We Bought HD Movies on Cassette Tape and They're AMAZING! - D-VHS and D-Theater

DVHS was a flash in the pan in the early 2000s, bringing 1080i content to tape. Why did it fail, who bought these things, and most importantly was it even any good?

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:20 The Hurricane
3:40 DVHS Player
4:40 VHS
6:15 DVHS
8:10 DVD
9:33 Blu-Ray
12:40 History
14:50 Why Buy DVHS?
17:20 Why Did It Fail?
19:14 Outro

[TheBitGuy]

One thing I've noticed is that people playing VHS tapes today will say how terrible they look. But that's because they are playing them back on a modern LCD TV with a terrible composite conversion. If you really want to experience analog VHS correctly, it is best viewed on a CRT. Preferably one about 12 inches.

[Aquatarkus]

Before DTheater, there existed an even more obscure format called W-VHS. It was an *analog HD* format and could record up to 1080i. It's based in part on the MUSE Hi-Vision video system, which had been used in primarily in japan for HD television broadcasts and HD Laserdisc

[robertcop]

Fun fact, it's still the only official physical HD version of True Lies available.

[bobrobert]

I was one of the crazy mofo’s who bought D-VHS player, when they came out. You have understand: we kept *hearing* about the miracle of high-definition. The problem was, you couldn’t find a demo, ANYWHERE. I literally couldn’t take the suspense any longer, pooled my scant resources together, and took the plunge. Needless to say, my brain MELTED, upon first seeing the absolute GLORY of HD. I watched U571, about 100 times, just marveling at the quality before me. I also picked up an antenna for my house, because the local OTA stations, WERE broadcasting in HD. One thing a lot of people don’t realize, is that virtually ALL of the NY/NJ HD broadcasts, were being done from atop the World Trade Center. When they were demolished, our ability to view those OTA broadcasts, went with it. Seems such a petty thing to have been bothered by, considering the sheer HORROR of what occurred, but as an AV Zombie, it did hurt a bit.

[lowandapapa]

Video mastering professional here. :)

What you might be experiencing is likely the result of the 2008 Universal fire, where many of the masters and the original negatives/intermediates that were used to make the masters were destroyed. At this vintage, the master that made the D-VHS was likely make from a duplicate copy of the original negative (called a "timed inter-positive, effectively a negative of the negative) which is only a single film generation removed. The Universal fire required one of the largest remastering projects in the history of the industry, many of which were made from "safety" copies, which are film copies many generations removed from the versions they made the original masters from. This is one of the factors that would help explain the film grain difference as well. (The other the technology used to scan/transfer the film into a digital form, but that's a deeper discussion...)

Not to disparage the work of the industry too much, but some of these replacement masters were also done on tight turn-arounds and may not have been as faithful of a replication of the original as time and budget would allow. Hope this helps explain what you might be seeing, and why certain films might look different than you would expect, or remember. That fire destroyed a considerable amount of archival media and recordings, and we'll never get back some of what was lost. (Many original audio masters were also destroyed.) The Hurricane, as far as I can tell, was released on Bluray is 2014, well into the time a replacement master would have been used. And since the encoding parameters between D-VHS and Bluray vary so much, it would not have been possible to use the previous encode for the Bluray.

[Killertamagotchi]

If you find D-VHS strange, I'll tell you that HD Laser Discs have existed for a relatively long time, even if only in Japan.
So a Laser Disc with 1080i and up to 5.1 DTS sound

[leokimvideo]

Mastering and data rate are the most important. There's some really bad DVD's with really low data rates and they can look like a VHS. This brought back memories of the data protection on VHS called Macrovision. A simple way to disable it was pass the output of the VHS through a 'video enhancer' box or a video mixer. Ah the memories of the glory of VHS. And the Format wars never seem to stop. Regular Show certainly focused on that nightmare.

[Swimm]

This is nuts. I remember when this came out but I'm from the hood. No person I knew could afford a thing like that. I'd since forgotten this format ever happened. This is mindblowing.

[lfmssoundman]

It's hard to aquire D-Theater tapes but I have a pretty healthy collection of them. If you ever want to go back down the D-Theater route, reach out to me. There's a bunch of unopened tapes I have as well as my personal favorite, The Mummy and The Mummy returns and I can't help but defend the D-VHS for how perfect it looks.

Universal was one of the studios that really put the most in to releasing D-Theater tapes. Other studios like Sony and Paramount just didn't see the value in it. Hence why most those movies, are Universal releases.

[FluxHorizon]

I worked at JVC when this format came our. It was a huge jump in technology at the time. The core tech was derived from D-5, D-9 and DVC. Early cousin ( track ing for data) was audio format Alesis ADAT ( the decks were made by JVC and the tapes) . The actual tape was a very grade low drop out, extremely durable and designed for digital data. For several years D-VHS was used by movie industry for dailies as it could be encrypted and password protected! I was an amazing format and challenging to work on at the time ( 5 day training seminar just be allowed to work on them only a few techs at factory service were trained). At this point many of decks need to have the capacitors on the D-A boards replaced as well as some of the process boards.

[Jedimichael]

Never have heard of this format. Very interesting. I just remastered my old high school Senior Video from the class of 2000...that VHS tape lost SO much quality in 22 years, it was pretty scary. I digitally cleaned it up best I could, but, its pretty rough. Would have been so different if this D-VHS had become more mainstream.

[hobo]

I love these kinds of videos on obscure formats! I would love to see Linus and the guys take on Laserdisc since it was in the same era as VHS. While obsolete and relatively forgotten compared to VHS and even DVD, it’s still great to break out a Laserdisc every once in a while and watch a classic movie!

[madpistol]

I'm still shocked that I've never heard of Digital VHS before now. I grew up on VHS tapes, and I seriously thought the next step up was DVD and all disc formats beyond that. This is a revelation, honestly.

[Kazyek]

6:05 Also, these "staircases" weren't really visible on CRT, which is what was typically used to watch VHS back in these days

[BretMix]

I have the exact same Mitsubishi player (HS-HD2000U) that you started with. Got mine for next to nothing at a closeout, as it has case damage and no remote. That said, it's still shockingly useful, even though it won't play D-Theater tapes: that glowing green button on the front is for the built-in TBC (Time Base Correction), which clears up the playback immensely on older standard VHS tapes. It's especially noticeable on damaged tapes that won't produce an acceptable image on anything else, in those cases it's night and day. So if you have a need for transferring old VHS tapes to digital, this is the absolute best player I've ever found for that specific use case - it really works wonders. Cheers!

[cswalsh]

As noted in other comments, the film source and intermediate mastering format make a huge difference. It makes sense that they did a great job transferring "The Hurricane" to D-VHS both because it was a recent film (all materials easily available) and it was intended as a showcase for the D-VHS format. Later transfers may have been good enough for TV, DVD etc. and not worth the time and money to really spend time/money remastering for Blu-Ray.

[andrewsearle]

Nice to hear Techmoan being credited; here in the UK I watch his Saturday offering before I catch up with the WAN show.

[Monticello]

Back in the days before Blu-ray I sailed the seven seas and "acquired" as many HDTV rips as possible, but D-Theater captures were the prized possessions. The movie Family Man with Nic Cage is another example were the D-Theater version is still the best looking version to date.

[SpydeyDan]

The only experience I've ever had with DVHS was in film school, where we used it to view raw footage at HD resolution before editing. It honestly never even occurred to me that any films were released on the format commercially.

[strider]

I would love to see D-VHS make a comeback today. It would be the perfect format for movie collectors who want something that'll last a long time but will also be in HD