What you said about so many people using SP or SLP and avoiding LP is so true. The last VCR I owned, toward the very tail end of the VHS era, _only had_ SP and SLP modes on account of this.
Great Video! Video tape still fascinates me too and I try to still find uses for it practically. Currently Im using a PCM encoder to listen to digital audio from Hi8. Therefore I get the sound quality of cd, the nostalgia of cassette tape like format (DAT & DCC not withstanding) and a pretty video disco strobeshow to look at all at once!
please put NTSC in title - this is just not true for the rest of the world where PAL was used. we never had anything slower than LP, and LP was quite watchable. again, in PAL countries. which still make over half of the world...
The interesting thing with PAL machines is the slower tape speed and difference in frame rate. With an E180 tape, those countries could still get close to the same recording time in LP mode that NTSC countries got in EP/SLP mode. You also had longer recording times in SP mode than NTSC countries.
In the UK, a PAL country. We never had SLP, we had SP and LP. The first LP recorders were pretty good because the video head drum contained four heads, two heads optimised for SP and two for LP. But as time progressed, and prices fell, the build quality and other technical aspects of the VCR began to suffer. In the end, unless it was a high-end machine, they started making recorders that just contained two heads in the drum that were optimised for LP speed but were also used for SP speed. The quality of SP recordings suffered and could not match the quality of the older machines because the S/N ratio was compromised by the much narrower video tracks. Also, because there was now a gap between each video track as laid down on the tape in SP speed, picture search was badly marred by thick, chunky noise bars, and poor still frame. Personally, I never used long play because I wasn't prepared to accept the reduction in quality, VHS wasn't that great to begin with anyway. Besides, in PAL countries, VHS from the start could record for up to three hours with the E180 cassette, soon to be followed by the four-hour cassette, E240 and eventually we had the E300 five-hour cassette, though the E300 was not recommended due to the very thin tape used. For most people, I'd say that was long enough.
PAL country here. We only had SP and LP, although I think the LP speed was the same as SLP for NTSC. We got 6 hours out of an 180 tape, which I think had the same length in meters) as a 120 tape in the US? Anyway, LP was watchable, be it with some more color noise and the inability to pause the video with a normal image. I had a HiFi VCR and the sound quality on both speeds was perfect. I even used LP mode for audio only to make 8-hour mixtapes for parties. People often wondered if I had the radio on because I didn't switch cassettes or LPs even once 😆. But if the radio, howcome no commercials? It was fun getting those questions from people with that puzzled look on their faces. Nice to get a trip down memory lane again. I completely agree with marveling over past technology. I collect old stuff (just one or two per technology) just to show this to my kid and to visitors. VHS, CRT, LD, 16 mm and 8 mm projector, R2R, walkman, minidisc, 8-track, tube radio, 78, polyphon disc music box and even a cylinder player. It's amazing to think of the design of this old stuff with the limited tooling they had back then. People love watching this stuff work 😁 Thank you for this video!
When I recorded video, I nearly always used SP because the image quality was poor enough at that speed; it got Much worse at the other two. And although I waited until I could buy a VHS HiFi machine, I still wanted the linear audio to be as good as possible.
LP was not consistent between manufacturers. A tape recorded in LP might not play on every VCR. I had a HI-FI Panasonic VCR which I used to record audio from CDs before burning was a thing. Keeping track of the time stamp made finding each recording easy, and they sounded just as good. I also used it as a Hi-Fi audio recorder for my band. We'd start a rehersal, with the VCR connected to the console's audio out, hit record (in SLP mode) and jam for hours. Good times.
I remember some cheap VHS releases being done in LP mode. It was difficult to get the tracking perfectly set on them. Using it to record jam sessions was a great idea!
We all knew the differences in recording speed way back then.. If you wanted to keep something for the long term you recorded it in SP or LP... You recorded in EP if you simply could not afford to buy more tapes. But also if you recorded in EP on a hi-fi machine on high grade tape you could get sorta decent results...still a lot worse than SP... On top of that when they went to "digital tracking" it did have a lot of difficulties with locking EP and LP recordings.. If you had manual it was fine. But for myself i adopted SVHS as soon as i could.. around 89'... and recording in EP was just a little lower than in LP.
Both Beta and VHS must have experimented with adding speeds later... I remember our 8th grade class watching "A Tale of Two Cities" which someone had taped off TV and then selected a slower speed midway through recording the film. Since the school's Betamax machine did not support the slower speed, we watched "fast motion" fight scenes and with tracking distortion for the end of the movie, which turned it from a drama into a comedy and had the whole class laughing!
Beta started with just one speed, B-I, when it first came out. Later B-II and B-III were added. Soon after, B-I disappeared from machines all together.
I do think they should/could have introduced a faster speed once camcorders came out, maybe at 1.5 or 2x SP speed, then start including it on high end VCRs as well.
In the last VHS years, I used VHS compatible S-VHS; they were rather affordable. I couldn’t make a difference in sound quality, but the picture was massively better. Of course there wasn’t any material to rent. I used it primarily for family videos and taping of TV movies I watched later on.
lol My Aunt down in Tenn., could b00tlegg like a Champ. My Mom couldn't figure it Out, and I wasn't allowed to "Screw-Up" the Electronics. So My Mom would Setup the Tri-Pod with the Full VHS Camcorder in front of the TV; then when she hit play on the VCR and it would appear on our HIUGE 25" drag. Console TV, She would hit Record on the Camcorder... 🤣🔫. New Sub; Dryden, Mich.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel In my childhood when i had VHS I didn't had slower speeds. All cassettes and recorder itself could write/read on normal speed only. Never head of slower speeds. Thanks interesting
@EastAngliaUK, broadly speaking, I prefer 480 over lower resolutions, higher tape speeds over slower ones, and if I'm looking between a consumer Beta deck recording at B2 speed and a VHS at SP, I'd pick VHS. A Beta deck recording at B1 would be my choice over VHS at SP.
Years ago I recorded six hours of music onto VHS with an RCA HiFi stereo VCR. The sound quality at SLP was virtually indistinguishable from the CD sources. And no tape hiss!
If I had one of those machines, I probably would have. The prices on those machines are out of my budget, especially for something I'd demo and likely never use again.
Back in that era, I stuck with Beta for the better video quality. VHS SLP was so poor that only SP was worth using, and then it was 2 hours vs. 3 or 4.5 on a Beta tape. I made the shift to VHS when HQ came along. I bought a JVC recorder with HQ that was finally decent enough for daily use. When SVHS came along, I went with that. Of course our TV sets back then had such poor resolution that we were used to a soft picture no matter what. I remember LD for movies - all that noise was gone.
What difference do you notice on VHS HQ? I only had VCRs with HQ support, so I don't know how much better they are compared to VCRs that don't have it.
LP was mostly not used because many machines simply wouldn't let you record in LP. Over the years, of the 3 machines my family had, none recorded in LP mode. FFWD and RWD blanked the screen (white on one machine), so no preview at all. Considering EP wasn't that much worse than LP it made sense. The machines played LP alright, just wouldn't record in that mode.
No simulation in the video. They were all recorded with hifi audio. At the EP/SLP speed, you can hear some lack of high frequency when compared to SP if you listen very closely. My plan was to switch to the linear audio heads for that portion, where the difference is very noticeable, however I found out in post production that I forgot to feed the audio into those inputs as well. I am planning a short followup video demonstrating that, however.
VHS hifi is not tape speed dependant. The head drum is at 1500 rpm for PAL and 1800 rpm for NTSC. The only difference is the track width. So s/n is variable but frequency response is not.
The noise increases, and why so much noise in the first place, that's why I was asking. Maybe he recorded at a very low level or something. I mean the noise makes sense for linear track, but I don't notice the high frequencies dropping much, but his mic is not that sharp anyway, which is good IMO.
The speed demos segments were recorded on a consumer-grade VCR, the Panasonic Omnivision that was featured in the video. For the complete VHS version, the other segments were recorded on a professional VCR.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel Thanks for answering, but I'm still puzzled, HIFI should not be that noisy on any VCR, so what happened with that? Did you actually play the linear track after all, but used that SVHS tape for the speed tests and would it have better high frequencies that expected from a linear track on normal tape? 😊
I think you must have used the HiFi track for the sound. At slower speeds you would be lucky to make about 4Khz on a good day. Voice was very muffled. The slower tape speeds made very little difference to the HiFi track; Voice was very acceptable, but music did lose detail. My comments are based on Pal.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel Hmm, no? I could definitely hear tape hiss and loss of frequency response as you went through the different speeds, a sure-sign of linear audio being used instead of hi-fi.
This video just popped up in my feed. Very interesting and brought back a few memories. Subscribed!
Welcome aboard!
What you said about so many people using SP or SLP and avoiding LP is so true. The last VCR I owned, toward the very tail end of the VHS era, _only had_ SP and SLP modes on account of this.
I think part of the reason for this is because JVC-made and JVC-licensed machines didn't support LP for recording, only for playback.
i still use vhs, with a set top box, but have a dvd recorder aswell
Great Video! Video tape still fascinates me too and I try to still find uses for it practically. Currently Im using a PCM encoder to listen to digital audio from Hi8. Therefore I get the sound quality of cd, the nostalgia of cassette tape like format (DAT & DCC not withstanding) and a pretty video disco strobeshow to look at all at once!
Thanks for watching and coming along on the ride. PCM and Hi8... there's a combination!
please put NTSC in title - this is just not true for the rest of the world where PAL was used. we never had anything slower than LP, and LP was quite watchable. again, in PAL countries. which still make over half of the world...
Stop whining bro. Think about me ass dude.
The interesting thing with PAL machines is the slower tape speed and difference in frame rate. With an E180 tape, those countries could still get close to the same recording time in LP mode that NTSC countries got in EP/SLP mode. You also had longer recording times in SP mode than NTSC countries.
Nice video with good explanation! Why is the rotating head at an angle?
The head is at an angle to maximize each "stripe" the head makes on the tape. They end up on the tape like this: ////////.
In the UK, a PAL country. We never had SLP, we had SP and LP. The first LP recorders were pretty good because the video head drum contained four heads, two heads optimised for SP and two for LP. But as time progressed, and prices fell, the build quality and other technical aspects of the VCR began to suffer. In the end, unless it was a high-end machine, they started making recorders that just contained two heads in the drum that were optimised for LP speed but were also used for SP speed. The quality of SP recordings suffered and could not match the quality of the older machines because the S/N ratio was compromised by the much narrower video tracks. Also, because there was now a gap between each video track as laid down on the tape in SP speed, picture search was badly marred by thick, chunky noise bars, and poor still frame. Personally, I never used long play because I wasn't prepared to accept the reduction in quality, VHS wasn't that great to begin with anyway. Besides, in PAL countries, VHS from the start could record for up to three hours with the E180 cassette, soon to be followed by the four-hour cassette, E240 and eventually we had the E300 five-hour cassette, though the E300 was not recommended due to the very thin tape used. For most people, I'd say that was long enough.
You're absolutely correct. PAL countries had the advantage of longer recording time from the start.
PAL country here. We only had SP and LP, although I think the LP speed was the same as SLP for NTSC. We got 6 hours out of an 180 tape, which I think had the same length in meters) as a 120 tape in the US?
Anyway, LP was watchable, be it with some more color noise and the inability to pause the video with a normal image. I had a HiFi VCR and the sound quality on both speeds was perfect.
I even used LP mode for audio only to make 8-hour mixtapes for parties. People often wondered if I had the radio on because I didn't switch cassettes or LPs even once 😆. But if the radio, howcome no commercials? It was fun getting those questions from people with that puzzled look on their faces.
Nice to get a trip down memory lane again. I completely agree with marveling over past technology. I collect old stuff (just one or two per technology) just to show this to my kid and to visitors. VHS, CRT, LD, 16 mm and 8 mm projector, R2R, walkman, minidisc, 8-track, tube radio, 78, polyphon disc music box and even a cylinder player. It's amazing to think of the design of this old stuff with the limited tooling they had back then. People love watching this stuff work 😁
Thank you for this video!
Thanks for watching! I love old tech, the level of mechanical and electrical engineering that went into those technologies is amazing.
When I recorded video, I nearly always used SP because the image quality was poor enough at that speed;
it got Much worse at the other two.
And although I waited until I could buy a VHS HiFi machine,
I still wanted the linear audio to be as good as possible.
VHS e VIDEO8 sono gli unici sistemi video di cui ho sempre avuto una enorme passione,gli altri sistemi non contano,con me..
cannot see any text on the video lol glad we have HD now
Now show us the Hifi VCR, even in SLP mode sounds really great
All VHS audio in all three modes were using HiFi audio tracks.
LP was not consistent between manufacturers. A tape recorded in LP might not play on every VCR.
I had a HI-FI Panasonic VCR which I used to record audio from CDs before burning was a thing. Keeping track of the time stamp made finding each recording easy, and they sounded just as good. I also used it as a Hi-Fi audio recorder for my band. We'd start a rehersal, with the VCR connected to the console's audio out, hit record (in SLP mode) and jam for hours. Good times.
I remember some cheap VHS releases being done in LP mode. It was difficult to get the tracking perfectly set on them. Using it to record jam sessions was a great idea!
Same here.. Would use my decks as a poor mans DAT.. borrow cd's from friends and record them on high end vhs tape on ep.
We all knew the differences in recording speed way back then.. If you wanted to keep something for the long term you recorded it in SP or LP... You recorded in EP if you simply could not afford to buy more tapes. But also if you recorded in EP on a hi-fi machine on high grade tape you could get sorta decent results...still a lot worse than SP... On top of that when they went to "digital tracking" it did have a lot of difficulties with locking EP and LP recordings.. If you had manual it was fine. But for myself i adopted SVHS as soon as i could.. around 89'... and recording in EP was just a little lower than in LP.
Both Beta and VHS must have experimented with adding speeds later... I remember our 8th grade class watching "A Tale of Two Cities" which someone had taped off TV and then selected a slower speed midway through recording the film. Since the school's Betamax machine did not support the slower speed, we watched "fast motion" fight scenes and with tracking distortion for the end of the movie, which turned it from a drama into a comedy and had the whole class laughing!
Beta started with just one speed, B-I, when it first came out. Later B-II and B-III were added. Soon after, B-I disappeared from machines all together.
I do think they should/could have introduced a faster speed once camcorders came out, maybe at 1.5 or 2x SP speed, then start including it on high end VCRs as well.
I agree. It would have been interesting to see improvement in the format.
In the last VHS years, I used VHS compatible S-VHS; they were rather affordable. I couldn’t make a difference in sound quality, but the picture was massively better. Of course there wasn’t any material to rent. I used it primarily for family videos and taping of TV movies I watched later on.
SVHS was markedly better when I came to picture quality, that's for sure. The audio was the same, but HiFi was already excellent.
lol My Aunt down in Tenn., could b00tlegg like a Champ. My Mom couldn't figure it Out, and I wasn't allowed to "Screw-Up" the Electronics.
So My Mom would Setup the Tri-Pod with the Full VHS Camcorder in front of the TV; then when she hit play on the VCR and it would appear on our HIUGE 25" drag. Console TV, She would hit Record on the Camcorder... 🤣🔫.
New Sub; Dryden, Mich.
That's the most complicated tape copying process I've heard. Lol. That's great! Welcome to the channel!
nice! thanks for your content!
Thanks for watching!
@@VintageElectronicsChannel In my childhood when i had VHS I didn't had slower speeds. All cassettes and recorder itself could write/read on normal speed only. Never head of slower speeds. Thanks interesting
I watch the HD copy its just so much shaper
It's hard to watch anything that isn't HD now. Off subject, but I noticed your user name. I grew up in Thetford.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel what do you think is better out of 240p 360p 480p vhs sp vs lp and beta?
@EastAngliaUK, broadly speaking, I prefer 480 over lower resolutions, higher tape speeds over slower ones, and if I'm looking between a consumer Beta deck recording at B2 speed and a VHS at SP, I'd pick VHS. A Beta deck recording at B1 would be my choice over VHS at SP.
Years ago I recorded six hours of music onto VHS with an RCA HiFi stereo VCR. The sound quality at SLP was virtually indistinguishable from the CD sources. And no tape hiss!
I thought he was going to play some of the 1080i VHS videos from the late 90s to compare or something
That would be pointless, it was a novel tech that almost nobody had access to or knew about
If I had one of those machines, I probably would have. The prices on those machines are out of my budget, especially for something I'd demo and likely never use again.
Back in that era, I stuck with Beta for the better video quality. VHS SLP was so poor that only SP was worth using, and then it was 2 hours vs. 3 or 4.5 on a Beta tape. I made the shift to VHS when HQ came along. I bought a JVC recorder with HQ that was finally decent enough for daily use. When SVHS came along, I went with that. Of course our TV sets back then had such poor resolution that we were used to a soft picture no matter what. I remember LD for movies - all that noise was gone.
What difference do you notice on VHS HQ? I only had VCRs with HQ support, so I don't know how much better they are compared to VCRs that don't have it.
@@MaxwelThuThu The video is quite a bit cleaner (less noise) and improved contrast.
LP was mostly not used because many machines simply wouldn't let you record in LP. Over the years, of the 3 machines my family had, none recorded in LP mode. FFWD and RWD blanked the screen (white on one machine), so no preview at all. Considering EP wasn't that much worse than LP it made sense. The machines played LP alright, just wouldn't record in that mode.
That's an interesting observation, and come to think of it, I remember a machine or two from back in the day that didn't have LP mode as well.
I don't really notice the high frequencies dropping much when you change the speeds, was that simulated?
No simulation in the video. They were all recorded with hifi audio. At the EP/SLP speed, you can hear some lack of high frequency when compared to SP if you listen very closely. My plan was to switch to the linear audio heads for that portion, where the difference is very noticeable, however I found out in post production that I forgot to feed the audio into those inputs as well. I am planning a short followup video demonstrating that, however.
VHS hifi is not tape speed dependant. The head drum is at 1500 rpm for PAL and 1800 rpm for NTSC. The only difference is the track width. So s/n is variable but frequency response is not.
The noise increases, and why so much noise in the first place, that's why I was asking. Maybe he recorded at a very low level or something. I mean the noise makes sense for linear track, but I don't notice the high frequencies dropping much, but his mic is not that sharp anyway, which is good IMO.
The speed demos segments were recorded on a consumer-grade VCR, the Panasonic Omnivision that was featured in the video. For the complete VHS version, the other segments were recorded on a professional VCR.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel Thanks for answering, but I'm still puzzled, HIFI should not be that noisy on any VCR, so what happened with that? Did you actually play the linear track after all, but used that SVHS tape for the speed tests and would it have better high frequencies that expected from a linear track on normal tape? 😊
I think you must have used the HiFi track for the sound. At slower speeds you would be lucky to make about 4Khz on a good day. Voice was very muffled. The slower tape speeds made very little difference to the HiFi track; Voice was very acceptable, but music did lose detail. My comments are based on Pal.
Your observations are true for NTSC as well. Each demo was recorded using the hifi tracks.
@@VintageElectronicsChannel Hmm, no? I could definitely hear tape hiss and loss of frequency response as you went through the different speeds, a sure-sign of linear audio being used instead of hi-fi.
Bad Electronics is what caused the shity picture in the slp!!!!!
Tape speed did not doom VHS. CD's and DVD did.
Beta WAS superior 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉