I have a collection of old videos that originally started out as VHS and Beta videotapes, which I copied to digital formats mostly with a Top of the Line Sony DVD recorder and Top of the Line VHS tape deck. When copying from analog formats, the quality of the equipment used makes a big difference, so I always used the best. The quality of the copies often seemed better than the originals which were loved regardless of how good the original recordings were--and they were variable but sometimes very good. All, of course, in Standard Definition Video now known as 480i. While this is not as good as High Definition, few people even stop to realize that the most ubiquitous video format we have--DVD--is also nothing but Standard Definition. To get High Definition on disc you need Blu Ray discs, though cable, satellite, and OTA broadcasts may also be High Definition.
DVD and through it Standard Definition are as popular as ever, and Blu Ray didn't take over everything as the industry may have hoped.
With erotic video especially, and especially of the softer forms I favor, experience does not bring boredom or disgust. I can watch the same videos over again and still get the desired effect, sometimes even better for all the earlier viewing. Nor does the resolution matter much; it's the content that is king (or queen), even here, ironically where it's all about sensuousness. Even more fundamental are the words and images whirling in one's own mind. What's on the screen is just inspiration, a koan. And I do not want to lose those koans.
Over the years, I added additional recordings, sometimes just a few minutes of OTA television, then loads of similar recordings by others on Youtube. I look for women with big boobs and women with super strength. Nothing X rated required. Even a woman from a commercial might be appealing. I also joined a number of paid and free websites from which I could download original videos, sometimes with more skin exposure. Roll through 20 years and you can see how I have over 200G of Standard Definition videos in my collection, not counting standard movies on DVD and Blu Ray.
Legally it was permissible to make analog copies of some videos "for personal use" as had previously been decided for music on the radio. The ultimate destination of my accumulated videos was DVD's, which circulated in a 400 disk DVD player where I could mix commercial and the home brew re-recordings described above. At the same time, many videos remained on the first HDD/DVD video recorder I bought, a Sony RDR-HX900. Now some videos remain on my Pioneer DVR-LX70 also. (I just learned that Sony DVD recorders were actually manufactured by Pioneer. The Pioneer had features like combine chapters/titles that Sony did not. And no reason to believe the Sony's were better…though my HX900 does have component video input which the later Pioneer lacks because of somebody's attempt to limit your recording options at least a bit. Also as explained below, sadly one feature was dropped from Pioneer's own last TOTL model, and the one I have, the LX70. Strange. Right after that, the original Pioneer collapsed financially and was bought out. Coincidence?)
Sadly, two key players over the last decade, the Sony RDR-HX900 DVD and Harddrive recorder (2005-2013) and since just last month, my Sony CX995 400 DVD/CD/SACD carousel, are now dead. When the Sony recorder first lost it's hard drive, I was shocked to find out that there wasn't a replacement model available. It seemed to me then that nobody made Harddrive/DVD recorders for sale in USA (I was wrong…read on). I managed to fix the hard drive, but within a year the DVD drive failed as well, ordinary service is unavailable, and replacement involves hacking an alternative part to work according to a procedure published on the internet. Even when the DVD drive replacement was sold by Sony, it was $300 for the part alone.
I was almost as shocked last month to find that Sony no longer sold 400 disc carousels. The 400 Disc DVD players have not been made or sold new for a long time, while 400 Disc Blu Ray players were only briefly available at stratospheric prices around 2009 then disappeared.
I remember when VHS (and Beta) were initially coming out at high prices and few people were buying them. The movie industry didn't like VCR's because they supposedly threatened movie revenues. It turned on a dime, and precisely when the lawsuit over VCR's was won by the public right to fair use recording on VCR's. Once consumers could legally record, sales of pre-recorded cassettes skyrocketed. Coincidence?
I was almost as shocked last month to find that Sony no longer sold 400 disc carousels. The 400 Disc DVD players have not been made or sold new for a long time, while 400 Disc Blu Ray players were only briefly available at stratospheric prices around 2009 then disappeared.
I remember when VHS (and Beta) were initially coming out at high prices and few people were buying them. The movie industry didn't like VCR's because they supposedly threatened movie revenues. It turned on a dime, and precisely when the lawsuit over VCR's was won by the public right to fair use recording on VCR's. Once consumers could legally record, sales of pre-recorded cassettes skyrocketed. Coincidence?
The next time around, DVD's were made recordable by the general public, and not just computer users, in fairly short order, and the DVD format was a hit almost immediately.
But now, standalone DVD video recorders have almost entirely disappeared. The major manufacturers such as Sony, Pioneer, and Panasonic* do not make any for sale in the USA. Nor Blu Ray recorders either. Sony makes those for the Japanese home market only. It does seem JVC makes a Blu Ray video recorder (actually, several) which even has analog inputs and 500G hard drive--and it typically sells for $1400 (and up to $3000) while the Japanese-only Sony's, thought by some to be better, are under $1000.
*Panasonic does still sell DVD recorders for sale outside the USA which can be purchased in the USA through specialist dealers. These lack the current ATSC tuner required to receive US stations, but work OK for copying video streams such as from VHS players to disc. Still available Panasonic recorders have some of the best disc editing features, including fit-to-disc where the compression is adjusted to fit the video perfectly to the remaining space on the disc. Titles on a playlist are automatically converted to a single title when written out to disk--this is a big one for me since I have lots of short clips that typically get written as separate titles which is very inconvenient.
Pioneer recorders of a particular vintage could also combine titles on the main Navigator list and also on playlists to write to disc. Those now sell for high prices on the used market. My Pioneer LX-70 only goes part way. I can combine titles on my Pioneer LX-70, but only on the playlist of titles to be written to a DVD. So that only goes part way. Plus if you have lots and lots of titles, it's a big pain because you first merge the first and the second, and then the first-second with third (which is now the second) and so on, with each step taking some time. The Panasonic approach of just making everything on the playlist part of the output title is far easier. Panasonic even lets you edit each title in some ways as it is written out without changing the HDD copy, for example always.
Pioneer recorders of a particular vintage could also combine titles on the main Navigator list and also on playlists to write to disc. Those now sell for high prices on the used market. My Pioneer LX-70 only goes part way. I can combine titles on my Pioneer LX-70, but only on the playlist of titles to be written to a DVD. So that only goes part way. Plus if you have lots and lots of titles, it's a big pain because you first merge the first and the second, and then the first-second with third (which is now the second) and so on, with each step taking some time. The Panasonic approach of just making everything on the playlist part of the output title is far easier. Panasonic even lets you edit each title in some ways as it is written out without changing the HDD copy, for example always.
This decline in the availability of such products is all part of Progress, otherwise known as planned obsolescence. But the lucky people, you know them, have all moved on and left this old "garbage" behind. Hah. It seems more of an industry plot to rid of us of our recording devices, our own independent streams of content. Now you are supposed to subscribe to a video streaming service for your videos, pay monthly. You are not even supposed to have a personal collection of anything, except as a playlist of videos maintained by someone else, perhaps on a Cloud so you can watch them anywhere at any time on any device, so long as you continue subscribing to the service and the service continues to exist and offer those particular videos.
But even at best, this will not give you access to everything. Much of what I have in my personal collection is not available anywhere, even on YouTube and Amazon.
So the Occam's Razor of Progress is an Occam's Razor of old content and old compilations as well.
I hope you are offended by this planned obsolescence, rights and capability stripping, and content erasing as I am. Holding on to our Standard Definition videos is more than a practical matter to me. I feel very strongly about it.
But we were granted One Exception to this harsh dictator. Funai, under the brand name Magnavox as well as it's own (Funai is licensing the name Magnavox from Philips), has made several Standard Definition DVD video recorders for 8 generations so far. (We seem to be in a stall right now since 2014 and it's unclear if Funai is going to repeat for yet another generation.) These are reasonably priced at $299 and have been widely available, notably at Wal-mart and Sears.
Recently I deboxed a NOS Magnavox I had in reserved and decided I liked it enough that I'm going to buy the latest model. The Mag makes a good "final destination" for SD videos because of the 1tb drive. Also Funai has made parts available at reasonable prices, and repairing a Funai made DVDR is relatively easy compared with repairing DVR's from Pioneer and Sony for which many parts are unobtainable. Even when Sony did make replacement parts available they were extremely expensive.
My current plan is to have two Magnavox DVR's with 1Tb drive apiece in the master bedroom, giving me 2Tb online storage or about the equivalent of 400 DVD's, same as my old 400 disc player.
In the kitchen, which is my Audio Video Editing Room, I will continue to have my Pioneer LX-70 but will be adding a Panasonic EH69--which has more useful ways of combining titles for output and other unique DVD writing features.
The Sony DVDR-HX900 I have will probably be retired. The hard drive still works fine (I replaced it a few years back) but the DVD burner is out (and though repair is possible, one has to modify available parts to get it to work, which is somewhat difficult).
Having two DVDR's in each room also means I can copy videos through analog connections from one to the other, though with some degradation. It's always best to copy digitally by reading DVD's or doing a Fast Write. Doing a slow write means the video is being re-coded which is almost as undesirable as going back to analog. But for display-only, as in the bedroom, copying through analog is often "good enough" and saves far more time consuming procedures. And sometimes it is the only way to do things.
