Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV
BIII (and VHS EP/SLP) is actually -slower- than BI or BII. The easy way to remember this is, "How long will the tape run before it hits its end?".
I rarely ever used the BIII speed (and I made very few recordings on any VHS machines I ever had, but certainly only at SP on those). SP and BI or BII were just reasonably acceptable for video viewing but the slow speeds were almost always lousy. Super VHS on a good machine may be an exception; when I got my HR-S9900U VCR, I did try Super-VHS EP speed and it did look pretty decent if I remember right.
It always amused (or annoyed) me that people would use the EP/SLP VHS speed and cram three movies on to one video cassette. When I got my first VCR, a Sony SL-7200 in 1979, recording one movie from a TV channel (such as "Jaws" when it was first broadcast) required two L-500 tapes at US$16 each, a full day's pay for me at that time for one movie.  So, ten years later, I could not understand anyone who was so cheap as to think "I do not want to spend two whole dollars (the cost of a VHS tape then) to record a movie, so I will pick this lousy quality and have to fast-forward through two movies, so I can save $1.33". Yecch!  |
I meant slower. It's what I get for rushing through posting half the time.
A few shows I did make SP recordings of, but back when I was archiving TV shows to tape my parents were buying the tapes and never wanted to supply me with enough so I always had to get everything I could out of what I got or miss programs (most of what I was interested in was played during sleeping hours). As soon as I got an S-VHS-ET deck I switched to that and didn't look back. EP recordings were better than SP on a regular deck.
Memory be it analog or digital is never cheap or plentiful enough until after it's thoroughly obsolete.