Oldest surviving color tape of entertainment show

[DVtyro]

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

I still have a working Philips CDV-488 Laserdisc player and it beats my Sony BlueRay hands down even when viewed on a 64" Samsung plasma in composite mode

There is something wrong with your setup or with your eyes.

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

Our ears & eyes are analog.

Digital audio and video is only stored in digital form, it is delivered to our ears and eyes as sine waves. The needed math and engineering has been invented, designed and licked out by the early 1990s. There is no "digital sound", there are no square waves, because they would require infinite bandwidth. The only issue with digital is macroblocking caused by insufficient bitrate.

[ARC Tech-109]

Originally Posted by DVtyro

There is something wrong with your setup or with your eyes.

No offense taken here but I do have to ask if you've ever seen a real high bandwidth analog video and I'm not talking from a consumer format SVHS or ED-Beta, instead I'm referring to the likes of BetaSP, Type-C or Quad on a purely analog monitor like a Sony PVM2530.

I do have both Type-C and BetaSP and the best high-end monitor I can muster up is my Panasonic TAU series CT-34WX54 widescreen CRT so I'd like to invite you over for some popcorn to watch either some first generation BetaSP that I shot with a DXC-537 docked to a PVV-3 or a 2nd gen RF dup of either the first Bourne movie or a distro copy of the 1968 classic Bullitt on Type-C and you can bring your BluRay or DVD of the same and we can do the Pepsi Challenge in my living room. No sweetening or proc amps just raw composite from the analogs and HDMI from the BluRay in real time.

[DVtyro]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Average digital looks better than mediocre analog, premium analog looks better than average digital, and premium high resolution and bandwidth digital usually looks better than premium analog.... Trouble is most digital that most people consume is average at best... It's usually not given enough bandwidth to be free of artifacts.

Exactly. Just for kicks I recorded some digital video to VHS and then digitized it back, you can see the comparison in my YouTube video. Twenty years ago we had MPEG-2 HD@ 15-18 Mbit/s, now our OTA HD dropped to as low as 5 Mbit/s and even 3.5 Mbit/s, it is garbage. There are tons of SD subchannels @ 2 Mbit/s, they look horrible too. Still, when you compare VHS copy with digital you can see how the edges are much better defined in digital, color does not bleed over edges, and static scenes look almost perfect. The quality of digital depends on bitrate, and the more detail and motion you have the more bitrate you need. Analog is different here, you get more or less the same results no matter fast or slow scene, but it is a known fact that the Japanese MUSE had chroma interlacing, so fast scenes looked less pretty. This is why most MUSE demos use slow to medium pans and tilts, very careful, with stabilized camera.

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

I do have both Type-C and BetaSP and the best high-end monitor I can muster up is my Panasonic TAU series CT-34WX54 widescreen CRT so I'd like to invite you over for some popcorn to watch either some first generation BetaSP

BetaSP is SD. The fact that you mention first generation reminds everyone that analog loses quality with each generation. Yes, BetaSP holds much better than Umatic or VHS, but it loses quality nevertheless. Digital does not lose quality when it is copied without editing, this is what everyone likes it for. This is why torrents are so great

34 inches? You got to be kidding. My computer monitor is 27 inches, it is not a gaming monitor, and I sit one foot away. On the other hand, my VHS captures look great on my smartphone

CRT is great for motion. Plasma is comparable. My main TV is a 50-inch Panasonic plasma, I wish I bought the Kuro when I had a chance. Early LCD TVs were crap for motion because of the ON/OFF character of the elements and low refresh rate, this is why I bought plasma back in 2006. But LCD TVs went a long way, and their 480 Hz or even 600 Hz refresh rate is good enough to portray smooth motion.