- High definition VHS tape?
You ever seen one of these?
Me neither.
But for a short period of time in the early 2000s,
you could actually build out a high definition home theater
using digital VHS or D-VHS cassette tapes.
Now, it's only 1080i, rather than 1080p,
but, come on, this was 2002, all right?
And, besides, that's still well over
four times the resolution of regular VHS,
and over Double DVD.
It's actually even on par with some early Blu-ray Discs.
So we spent the last two years
and over $1,000 going back in time
to see what life would've been like
if our dads had been both rich
and geeky enough to go D-Theater.
This was an adventure and a half, guys.
Did you know that some plasma TVs have FireWire input?
Well, I sure didn't,
which is why we had to buy two of them
when we bought the wrong one.
This whole thing was a nightmare, honestly.
But, we finally got everything working,
and we can tell you once and for all,
is it any good and why did it fail?
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Our first challenge was finding a movie
that was available across every format we wanted to compare.
All of them having identical two-hour
and 26 minute run times.
The biggest difference
between these versions of "The Hurricane,"
starring Denzel Washington,
is, of course, the resolution that they play back.
- You like "The Hurricane," right?
It's like your favorite movie of all time.
- I have the biggest collection of "The Hurricane" films
of anyone I know. - Yeah.
- We've got VHS, which outputs at 240i,
DVD, which outputs at 480p widescreen,
D-VHS, which outputs at 1080i
with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround,
and, of course, Blu-ray, which does Full HD 1080p.
I have to confess, until this was brought up
in a writer's meeting two years ago,
I had no idea that this format ever existed.
- I didn't know it existed either.
- But it's really impressive.
It'll do up to 28.2 megabit per second,
which is over double the bit rate of DVD,
and, because it uses the exact same form factor
as traditional VHS,
the players are actually backwards compatible,
so they can play both D-VHS tapes and regular VHS tapes.
Of course, the tapes are not quite exactly the same.
- They're pretty close. - They look pretty similar.
- It's the back.
So it's just these tiny little holes.
Aside from being one is digital,
and one is analog, that's pretty much the only difference.
- Right, I guess that's probably worth explaining
how you can put digital data onto a magnetic tape.
If you think about it, it's not that different
from how you can record data to a spinning disc
in either an analog or a digital format.
So a record is a spinning piece of plastic
with little analog bumps in it,
while a CD still has the exact same bumps,
but they're digitally encoded data,
which makes it much more efficient.
And, in fact, tape is still very widely in use today
in the data center. - Which is real slow.
- Do you know if the film itself
like the tape film is different?
Looks thinner maybe?
- Yeah, just pull it out, right?
- What's the worst that could happen?
- In the D-VHS tape, there's more film.
It might be thinner, I don't know,
but there's definitely more tape in there.
- [Linus] This is probably a nice VCR, I would think.
- This thing is like top of the line for when it came out.
- Look at this remote.
iPod, eat your heart out. (Nicholas laughing)
- The original touch wheel. (laughing)
- This bad boy outputs a maximum resolution of 1080i,
features active cooling,
and, most importantly, got the D-Theater logo.
That's very important.
That means it can play D-Theater tapes.
And in D-Theater mode,
it actually runs at high speed instead of standard play.
- It's more data,
and it has to get through it faster
to actually read it properly. - That's sick!
The most important thing, though,
is that it has iLink FireWire output.
We will explain more about that later.
First, we need to talk about our TV.
It might be a flat panel,
but this 1280 x 768 plasma weighs over 100 pounds,
and its notable features include its gigantic 50-inch panel,
its integrated carrying handles,
and its support for iLink FireWire input.
Again, more on that later.
First, we watch.
- Okay, when I first set up D-VHS
and put it in, I was like,
"Oh, this doesn't look that good."
But then I put the VHS in,
and, oh my God, I forgot how bad it looks.
- It's not great.
I mean, I don't remember having a problem with it.
- No. - But then again,
I spent most of my VHS-watching years
watching on a screen that was literally 12 inches.
- Oh, wow.
- I had one of those little ones in my room.
It had the built-in VHS player.
- I know exactly what you're talking about.
- Wow, there's no color depth.
- No. (chuckling)
- I thought you had to go farther back
to find problematic elements of film technology-
- Yeah.
- But people with dark skin in this movie,
they do not get captured properly.
- [Nicholas] No, the contrast looks terrible.
Even the color here, it's all like,
just really washed out and bland.
- It should be noted
that this might not be properly representative
of the experience of playing back this VHS tape
when it was brand new. - Yeah.
- The rated lifespan of a tape that's being stored correctly
is 10 to 25 years.
Assuming it made it the full 25 years,
we should be in good shape,
but it could have degraded in that time.
- Yeah, but then when we pause and it's not moving,
you can see how bad,
the stair-stepping and stuff is on everything.
I can barely read that sign, "Cash only,"
but I can understand what I'm watching.
- Oh, yeah.
- But there's a ton of detail that's just not here,
but is present when we watch content on a 4K Blu-ray
or even just like a Netflix stream
or something like that. - Oh, yeah.
It's time to go HD.
No?
Whoa!
- It should be in iLink now.
Let me check.
- [Linus] Oh, it's definitely on iLink.
You can't tell?
- No, no, I know, I know, I know.
I just wanna make sure it's not going over RCA.
Just double checking. - It's not.
Just have a seat.
It's not.
Wow! - It's pretty crazy, huh?
The dynamic range is wild. - Yeah!
- The contrast differences-
- This would have made my eyes
fall out of my sockets in 2002, all right?
- [Nicholas] On a lot of these,
they even had something similar to a chapter select.
- Wow! - Yeah.
With a menu and everything,
so you could- - Shut up!
- Tech One showed it off in their video from six years ago,
but I couldn't get it to work on this.
- This looks so good. - I know, I know.
There are problems, though.
If I hit pause, for example,
because it's moving at such a high speed,
but then play- - Okay, yeah.
- Play takes a second to kick back.
- [Linus] It takes a while.
- And the problem is, it's still counting up.
Give it a sec, it'll go. - Ooh, okay.
- But, see, we're completely gone from that one scene.
So pausing and playing was not-
- But look how clear that text was
as you were tilting past it. - I know, I know.
The only thing that really tripped me up when watching this
was the amount of film grain you can see.
- Yeah, well that's the thing.
Any HD movie back then was shot on film, right?
It's not like we had Red Digital Cinema Cameras.
Okay, my family didn't have money, right?
So, in the early 2000s,
I didn't even know anybody who had a TV like this.
- No, we were stoked to get flat screen CRTs, you know?
- Not a...
Ooh, ooh!
- Ooh! - Ooh, spicy ad.
If you told me that this was just a modern setup, not HDR.
Sure, obviously, I can tell it's not HDR.
I'd be like, "Oh, okay." - Yeah.
- For a short period there, plasma TVs were super in demand
when you couldn't get anything with good blacks.
- Oh, yeah.
- Now I haven't seen a DVD in a while.
- It actually looks a lot better than I expected
and that's when I originally discovered
that this was not 1080i, that this was 720.
- [Linus] I can already tell
this is a noticeably softer image.
- It does look worse. - Yeah, it looks way worse.
It looks way better than VHS.
- That's the thing.
- You don't get that obvious stair-stepping
all over the image.
- I don't think it looks way worse.
- But, look, everything from the top of his hair,
to the bottom of the frame is completely crushed.
You entirely lose the detail in his face.
He might be acting, but we have no idea,
because the color depth is not good enough
and the contrast is not good enough.
That's what double the bit rate gets you.
It's not all about resolution.
And you see the blocking in the sky as well.
Like, okay, paused is not fair,
but let's put it in motion. - Sure.
- It's not as bad in motion. - It's not.
- But that contrast,
that dynamic range sucks. - Yeah.
That's pretty terrible.
- Any surface with texture. - Oh, yeah, just disappears.
- [Linus] It's just a blocky, smeary mess.
- It's a blur.
Going from VHS to DVD was already such a step up for people.
- For the additional cost of D-Theater. (inhaling sharply)
- You had already bought a DVD player to get 480p.
You wanna shell out even more to get a D-Theater player?
To go back to VHS?
- Back when D-VHS first came out, before D-Theater,
the players actually started at around $2,000.
- We'll put in the Blu-ray on the same player.
We got our fancy Panasonic.
- [Linus] Yeah, this is the one we used for 4K Blu-ray.
- [Nicholas] Yeah, so this is better.
- I don't know that this looks better than the D-VHS.
It might not be as good of a master.
There is so much film grain. - Totally.
- I don't know if it looks better at all.
- No, no, I don't think it does.
- No. - Than the DVD, yeah.
Than the VHS, yeah.
But then the D-VHS, no.
Maybe if we had more degradation on our D-VHS,
we'd think that it looks better.
But, the reality is not a lot of people were buying those,
so we don't have to rewind anything.
- Yeah. - Fast forward.
Chapter select.
Scene-skipping, in general, can just happen.
We don't have to sit there and wait for it to go.
- You can actually read the text in the book.
- Yeah!
Oh, look at how blown out that old sky.
- Look at that! - Oh, God.
That was awful.
- Let's go back to D-Theater for a sec.
I don't know which master copy of this film was used
to create the Blu-ray,
but whatever it was actually could have also degraded,
perhaps even to a greater degree than our D-Theater tape.
It is possible for a superior format of the movie,
like a Blu-ray, to look worse in some ways,
than an inferior format of the same movie.
Sometimes when they're upscaling an older film,
they'll actually process it in a way
that film enthusiasts feel degrades the experience.
- [Nicholas] Rewind.
One thing I like is that there's no rewind lines.
- So it's going, "Let me grab this frame.
Let me grab this frame." - Yes.
- Rather than, "Let me read this stream
that is coming past me." - Yeah, yeah.
See, this is too far back, I think.
Oh, listen to this thing go.
(D-VHS player whirring)
- Wow, she rips. (Nicholas chuckling)
Oh, absolutely, you can totally read the text on the book.
- Yeah, you can.
- It was a little sharper on the Blu-ray.
I think I like this grade better.
- I think so too.
I think the color pops more.
- Look how much more detail you can see in his face
and on that jacket.
This is the best copy of "The Hurricane."
What the?
Did you see how much better he looked?
- Even when the books right there
fall down off the forklift or whatever, they're so vibrant.
All of them.
- Again, it's not HDR, but this is a really good SDR grade.
See, even though he's supposed to be naturally lit,
so you have that shadow cast on the side of his face,
you can see the detail, you can see his expression,
you can see the actors acting.
This is actually a better movie.
You are capturing more of what's happening.
This is a big difference.
This is not the result I was expecting to find.
- Really?
You thought you were gonna crap all over D-VHS?
- No, I thought the Blu-ray
would be obviously better though.
- Oh!
- Mastering matters more than resolution at a certain point.
(jazz music)
I feel the same rage that I've read on forum posts
so many times over the years,
when a new grade, a new master of a movie comes out,
like a treasured movie, and it's like, "Why?"
To what (beep) end?
You already had a good one!
I want a D-VHS collection now.
- Oh, my God.
- The first D-VHS player we bought,
which cost us over $350,
two years ago when we first started down this rabbit hole,
has a big problem.
While it does support recording
and playback of HD D-VHS tapes,
and it can output over FireWire,
it cannot playback D-Theater tapes.
And this is for good reason.
Remember, guys, this was 20 years ago,
which means that technologies we take for granted today
didn't exist yet, like HDMI.
And, like it or not,
one of HDMI's biggest innovations was HDCP,
the copy protection encryption
that convinced major film studios
to release their content for home viewing.
I know, I know, HDCP ain't exactly a popular technology.
But, let me explain.
Old school analog interfaces, like component video,
could absolutely carry an HD signal.
The issue was that there was no way
to prevent people from capturing that signal
and recording it to their own tapes.
And for this reason, recording and sharing bootleg VHS tapes
was extremely common back in the nineties.
Great for consumers, bad for movie studios.
Having gone through that experience,
the film industry resolved to never repeat it.
They had failed in their attempts
to outlaw media copying devices so far,
but they had some other ideas.
They believed that even if people
could watch standard depth bootleg movies on their couch
for next to free,
they could use innovations like high definition picture
and surround sound to motivate viewers
to go to the movie theater instead,
which is, of course,
where they got the majority of their revenue.
When early generation D-VHS players rolled out in 1998,
they could be used for recording
and playing back TV broadcasts in high definition,
and they could be used for watching movies,
but only standard VHS movies were supported,
because the major film studios
refused to release their films on D-VHS.
I can only imagine how frustrating that must have been
for enthusiasts at the time, okay?
Which raises some questions.
What on earth were people doing with these things?
We've got some idea.
There was a VHS tape actually inside this player
when we bought it.
Let's take a look, shall we?
- This looks good, though. - Looks really good.
- [Nicholas] The quality is impressive.
- Something to note is that even though HD broadcasts
were not particularly common in the US at the time,
that doesn't mean that there was no use for these things.
In other regions, particularly in Japan, they were...
Wait, what is this?
- It's the Victoria Secret Catalog from 2008. (laughing)
- [Linus] What were people doing with this?
- [Nicholas] Recording whatever they could
in the highest definition possible.
- Recording softcore porn on cable
wasn't the only use for it, though.
- There were a lot of HD broadcasts back then.
So one guy would actually follow a local station
that would do IMAX releases.
They'd broadcast them,
he'd record them on his D-VHS player,
and then play them back.
- Corrected for inflation.
Early D-VHS players cost over 2,000 today dollars.
The only people buying into this ecosystem
were obviously willing to go to great lengths
to get the most out of their home theater setup.
Here's the label for that tape, by the way.
You can have it back if you want.
I really don't need it.
D-Theater uses the same media as D-VHS,
but, this time, with support for encryption,
and that's to appease
the anti-copying film industry executives.
That is why it uses the super unusual IEEE 1394
or FireWire connector.
Our D-VHS player came out before HDMI and HDCP,
so the only option is to output SD, so standard definition,
or to output HD over that encrypted FireWire output.
And you might think, "Well, no problem."
You could just convert that to HDMI, right?
But, you can't.
Because only about 90 films ever made it to D-Theater.
The last was "I, Robot," released in 2004.
There's been very little demand
for products that can convert these weird FireWire boxes
to modern standards.
And while there are FireWire capture cards,
again, due to the obscurity of the tech,
I'm not aware of any that can defeat the encryption
that was used by D-Theater.
There are, apparently,
D-Theater players that do support HDMI,
but by the time those came out,
D-VHS was on its way out the door,
so I suspect that the owners of those units
are probably holding onto them until the bitter end.
And who can blame them,
especially knowing what we know now
about how good D-Theater releases were?
So, with that in mind, why did it fail?
First of all, the movie execs got one big thing wrong.
People didn't care about high definition
nearly as much as they thought.
Certainly not enough
to overcome the cost, space, durability,
and convenience advantages that DVD had over D-Theater.
Would you rather have a slightly sharper picture
or a movie you don't have to rewind?
Factoring in that this one has a player
that cost over $1,000.
Another major problem for D-Theater
is that HD DVD and Blu-ray,
the ultimate winner of the high def format,
were just around the corner,
promising even more better image quality
with all the same advantages of DVD.
And then, when Sony aggressively pushed Blu-ray to dominance
by including playback capabilities
with the PlayStation 3 in 2006,
nothing else ever stood a chance.
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- If you guys enjoyed this video,
you might also enjoy the one
where we took an in-depth retrospective look at 3D Home TVs
and why they failed.