Why do DVDs have more material than VHS?

[Glom]

The first thought might simply be to suggest that DVDs have a greater storage capacity than VHS, but if you look to the limit of content, this hypothesis is suspect.

In terms of core material, I haven't seen a DVD with content much over 3 hours. Such examples include most I Love Lucy, Red Dwarf, Return of the King.

For VHS, while most don't seem to want to exceed 1½ hours, I have seen ones with almost 3 hours. Examples include Porridge, Star Trek: The Next Generation. And we all know that E-240 blank tapes were readily available.

So VHS frequently did have much less, but we can see it could have had more. However, with DVDs, while they have more, they don't seem to able to handle much extra material. For Red Dwarf VII, which had four hours worth of core material, the episodes were split up into two discs instead of being kept on one as was down with the previous 3 hour seasons. The Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition DVDs had the 3½ movies split up into two discs.

In terms of demonstrated capability, DVDs don't seem to have a much higher capacity than VHS. Why is their capacity used so much more then?

[GDwarf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS#Tape_lengths
VHS did have limits in length, the longest seems to have been about 4 hours. DVDs not only have far higher quality, but can store 4.7 GB (double that if it's a dual layer disk). Which allows it to have far more recorded on it at a far higher quality of recording.

[papageno]

A VHS cannot be navigated as a DVD.

[Gillianren]

I took video production in college, long enough ago that we had no option for digital recording. The thing a lot of people don't realize is that, the more stuff you have, the slower you have to play the tape--or else you have to have more tape, which is limited by the size of the cartridge. The thing is, playing the tape slower affects the playback. You can fit six hours of programming on a tape--just look at the box on a blank one--but it's lower quality recording.

[snarkophilus]

A VHS cannot be navigated as a DVD.

That's why VCRs have counters. Sure, it may take a minute or two to get there, but you can find a "scene" pretty accurately on a cassette.

Heck, I have an old computer that uses audio cassettes for storage. Even that can find programs and data using the counter strategy.

It's probably partly quality issues, but I recall that originally it was to push people into buying DVDs. You got more if you bought the DVD, which made it worth the extra money (to some people). Now, since VHS sales are practically nil, it's probably just not worth it to add features to the tape. I do have a couple of tapes with a few bonus features, though.

[ToSeek]

I've put eight hours on a T-160 tape before, but I wouldn't do it for anything I wanted in high quality.

[SeanF]

I've put eight hours on a T-160 tape before...
Same here.

...but I wouldn't do it for anything I wanted in high quality.
Same here. :)

It's what papageno said - random access. If you had to fast-forward through two hours of movie to get to the "making of" documentary, nobody'd watch the documentary. At least, not enough people would want to watch it to make it worthwhile to include it.

And if you had to fast-forward through the half-hour documentary to get to the movie, your customers would lynch you.

[Glom]

Well ignoring special features. Take Red Dwarf, the VHS release had three episodes per tape. The DVD release the entire six episode seasons for series I to VI.

Can VHS go longer? Yes. Porridge was released on VHS will all six episodes of a season on one tape. Why are VHS generally not used to their full potential?

Are DVDs similarly underused? I'm not so sure. While all six episodes of series I to VI of RD were on a disc. When VII and VIII were released, which have eight episodes each, the series was split between two discs. These discs are part of the package, so it's not a money making scam by getting you to buy two discs. If a disc could have had all eight episodes on a disc, wouldn't it make sense for the distributor to make it so? Clearly, DVDs reach their limit at around 3 hours (the box set of Stargate SG-1 season one has a couple of discs with five episodes, but without commentaries so I suppose that makes up for it) just like we've seen for VHS.

So why were VHS capacities so underused while DVD capacities are used to their fullest?

[Gillianren]

Picture/sound quality.

[GDwarf]

Yes, the more you fit on a VHS the lower the quality is, DVD can have this problem, but it's not normally an issue. That's why your VCR can record at different speeds and why blank cassettes have multiple times listed on them.

[Sam5]

The first thought might simply be to suggest that DVDs have a greater storage capacity than VHS, but if you look to the limit of content, this hypothesis is suspect.

In terms of core material, I haven't seen a DVD with content much over 3 hours. Such examples include most I Love Lucy, Red Dwarf, Return of the King.

For VHS, while most don't seem to want to exceed 1½ hours, I have seen ones with almost 3 hours. Examples include Porridge, Star Trek: The Next Generation. And we all know that E-240 blank tapes were readily available.

So VHS frequently did have much less, but we can see it could have had more. However, with DVDs, while they have more, they don't seem to able to handle much extra material. For Red Dwarf VII, which had four hours worth of core material, the episodes were split up into two discs instead of being kept on one as was down with the previous 3 hour seasons. The Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition DVDs had the 3½ movies split up into two discs.

In terms of demonstrated capability, DVDs don't seem to have a much higher capacity than VHS. Why is their capacity used so much more then?

Modern technology allows for more TV type scan lines on a DVD.

Technology today could produce a recorder that could get more scan lines on a VHS tape and get up to 16 hours or more on a tape but there is no need for that for commercial movies.

The modern standard went for the more compact DVD disk, rather than keeping the big, bulky, and heavy VHS tape format. My DVD recorder can get up to 8 hours on a single-sided DVD disk. In the future the disks (or whatever they will be in the future, chips maybe) will allow for more storage of more scan lines in an even smaller package.

The original commercial video tape back in the late 1950s was 2 inches wide and ran at a very high speed, and it had wide scan lines, just for a black and white TV recording.

[Metricyard]

Not to metion that you usually get different options of closed caption and/or languges included, and in the case of LOTR's DVD series, 3 different commentaries.

Plus Easter Eggs :)

[Roving Philosopher]

Since commercial DVDs are pressed, the amount of time it takes to make, say, 10,000 copies isn't affected by the amount of data present. With VHS, if I'm not mistaken, more data means longer duplication times (though it may be negligible up to a point), which would likely increase manufacturing costs.

As an aside, I've got 65 episodes of Ray Bradbuty Theater on 5 DVDs (which is about 5 1/2 hours each). There are no special features, and only the bare minimum of menus. And still, the transfer quality is pretty low.

[Van Rijn]

So why were VHS capacities so underused while DVD capacities are used to their fullest?

Actually, they usually aren't, at least in terms of time. You can put more hours on a DVD (it is just another disk) at the cost of lower quality/higher effective compression MPEG-2 encoding. It's a tradeoff between quality and time. And given the cost of DVDs . . .

[papageno]

That's why VCRs have counters. Sure, it may take a minute or two to get there, but you can find a "scene" pretty accurately on a cassette.
Yes, but you still have to rewind or fast-forward the tape, while with the DVD you basically jump to the right point.
And you cannot switch the audio track, turn on/off subtitles and commentary, while you are watching (Metricyard already mentioned this).


Heck, I have an old computer that uses audio cassettes for storage. Even that can find programs and data using the counter strategy.
Ah yes. I used to do it with my Commodore 64.

[Ozzy]

VHS tapes lose a little bit of quality every timeyou play them. If you are ff or rew it is best to stop the tape first, then fast forward. This disengages the play heads and doesnt wipe the magnetic stuff? that the tape is coated with.

Longer VHS tapes large storage capacity, but 3 and 4 hour tapes are prone to tension problems and can become over loose or over tight.

I worked with someone who was in with the JVC management. Back in 1993 he told me that the goal of the big manufacturers (JVC, Sony, Panasonic etc..) was to eradicate tape based technology because the complicated machinery of play heads and loading mechanisms cost them millions each year in warranty.
We were fed the furfy that we should buy CDs because the sound quality was better and they were indestructable and would last forever. Since then music post production uses software that tries to emulate the analogue feel of records. I have old CDs that are noticeably deteriorating from the outside edge in. (my grandma has playable records from the 1920's. They weigh a tone and you do not want to drop one on you foot!).
The storage capacity of music CDs only uses half of the available space, manufacturers had to wait sometime for the storage capacity to be large enough for a movie.
Would I go back to VHS ...no ...... DVDs are easier to navigate, but they are annoying when they sort of half freeze and jerkily play tiny bits of scenes. Not as annoying as VHS tapes with tension and tracking problems, tapes caught in heads, and constantly requiring head cleaning.

[snarkophilus]

Ah yes. I used to do it with my Commodore 64.

I loved my C64, though I was lucky enough to have a 5 1/4" drive for it. It also had a slot for cartridges, which was a very nice feature (though I only had two things on cartridge). Add write capability to that, and you have the precursor to modern USB memory sticks....

[jt-3d]

Well before we go to far off course, I taped a lot of shows in the 80s. I mean a lot. I taped the entire series of Carriers off of Discovery, watching each episode and carefully cutting the commercials from each one with variying degrees of success. Well before I even watched the tape, that thing got a crease right down the middle of the entire tape thus rendering the whole thing, if not useless at least very annoying. Frankiy I'm surprised that I held onto VHS as long as I did.

A DVD will hold more but it's in the form of menus, trailers and such. The only VHS I have that has an extra in Castaway.

[Roy Batty]

I loved my C64, though I was lucky enough to have a 5 1/4" drive for it.
That would be the 'lead brick' then :)

[mugaliens]

If one were to use VHS for data storage, you'd find about the best it could do was about half of the original DAT spec, which itself was very roughly comparable with the 4.7GB DVD spec.

But as has been mentioned, DVD is randomly accessible, hence the demise of VHS.

The other thing DVD has going for it is the audio, which takes up far less space than the video, as far as movies go, the audio packs a very large wallop.

[NEOWatcher]

That would be the 'lead brick' then :)
I had that lead brick and a lighter 3rd party brick. The only machine I had cassete backup for was... get this... a ZX81.
VHS tapes lose a little bit of quality every timeyou play them.
I haven't made the move to DVR yet ... I leave a tape in for my daily recordings. My old recorder, I would get about a month before the tape couldn't take it. My new one has gotten a few months.
Technology today could produce a recorder that could get more scan lines on a VHS tape and get up to 16 hours or more on a tape but there is no need for that for commercial movies.

Can, and does... My new unit is a combo VHS/DVD-R. It has a 5x mode on the tape which will get 10 hrs on a standard tape and over 12 on a T160. I don't normally go there because of the quality.
As far as indexing, the mechanism is pretty quick. I can rewind a tape in about a minute. Unfortunately, that makes finding a spot on the tape very difficult, since at full tilt at 3x, about 15 minutes of tape goes by between the time I press stop and the tape actually stops.

For the time being, I will use tape for daily programming and move other taped stuff to DVD. I still need DVR and a Digital camcorder before I say bye-by to tape. (yes, I'm still stuck on VHS-C)

Edit: Format

[Maksutov]

VHS tapes lose a little bit of quality every timeyou play them. If you are ff or rew it is best to stop the tape first, then fast forward. This disengages the play heads and doesnt wipe the magnetic stuff? that the tape is coated with.Who doesn't know that? But with more recent machines, one head is still engaged to produce the time counter data.Longer VHS tapes large storage capacity, but 3 and 4 hour tapes are prone to tension problems and can become over loose or over tight.Yup. The perils of analog. I worked with someone who was in with the JVC management. Back in 1993 he told me that the goal of the big manufacturers (JVC, Sony, Panasonic etc..) was to eradicate tape based technology because the complicated machinery of play heads and loading mechanisms cost them millions each year in warranty.Sounds about right. Especially when the kid stuffed oatmeal into the tape load opening.
We were fed the furfy that we should buy CDs because the sound quality was better and they were indestructable and would last forever. No question the sound quality was better. Digital recording is unaffected by one of the supreme problems of VHS: low frequency buzz. This is the 60HZ or thereabouts low buzzing heard whenever there is a high frequency sound on the sound track. It's caused by the mismatch of the switching between heads as they scan the biased tracks. Even with the same machine that made the recording, these shifts are never in synch and lead to these very annoying low-pitched buzzes during playback.

Re endurance, what lasts forever? A red flag should have waved at that point.Since then music post production uses software that tries to emulate the analogue feel of records.Sources please. The best CDs I've heard are those where the recording engineerings have gotten the A/D converters working properly, without any analog fuzz (AKA "warmth"). I have old CDs that are noticeably deteriorating from the outside edge in.Funny, the many first-generation CDs from the early 80s I have still play just fine. (my grandma has playable records from the 1920's. They weigh a tone and you do not want to drop one on you foot!).You mean a "ton"? This smells of a Stereophile article from the 90s that bemoaned CDs, tapes, LPs, and wondered if shellac 78s were the only real means of preserving audio history. Bunk! The storage capacity of music CDs only uses half of the available space, manufacturers had to wait sometime for the storage capacity to be large enough for a movie.That makes no sense. Evidence, please?
Would I go back to VHS ...no ...... DVDs are easier to navigate, but they are annoying when they sort of half freeze and jerkily play tiny bits of scenes.Funny, my DVDs play fine without any of those problems. Maybe you should clean or upgrade your machine? Not as annoying as VHS tapes with tension and tracking problems, tapes caught in heads, and constantly requiring head cleaning.Funny, once again, I've never had a VHS tape "caught in the heads". Perhaps your handling and housekeeping need to be reevaluated?

Re the original question: it's because DVDs have more storage space and the storage is optical digital.

Suggestion re quality: look at a scene on VHS where reds are predominate. Then look at the same scene on a DVD release of the same video. If you can't see a difference, i.e., true, stable, and well-defined reds instead of the fuzzy bleeding reds VHS produces, then, call your optometrist.

[Ronald Brak]

Ozzy is in Australia and our culture results in more more caught tapes and scratched DVDs than in some other countries.

We'd be better off if DVDs came in a sealed plastic case like an old 3.4 inch floppy disk.