Quote:
Originally Posted by Taxi
My dad has a VCR attached to his 60" Vega SXRD TV.  (Yes, VHS looks like ass when blown up that big.)
I used to have to remind him to switch over to the HD input when we're watching something over the air in HD, but he's getting better at doing that on his own now.  |
Yeah, it can look bad, but not if presented properly. I watch many VHS tapes still and on my 64" HD Pioneer set. I know lots of older folks who prefer the VHS to the DVD just because of feeling at ease with it.
For those of you who might still have older relatives with extensive VHS collections and have moved up to big screen HD sets, you can do this:
Put the VHS setup through a different input from the HD cable, and allow nothing else on that input, so they must switch to another input to view cable.
Set up the VHS input so that you always have the darker sidebars, don't use any stretch or zoom settings that will just enhance the scanlines, edge fuzzies, or dot-crawl effect, and make people look fat.
If the set has a built-in P-scan converter, use it. It often goes under a company-specific name of some sort.
Have a good quality VHS unit like JVC, Sony, Panasonic, Mitsubishi and not an off-brand unit, and if it has S-video, that's even better. If you do this, and you play good quality tapes, not old rentals that have been seen a million times, you will get a very fine picture regardless of it being a big screen set.
If you must play older rentals just because the film isn't available any other way, then spend a few dollars for a tape cleaning/rewinder machine and clean the tape first before watching. This is a big deal for rentals.
Also an option is to get a used DVDO enhancer such as Plus 2, Pro or Ultra models that digitally convert the inputs to P-scan and give you component outputs, and also will create the sidebars for you, but then we're getting into areas that older folks don't want to deal with too much.