On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 01:15 PM, mean-green@hushmail.com wrote:

...

Tim, I think you're missing the point here. Valenti and his ilk would like nothing more than to force you to to rebuy your visual media *again*, but

At 05:06 PM 6/3/2002 -0400, Trei, Peter wrote: they don't have to. I'll bet dollars to donuts that you've rebought some of your VCR tapes as DVDs. Whey wouldn't the MPAA think they can make you do it over?

Tim may be willing or able to repurchase his movie collection but many are not. I've "backed" up all of the movies I have on VHS onto CDs (2-3 per movie average) from DVD in a high quality format called SVCD. As soon as my budget allows I'll be a DVD burn'in fool.

I only bought one (1) VHS tape, ever (*). That was "Pulp Fiction." So far, I don't have it on DVD. (* I am only counting popular movie versions on VHS. I do have such VHS tapes as "Tactical Shotgun," "Street Smarts," and "FN-FAL Armorer's Guide," as these are specialty items.) However, I have vast numbers of tapes (several hundred, since my first VCR in 1979) made of things from my cable and more recently my satellite systems. And the Supreme Court decision, Disney v. Sony, makes these tapes perfectly legal. Moreover, the Home Recording Act of the early 90s explicitly collected a tax on blank tapes in "exchange" for making my collection of around 800 CDs on DAT and CD-R fully legal. (A friend of mine has more than 6000 CDs recorded onto DAT and CD-R, all perfectly legal under HRA. Knowing how lawyerscum argue, there are probably those claiming that the HRA was superceded by the Millennium Copyright New World Order Enablement Act, but that is absurd. The tax was collected on the blank tapes and CD-R blanks. If they wish to send me a check for all of these taxes collected, trusting only my word (as no records were required to be kept), AND if they wish to compensate me for the labors I made to comply with their laws that are now INOPERATIVE, blah blah blah. (An obvious absurdity, I understand. My point is that Congress cannot simply monkey around with laws when past laws made certain things fully legal. This would be an example of an "ex post facto law," something explicity, and rightly, banned by the Constitution.) BTW, I use my Ultimate TV to collect many hours of raw signal, some of which I make my own tapes with. These play well on every VCR I've tried. For example, I made a nice tape of two of my favorite "Outer Limits" episodes: "Demon with a Glass Hand" and "Soldier," both written by Harlan Ellison. No sign of any "Macrovision" junk, and now I have a perfect tape costing me $1.39 in tape costs for what "Blockbuster" wants at least $20 for, when it even has the old "Outer Limits" episodes. (The quality is quite good. I recorded this at standard VHS, fast speed setting. My VCRs are S-VHS, but I used VHS so I can play it on the VCRs belonging to friends.) I don't have any plan to replace my large library of taped programs and movies with DVD versions. They taxed me on the tapes, so fuck them on any idea that they can now make my taping illegal. --Tim May ""Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." --Patrick Henry

On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 08:37 PM, Morlock Elloi wrote:

...

I only bought one (1) VHS tape, ever (*). That was "Pulp Fiction." So far, I don't have it on DVD.

DVDs are probably the first product ever rolled out exclusively for content control purposes.

Quality-wise, it's somewhat better than VHS and almost the same as Hi-8 (which I use for archiving purposes), and definitely inferior to analog laserdisc, which had a thriving market but is now almost extinct (a nice side-effect being that titles are now available for $5-10 and there are some which will never make it to DVD).

Hype and brandheads that salivate on words like "dolby" "surroundumb sound" aside, average consumer got only new expense with DVDs - buying a player.

Like CDs, audio cassetes and IP protocol, VHS will stay forever with us.

I disagree, politely, with nearly every point you make. DVDs are taking off faster than I have ever seen a product take off, and I've seen quite a few. They are vastly better than VHS, in picture quality, and are mechanically superior to VHS in nearly every way. (No broken/stretched tapes, no complicated read heads and capstans to get knocked out of whack, scratched, etc.) (I also have Hi-8, but would never think of archiving _anything_ to it. Flimsy heads/capstans in spades. Ditto for DV, which I also have. It's resolution is the best of all, but it's convenience and robustness are dubious.) I started looking at laser disks in 1979, but never bought one. The disks were too large and unwieldy to be a competitive format. VHS will of course be around, in the same way that LPs are still around, and even in the way that 78s can still be played with the right equipment. But the morphism from LP --> CD is being outpaced by the VHS --> DVD morphism. There's a good reason why DVDs are doing so well. --Tim May "They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote." --Rep. Ron Paul, TX, on how few Congresscritters saw the USA-PATRIOT Bill before voting overwhelmingly to impose a police state