I want buy several videocd's such as http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=617&item=6339755330&rd=1&ssPageName=WD2V Anyone knows how the quality of those discs is, if theý're legal (Dont think so :smt082 ) and if they can played on a Saturn with mpeg adapter. Cheers.
I wouldn't bother, that episode is probably on bittorent or something in better quality and without the Chinese subs!
Yeah ok fair enough..but it saves all the hassle of downloading and burning it ;-) (It's four episodes btw).
These VCDs usually look pretty good, I've got a couple of various asian kung fu movies on VCD. They have a slightly crappier quality than DVD
VCDs are far worse quality than VHS generally... SVCDs are far worse than DVD and they're twice the quality of VCD...
Oh, pleeeease don't buy that. The first four seasons are already out on DVD, and season five is out on the 21st of December. Don't settle for inferior quality.
vcd is better than vhs, and about svcd and dvd.... you will hardly notice a difference on an analog tv...
There is no way VCD is better than VHS, in theory it should be nearly identical but in practice hell no. VCDs are far blurrier and due to degradation, there will be animation artifacts. It does have "CD quality" audio of course though, thats it's only advantage. I can see MPEG blocks/grain on my "analog" TV with conventional SVCDs too, using RF AND COMPOSITE video, that says something. DVDs of course alot a far wider bitstream than SVCDs not to mention the higher resolution. Besides, if you can't tell the difference between a 480x480 and a 720x480 picture scaled, theres something wrong with your head.
Well, to be honest, I think VHS suffers more from degradation than a digital medium like VCD. Some of my old tapes have gotten a few cm of static along the upper edge of the image, and some seem to lose the vertical synchronisation every x frames, kinda kills the pleasure of watching Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail :-(
if you know how to make your discs, then what i said is right, if you use nero or those things to make it, they will look like crap, just like i can put up to 5hr on a dvd with great quality. all about skillz
I know I know , already have some of those :smt023 Just wanted to feed my Saturn something for a change :smt033
VCDs are half the vertical resolution of VHS (240/288 lines vs. 480/576), and in fact, half the vertical resolution of any analogue video format. This means that it's impossible to store interlaced video (i.e. 50/60 fields-per-second stuff; footage from a video camera, etc.) properly on a VCD. But then again, we're talking about filmed cel animation (which is 24/25 frames per second), so it's not really an issue in this case. And a VCD's horizontal resolution is most definately better than VHS. Hmm, that's questionable. VHS tapes suffer severely from colour bleeding, dot crawl, unstable picture, and other analogue nasties - all of which just increase over time as the tape degrades (even if it's not used). Digital noise is much less obtrusive - assuming it's from a good source (preferrably digital) all you'll get is blockyness where there's too much movement for that bitrate. It's 224kb/s MP2, which is about comparable to a 128kb/s MP3. Not really much better than Hi-Fi sound on a VHS tape, but not everyone (including pirate video copiers) has VCRs which can play/record Hi-Fi sound. Normal sound on SP VHS is probably comparable to those little micro-cassettes you use on old-fashioned answering machines and dictaphones... on long play! Some people don't really notice digital noise - well, compared to analogue noise like snow and blurriness which covers the entire screen for long periods of time. Telling the difference between 720x480/576 and 480x480/576 may be hard if they were the same bitrate, but SVCD's max bitrate (2.5Mbps) is half of that of a pretty low-bitrate DVD video. So, basically it's debatable whether VCD is better than VHS - they both have advantages over each other in different aspects. But DVD video is significantly better than VCD - it's pretty much at least twice the quality in every aspect.
If you buy a legit VHS tape, brand new, theres no question that a VCD encoded with TMPGEnc or even _Panasonic's_ MPEG encoder cannot hold up in quality. I spent many a day encoding VCDs, I know.
The thing about pirate VCDs is they're usually made from crappy boots anyway. :-( So it's like watching something meant for a 200x200 res (not exact, but you know) blown up on your 20 inch TV screen. Nasty... :smt009
My video sources for my VCDs were from Laserdiscs (captured to MiniDV, firewired to a PC) and DVDs, both produced video worse in their best moment than a VHS tape recorded with the same $600 VHS/MiniDV deck
OK, I'll believe you. I've never really compared VHS and VCD face-to-face or anything. I haven't really made that many VCDs, either - I'm more of a SVCD or CVD man myself - I spent the whole of last summer messing around with them, mostly using all free products like VirtualDub, AviSynth (which I must say is FOOKIN' GREAT) and QuEnc (a free MPEG encoder). Now SVCDs - they're definately better than VHS... except for the crappy size restrictions - 40 min on a CD vs. up to 4 hours with PAL VHS.
Sure SVCD looks better, maybe not better than SVHS, never ever used SVHS You know that VHS recorded in extended play aren't the same quality as SP right? Probably a EP (we can get 6 hour tapes) tape looks on par with a VCD because they too have horrid artifacts.
EP isn't that common in PAL Land. Most VCRs only have SP and LP, LP being complete ass as you may know. I was talking about 4 hour SP VHS - because VHS tapes have to be played slower for PAL due to the lower refresh rate and whatnot, typical blank tapes are E-180 and E-240, compared to your T-120 and... T-90's (??) with NTSC. These bootleg VCDs probably aren't half as bad as the pirate VHS tapes I used to get when I lived in Saudi in the early 90's (EVERYTHING WAS PIRATED THERE!!) - they were god-awful in every way, and were often (badly) recorded in cinemas. I remember with the copy of the GI Joe movie me and my brother watched many a time, we got to a stage were knew *exactly* the points were it switched between colour and black & white!
