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? 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. :-) Best, :-) Marko -- 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