Beta tapes

[CaTaClYsM]

and yet you would have me just as soon buy a DVD RW drive that cost 300 bucks because it had 80 more lines of pixels than a beta did. (80 lines of pixels compressed in MPEG-2 but meh, they arent beta so those pixels must be better.)

But it is pretty clear that I have thrown my pearls before swine, if you wanna keep blowing hot air that's your choice but I've got betting things to do with my time.

[Knowname]

no, because it has more of a futre (ie SOME) in consumer electronics

anyway I thought you had a beta deck, what does this one not record?? If not, keep it, record on that, move it to computer ($20 cap card) and we're all done here! I have a 36 gig too... DVDs are only 4-9 gigs how do they hold 3 hours+ multiple sound layers if a 36 gig can't hold 1+ 1 sound layer? even 1 hr of uncompressed footage (which you probly won't be able to capture in...) will fit in like 5 gigs. Huffy can do it in 2 (48khz stereo audio PCM). Windows doesn't take more than 2g so that leaves 29g for everything else

[Ashyukun]

Actually, I'd probably say the reason we are so fond of DVDs isn't as much the higher resolution (over Beta or VHS) but more the fact that we don't lose quality when we use them as source, as we can access the full-quality video without having to run it (in effect or actuality) through any wires. No matter how good a wire you have, you're going to lose some quality with an analog connection. And other than the DVD-ROM drive (which most computers these days come with or can be gotten nice and cheap) you really don't need any hardware to use them as a source, just a couple pieces of software, all of which are (I believe) available free.

Actually Knownam, I'd doubt you could get a capture card capable of capturing full Beta resolution for just $20, most capture at around 320x240 (or 352x240), i.e. VHS resolution.

I did some looking around, and NTSC standard resolution is apparently 525 lines. We were both wrong, but yes, it is higher than VHS quality. I unfortunately haven't been able to find out just what resolution TV actually reaches us at... I just don't think we actually get it at the full 525 lines.

But, all told, were I looking to record and save shows to watch later, I'd probably be going the PC-based PVR method as well. Assuming you want to store your TV shows indefinitely, this would in the end be a cheaper route to go for most people. A good number of people have CD burners anyway, and CDs can be gotten for pennies apiece. Granted, at a decent resolution you can't fit as much on a CD as on a tape (at least with current compression technology), but they cost a lot less, take up less space (when not stored in jewel cases), and will not degrade like a tape will with repeated viewings.

This may not work out well for you, but it's probably what I would do if I thought anything on TV these days was worth recording. I haven't bothered with anything since Firefly was put on hiatus, and my wife hasn't wanted to tape much of anything since Ally McBeal ended.

[RadicalEd0]

First to Cat, as was said beta isn't superior to DVD because of its resolution, the superiority comes mainly in the fact that its digital instead of analog. Sure, analog was 'uncompressed' by digital means, but it still was compressed in that YUV and interlacing are both analog forms of compression, as well as the fact that analog is always subject to (often severe) noise, distortion, and temporal degradion. Mpeg2 on the other hand's only vice is its being subject to DCT blocking and ringing artifacts, which at DVD res and rates isn't usually severe at all. The advantages however are the ability to transfer losslessley, overall better image quality, higher 'resolution' (resolution in pixels is a purely digital convention, analog video really has no specific resolution so to speak. There are perhaps 400 lines recorded by beta, but the technics are kind of shady and require some good electric engineering background to fully understand), and as was said a standard that actually has a future and isnt completely defunct. So the standard will be obsolete in 6 years. The same goes for all technology. 6 years from then something better will be out too, you just gonna wait forever? The fact that computers will be 12x faster in 6 years stop you from buying a good one now instead of some $300 emachines? I guess it comes down to the question of how much you value what you're recording. Sure, if you dont give a crap that its a standard with no future and that you're going to have to go through all kinds of loops to keep it up to date in the future then by all means beta would be fine for you. But if you want it recorded on a higher quality medium, which will be re usable in the future (352x240 mpeg1 is part of the DVD standard, and VCDs are about 14 years old) and much easier and less lossy at that, then pull the strings to get a DVD. It depends on what YOU want to do. omfg that sounds like a microsoft ad capaign.


ash: broadcast ntsc is about 485 lines of horizontal resolution (525 total, but 40 are reserved for analog garbage and blanking, and the other 5 arent used :\ ). NTSC TVs have approx 720x480 pixels on the display (not to be confused with transfer, which as I said above can't really be measured in pixels)