On Thursday 17 June 2010, Marko Vojinovic wrote: >On Thursday, June 17, 2010 19:22:41 Gene Heskett wrote: >> On Thursday 17 June 2010, Tim wrote: >> >On Wed, 2010-06-16 at 14:47 -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote: >> >> An inferior format, VHS, image qualitywise, yes >> > >> >No. Have you actually compared them, or just repeating gossip? I >> > have. They were both as bad as each other, in general. And when there >> > was a difference, the Beta machines I've seen were worse. >> >> And the ones I've seen (I am a retired broadcast engineer), the >> Betamax's made for the professional market, were far better than VHS in >> its wildest dreams if properly mechanically standardized so tape >> interchangeability was maintained. That was a bit more difficult to >> maintain over time than some, so maintenance costs were maybe 10% >> higher. Because the format was not the dominant format, sony wasn't so >> concerned with maintaining backwards compatibility, so the 'Beta' >> formats stds got tweaked several times with visible improvements each >> time. The only time the vhs format was 'adjusted' was S-VHS, which was >> a decent improvement, but still had relatively poor noise levels. >> >> No hands down better format than beta was done until dvc-pro, which was >> a fully digital format. And I'll include the type C, and even the >> almost archeological 2" quadruplex machines in that group. An optimized >> Ampex VR-1200 could make some very good (NTSC/PAL) video. > >How would you rate U-matic in comparison to all those? > U-Matic, in its earlier development wasn't markedly better than VHS, but the tape itself was more robust and the mechanisms weren't quite as finicky. It likewise actually went through some standards fiddling and a considerable improvement in the tape itself that did improve it, but that was its swan song because we could by then get an S-VHS machine for 7 grand compared to the same years BVU-9xx from sony at over $20G's. The S-VHS format was several DB noisier, but no one more than 15 miles from the transmitter could tell the diff. Price wound up carrying the middle market by then because a 1 hour U-Matic tape was nearly $35 and the 1 hour S-VHS was about $20. That also counts when your news depts morgue has $100k of tape tied up till whenever. >I had some limited experience with beta (some incarnation of it), u-matic, >s-vhs and regular vhs. And from my POV, the order is exactly like that >quality-wise. But I was by no means an expert on all that, so I'm just >wondering about general opinion. :-) I would generally rank them in that order myself. >Best, :-) >Marko > -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) If you think you're right -- Murphy's Laws for School Administrators n�2 -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
