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. -- 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) Someday your prints will come. -- Kodak -- 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