Dvd-era Gripe

[David Challinor]

oh dear - I'll get into big trouble with many members for this message but...COMPARED TO VHS, DVD TECHNOLOGY IS REALLY HACKING ME OFF! ...ok, the picture quality is great compared to VT, DVDs never have electrical lines down the screen (folds on the tape itself?) or - horror of horrors - the tape snaps and is broken for good etc.
But what have we got in return....?
Well, just how many times have DVDs I have bought or rented FROZEN in mid scene, I've lost count...
Worst still, the Dreaded 'BAD DISC ERROR' sign appears and you're taken on a scene or more, and maybe a fifth of the film is skipped by, all due to the infernal machine...dust, scratches? Probably....but that NEVER happened to VHS. You could sit back with no worries and watch the entire story.
With new/rented DVDs I've started searching for scratches - like I did with old LP records [hardly very-digital eh?!] - but feel we should have a format which isn't so prone to basic problems. At least videotape was better protected in its plastic casing.
Also, as for the DVDs 'extras', well we all love 'em, don't we, but I'd vouch nobody who's fell in love with the cinema/movies - as members of this site have - did so because they saw three outtakes of a British film ... it's marketing hype mostly, aimed to get us to shell out again for a film we love in a new format.

To back up my case a couple of examples of what I mean: yesterday, it being cold and running out of ideas I spent £14.99 on Disney's Bambi for my (nearly) 3 year old...of course she loved this classic, but it froze no less than 3 times, despite the packaging telling me how technically brilliant it all is nowadays. Her Dad had to 'scroll back' for the film to snap out of it and to get going again, but the magic was lost for vital moments.
I have a perfectly respectable Matsui player, and the disc was new and clean, straight from Morrison's Reigate. Anyway, I decided to look at the 'bonus disc' tonight with 'deleted scenes'...these 'scenes' (all two of them) were simply bare sketches Disney had quite rightly decided not to develop. Hardly buried treasures. At least they had put voices to the pencil drawings, but I felt ripped-off. Anyone else viewed them? 'Deleted Scenes' my a***!

As I said, I have suffered many freezes on DVDs I rented - occasionally I have got my money back after a disappointing friday or saturday night of broken viewing, fighting with the DVD controls just to wrest back control of the narrative flow of the film. ...'Never happened in the good old days when a vid' would do.

One last memory - last year myself and my wife settled back to enjoy the modern 'epic' Cold Mountain. A third of the way through: ''BAD DISC ERROR'' appeared....the film leap at least a quarter of the way through its showing, and I'll never be able to think of that film without remembering the disappointment of its first DVD showing I had of it. Shame.

I wonder how many new viewers to, say, 'Lawrence of Arabia' will be taken from Lean's famous burning matchstick edit to a much later scene by and not the marvellous vista of the desert as cinema/video adequately did....? David, I can almost see you spinning in your grave.

Is it possible that the DVD format is still developing techically speaking? Well, it's not there yet in my book! Roll on the next new money-spinning format.
Does anyone else feel the same/have similar problems ?!?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?

[mysteriesofedgarwallace]

It sounds more like a problem with your player.
I own about five or six DVD players and have to say that the Sony and Panasonic players have been faultless; the Matsui plus a couple of own brand ones from Asda have been very troublesome.

[Steve Crook]

Look at them a bit closer.
Yes you can get problems with tape stretching, creasing and even breaking. But there is more information recorded on the tape.

Other things DVDs are prone to is one scene breaking into another (usually a sign of a dodgy DVD) and "ghosting" where, as a part of the compression to fit the film onto the DVD, one scene will sometimes start to appear before another one has finished. It's rare to find a clean cut. You also can't step through frame by frame on a DVD. Yes, you can step through it, but in each step you're usually stepping through 2 or 3 frames.

DVDs are very useful - but don't believe the hype.
They aren't higher quality than tapes.
You certainly can't improve the image by recording a tape onto a DVD.
What you can do is copy from them without any loss of information, unlike with a tape that degrades in quality every time a copy is made.
It's even unknown (unproven) if a DVD will last longer than a tape.

Steve

[deckard]

Fear not David! this technology might be here sooner than we think, here's hoping eh? :unsure: regards, Decks.

[DAVID RAYNER]

I must say, I've never had any problem with my DVD's or my DVD player. The main advantage that DVD has over video is that there is no colour bleeding (some video tape recordings can't handle red, for instance) and, if the film has been remastered for DVD, the image is pin sharp.

Take Nicholas and Alexandra, for instance. The VHS pan and scan video transfer is such that you can't read the credits or the cast at the beginning of the film, as the white lettering just melts into the red background. But on the remastered widescreen DVD, the credits are pin sharp and you can read every name.

That's the plus side. On the minus side, I don't know whether DVD recordings will last anywhere near as long as the old videos. Only time will tell. The oldest pre-recorded video I have is one I bought in 1988, of the 1958 BBC Television serial classic, Quatermass and the Pit. I ran it last night and it still looks exactly the same as it did when I first played it, seventeen years ago. Who knows if my DVD of Nicholas and Alexandra will last for seventeen years? Even if I handle it and store it correctly, chemical changes inherhant in the disc may eventually render the disc unplayable.

[Jim]

Echo those comments David,

I've had all those symptoms AND on a new and costly dvd player! So I'm very wary of buying mid-priced DVDs, but even the slightest bit of dust, etc., will cause a DVD to freeze; stop.

I remember 'Tomorrow's World' demonstrating this new technology years ago, when all kinds of rubbish was placed on the disc, like fag-ash, etc., and it was still supposed to play! (I can't remember if it worked or not). But then I also remember them doing a demo on some cream that was supposed to take the misery out of hypo injections - that died a death, didn't it?

Ah! the advancement of science!!

:cry:

[David Challinor]

Thanks for all the replies! Maybe a bit of snow might help my player/DVDs from freezing...I know I am.

[Allen Dace]

I can only say that I'm a huge fan of DVDs and I have rarely had any trouble whatsoever with them (and then a speck of fluff on the disc has proved to be the culprit). I never rent so I can understand that they might get damaged by careless people before you've got hold of them but as long as you have a clean dust-free environment and never ever touch the disc surface you should have no trouble. If you've experienced otherwise I'd say its very bad luck (and an expensive player is not necessarily going to be the best).
Also I am honestly amazed when people assert that the picture quality is anything less than vastly superior to VHS (EXCEPT when the DVD is poorly encoded which I grant does happen although an on-line review will usually point this out).

No offence David and Steve (and its true that we just don't know how durable these DVDs will prove to be) but I'll stand up for the point of view that DVD viewing can be a great experience - consistently.

[Ed Parsons]

Originally posted by SteveCrook@Feb 22 2005, 12:29 AM DVDs are very useful - but don't believe the hype. They aren't higher quality than tapes. You certainly can't improve the image by recording a tape onto a DVD. What you can do is copy from them without any loss of information, unlike with a tape that degrades in quality every time a copy is made. It's even unknown (unproven) if a DVD will last longer than a tape.

Surely DVDs are much higher quality than tapes? My five year old Panasonic has played every DVD I've tried in it, except for one or two that were down to manufacturing errors. Towards the end of the VHS era I was having to take every other tape I bought back for an exchange because of the terribly poor quality of tapes everyone was using. It used to be a nightmare. The resolution, picture and sound quality is nearly always better on DVDs.

With regards to copying VHS tapes to DVD, my DVD Recorder has a built in Time Base Corrector which gives the picture a much more stable appearance. So that's one slight improvement. I agree with about the durability of DVDs, though. That has yet to be seen. So there may be future problems with home recordings.

Commercially released DVDs are a vast improvement over video tapes. If people are having problems with a significant number of discs than it's almost certainly the fault of your player.

[mysteriesofedgarwallace]

A DVD recorded from a video tape will be just that.
A commercially released DVD is (or should be!, unless its released by 'Clearvision') better quality than a VHS tape as VCR's can only (except for S-VHS) output a composite signal. A DVD player can output an RGB, or at the very least an S-VIDEO signal.

[ollie]

I'll go along with the pro dvd lobby,lol i have 2 machines 1 a samsung 709,had it about 5yrs or so,it did start being fussy on some discs,but since i got a pannye55 it hasn't refused one disc! and burnt about 250,no coasters!

When vhs first came out (i got a panny one in 1980) i,like most was over joyed at being able to tape stuff,and rent movies,towards the end of my vhs use i HATED the format i'd previously loved,tapes breaking chewing up worrying about magnetic fields,lol i got very obsessive with white lines on pre-recordeds, the record for taking back a tape to hmv,was 6 times and then i just gave up. I still have some tapes that are 25 yrs old the ones i've tried to play generally stick to the heads now,luckily i've retrieved every thing of value to me.

My dvd/ dvr-r experiance has been nothing but positive, but the only worry as stated, is longevity,i too only use quality branded discs and keep them in dark cases out of the sunlight,i hope they dont ROT till there is another media to store my (our) much treasured collections,which without we would be at the mercy of reality tv,banal drama,and mostly crappy hollywood cinema releases.

cheers Ollie.

[lassie]

Occasionaly we had the odd disc which will freeze or skip and can be annoying. But I blame the kids for the way they handle them when inserting them and taking them out of the player.