Quote:
Originally Posted by SFtheGreat
I said D-VHS was better than DVD.
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I'd mostly agree with this.
D-VHS was essentially the same as DV or Digital8, with digital signals stored on the tape. No analog info was present, and was not subjected to loss. But unlike DV/D8, it wasn't lossy DV (4:1:1) but lossy MPEG (4:2:0), which had less/different colorspace compression. The signal was superior, due to the codec.
Note that D-VHS bitrates went from about 3mbps to 15mbps, so my "agree" would depend on it being 15mbps. Anything less than 10 is DVD territory, and looks the same. I've long stated that 15mbps is a sweet spot for both capture and archiving, for MPEG-2. It looks near-transparent to the tape source. Only for technical reasons (GOP, maybe 4:2:2) would you want lossless for editing and restoration.
However, it was still helical tape, which let to problems. That's the main reason the format was disliked, aside from cost.
D-VHS was closer to MicroMV than anything else. Excellent format (MPEG-2 based), terrible tapes, but too expensive. (We have a MicroMV camera for transfer work, what few come in.)