Talk:Video 2000

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Can someone confirm or deny the accuracy of the following statement from this article: "VHS and Betamax sported slightly better display resolution" I'm not certain this is true, particularly of VHS which has a 240-line vertical resolution.

Has anyone got evidence for this yet? I'm in agreement with the above poster (Colin99?) - any comparison with standard VHS was, in my opinion, always in the favour of the V2000. Indeed, I only upgraded to VHS when the ability to record stereo and Super VHS became available (at a reasonable price!)... C2r 23:19, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Re. "Philips introduced a long-play cassette, the V2000 XL, with a capacity of eight hours per side." I think this is factually wrong, wasn't it the eXtended Play (XP) mode which provided eight hours per side, not the cassette itself? Comments please on both of the above. Colin99 21:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

This comment looks factually wrong:"Distribution of Video 2000 products began in 1979 and ended in 1998". Would that be 1988 perhaps? Colin99 20:41, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Flipping the tape

Intuitively, I'm sure that competitors to the Video 2000 must have presented the need to flip the tape as a disadvantage, rather then an advantage. VHS and Beta could utilize the entire tape area without flipping, so why limit the recorder to only be able to record on one half of the tape at a time? This serves no purpose other then to mimic a quirk of LPs and Audio Compact Cassettes, and it would reduce picture quality compared to utilizing the whole tape at once. Algr 19:03, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

It did of course mean you didn't have to re-wind the tape - you could just flip it over to the other side to watch something else! C2r 23:19, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Philips were aware of a user perception, that the inability to flip the cassette represented a waste of recording time. At the time, the man in the street was well used to turning his medium over (be it a 78, a 33 or an audio cassette), to double the playing time. Philips reckoned that this ability to turn the cassette would pander to that perception and used it as a merketing tool. In spite of claims to the contrary, V2000 did give a noticeable improvement in video quality. Unfortunately there were two things that let the format down. One was the poor audio quality (though this could have been improved). The other was the lack of a portable, battery operated recorder for use with a camera (again something that could have been fixed). The real problem was that VHS had become so entrenched in the market place, that it had become almost impossible to dislodge.

My father had a "portable" V2000. It was a Philips machine, bought in 1982/1983 (I can remember which year exactly). It was "cutted in half", with one half having the tuner part and the other being the magnetoscope itself. My father bought a camera too, which had to be connected to the magnetoscope half part in order to be able to record something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.168.3.246 (talk) 19:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

True I reckon. V2000 used very fine video tracks to achieve the high density required. If instead, these tracks had used the full tape width then the linear speed could have been halved, and so the same running time arrived at on a single-sided tape. This might have had an unfortunate effect on linear audio quality though. Colin99 15:55, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

It's important to remember that VCC debuted with 4 hours per side before the VHS E-240 was introduced, although a comparison of blank tapes costs by Which? magazine in March 1981 showed there wasn't much in it hour-for-hour:

	Beta	VHS	VCC
tapes available and target prices	L125 30min £4.90 L250 1hr 5min £5.50 L370 1hr 30min £6 L500 2hr 15min £6.30 L750 3hr 15min £8.30	E30 30min £5 E60 1hr £6.20 E90 1hr 30min £6 [rare] E120 2hr £7.30 E180 3hr £8.50 E240 4h available shortly	VCC120 2x1hr £7.25 VCC240 2x2hr £11 VCC360 2x3hr £16 VCC480 2x4hr £21.50
cost per hour for longest tape	£2.55	£2.85	£2.70
cost per hour for 2-hour tape (or nearest)	£2.80	£3.65	£3.65

I've omitted the appropriate columns for VCR and SVR formats for the sake of clarity, and of course this was at a point when Beta was already "losing" and so prices were cheaper than VHS, but nevertheless it does demonstrate that VCC blank tape prices per hour were comparable to VHS. Of course, the £8.50 for an E-180 is the equivalent of around £22 today! Nick Cooper 15:17, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I note that the readily available L-830 Beta tape (3 hours and 35 minutes =215 min) is missing from the table. Presumably unavailable in 1981 but must have been shortly thereafter. Colin99 15:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

No, it wasn't included in the table. Presumably it was a follow-on from the development of the E-240, that used a thinner tape than everything upto an E-180. Nick Cooper 19:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Not so much a developement from the E-240 as a simultaneous development with the E-240 we could assume. The table implies that the E240 is 5h, which must be an error. Colin99 20:29, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, my tgranscription error r.e. "5h" - I've corrected it. Nick Cooper 21:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Just noticed a comment here, that Beta was losing in 1981. Is that so? Losing as in not going to survive? Beta had its best year in 1983 (the top selling UK machine of 1983 of any format was the Sanyo VTC5000). What does the magazine say? Colin99 20:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you're right - that was just me prematureluy burying the system. The magazine basically says that it's too early to call on either of the three systems, although it notes that prerecorded V2000 tapes are rarer, while the older Philips VCR and Grundig SVR machines could be bought cheaply, but were effectively obsolete. Nick Cooper 21:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dimensions

Regarding this edit; was the original size given in metric or inches? The change might be okay if the metric figure is meant to be an approximate conversion from inches (phoney accuracy in conversions is a bad thing).

OTOH if the original figure (and actual) figure was metric and the inches one is an approximate conversion, then it shouldn't be changed unless it was wrong. And also, the mm should be the main figure given.

Fourohfour 11:00, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Video Tracking

The link goes to the wrong page! It should go to the subsection of the VHS page describing what video tracking in the sense of the video head following the track. 67.180.29.122 06:44, 8 November 2007 (UTC)