REWIRE YOURSELF

REWIRE YOURSELF

VHSBETACEDLV

Richard Robinson

by

These days in New York City a fascinating electro-cultural phenomenon is taking place: record stores are empty while there are lines around the block to get into video stores. Companies like Video Shack, First Run, Video Bugg, Video To Go, and The Video Room have sprung up on street corners throughout Manhattan and are doing a land-office business renting and selling video cassettes and video discs to those who have discovered the ultimate form of contemporary home entertainment.

Video Shack, with half a dozen stores and over 400 movies for rent or sale, is typical of this shift in home entertainment havbits. For $5 to $10 (depending on the movie and the rental time), an incredible spectrum of programming is available including most of the hottest movies, as well as special interest programming from rock concerts to cooking lessons.

All you need to participate are a TV set and video machine (which these days cost less than even moderately priced hi-fi systems) and the price of the rental (less than the price of a record or book). So on Friday afternoon you stop by the video store, pick up a couple of films for the weekend, and find yourself at home spending less than it costs to go to the movies and not having to watch CBS, NBC, ABC, and related commercials. All the decisions are yours, and the end result is truly wonderful.

There are currently four video formats on which video programming is available: VHS, Beta, RCA Video Disc, and Laser Disc. Each has drawbacks and advantages which you should be aware of before you buy a video machine.

RCA’s CED video disc is the cheapest video player available, selling, with factory rebates, for as little as $350. Like the Laser disc, the RCA disc is a playback only system (like the audio record) that holds only one hour of TV on each side of the disc—you have to flip the record over to watch the second half of the movie. The RCA disc is a good system, the real problem is that so far there are relatively few films or other programs available on this disc format.

MCA’s Laser disc is more expensive than the RCA system, but about a hundred dollars less than the cheapest video tape recorder. It has the potentials of being a really fantastic home entertainment unit with its laser-optical playback electronics, but again the number of programs currently available is limited.

Sony’s Betamax was the first home video format. It runs at three tape speeds, Beta I, II, and III, and like all video cassette systems will record regular TV (now illegal, so much for freedom of the airwaves) as well as playback pre-recorded tapes. The maximum recording/playback time at the slowest speed (Beta III) is five and a half hours.

Panasonic/RCA’s VHS video cassette recorders are perhaps the most popular, and the greatest number of pre-recorded movies and tapes are available on this format. The VHS runs at three tape speeds (SP, LP, SLP) with the maximum recording time on one cassette being six hours at the slowest speed (SLP).

Other formats exist such as Technicolor’s video system which uses 1/4” tape cassettes—half the size of the Beta and VHS 1/2” tape cassettes—and the UMatic video system used by TV news crews, but none of these other formats have any pre-recorded programming available to my knowledge.

There are no sure bets in the home video market. Manufacturers have in the past changed formats and video systems without regard for those who already own machines, and will no doubt continue to do so. Right now the best bet is the VHS system championed by Panasonic and I RCA and available under various manufacturers brand names.

VHS offers the longest recording time per cassette—six hours, although the picture qualify is much better at the two and four-hour speeds. VHS cassettes cost $10.66 plus tax in New York City at the moment for the cheapest, and about $14 to $15 for higher tape grade quality cassettes. In fact* if there is any current video “standard/’ it is VHS, which is something to keep in mind if you plan to trade cassettes with friends who own video machines.

In addition, all the movies and program specials,now available for sale or rental are available on VHS. The quality of these pre-recorded cassettes is pretty good, by the way; certainly no worse than the picture quality of regular TV.

In the next few years there will probably be a smaller cassette size video format introduced for home use, with a subsequent reduction in tape cost and perhaps in rental charges. But neither VHS, Beta, or any future tape cassette will ever be as cheap as the video disc in terms of software cost. So, if you are planning to get into home video now, your best bet is the VHS format. If you have a wait-and-see attitude, it is possible that in a few years one of the video disc systems will have enough programming on' disc available to make it a more economical format in that with the cost of buying the discs outright being little more than the current cost of renting the same programs or movies on tape.