I just tried a little experiment with watching my 95 faces set VHS copy of Return Of The Jedi …I have a Panasonic 4 head hi-fi stereo vcr and I plugged it into my 55 inch LG lcd tv via coax cable and ran rca cables out from the vcr to my little Emerson portable tv/vcr combo so I could watch it on both displays .
The portable tv is mono and the big lcd is stereo . I placed the little tv behind me while watching the big tv . This had the feeling of being outside at a drive in movie . The Big tv was great for the sound effects and music and the little one enhanced the dialougue .The 95 tape has pumped up colors from the releases prior to it , but on the lcd , the colors appear more toned down , making it seem closer to the theatrical colors .
Granted , the vhs image was softer on the lcd and a little fuzzy around the edges , but this gave me a feeling of 1980s nostalgia , as it was the pan and scan version and that is how I originally watched the movies at home before the 92 letterbox set came out .I have not popped this tape in in ages and forgot that the last shot of the movie as well as the credits switch to letterbox on the 95 tape .
I would like to get a small stereo crt tv with rca inputs and try this again sometime , but daisy chain 3 tvs .
Does anyone else out there have some unique ways of watching / displaying the movies ?
A mate back in the 80’s had one of these (or something very similar to it):-
In our group of like-minded video nuts… who’d happily spend hours trying to work out which of all of us had the best tv and video record to watch films rented overnight from the local rental videoshop on…and NOT whose mum had the best coke & biscuits in - we had some shocking priorities back then 😉
The 80’s ‘fuzz’ and wavy images on the screens all added to the vibe of the films for us - especially on those low-budget horror films like Puppet Master, the Hammer Horrors and even sci-fi films like the OT, The Last Starfighter, Battle Beyond The Stars etc.
I do remember us trying to record the hired OT tapes by rigging up two VHS machines together - and the rigmarole involved in doing it… sometimes successfully, many times not (or the quality being so bad it was not worth the effort!)
Top thread screams, I may try and see if the old video player still works over the weekend, and give Star Wars (a '95 Faces tape) a watch on it…
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^ Thank you for the reply oojason ! Please let me know how your experience goes if you decide to do that . Love the pics man , that first one is the first Sony Betamax player that was released as a tv/console combo before they made a standalone player . It retailed for around two thousand dollars here in the U.S. when it was new and adjusting for inflation ,one could buy a new car in todays money ! I love old tech like that and would love to own a working one , if I didn’t live on the top floor of my building 😃 also love the analog glitchiness of that gif .
As a related aside , a while back , I hooked up my old Apex DVD player to my little vcr/tv combo and made a copy of The Force Awakens on vhs for my own personal use .It has kind of a cool retro feel to it and if I had the technical know how , I would convert it to pan and scan to make it feel more like an 80s tape .
On my next watch-through of the OT I plan on watching them horizontally mirrored (so left becomes right and right becomes left). I tested it out before on a couple scenes, and I was pretty amazed how fresh and new it made these shots look that I’ve seen a million times before. Maybe the closest you can get to “see[ing] it again for the first time”
“Always in motion is the future” 🌌
I’ve read not only does Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon sync nicely with The Wizard Of Oz, but also The Force Awakens. I’ve never tried either of these, but maybe I’ll give it a go just to try something new. I wonder what else would work well? Maybe I’ll try Empire Strikes Back with the Vangelis Blade Runner soundtrack or Rogue One with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
I’ve read not only does Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon sync nicely with The Wizard Of Oz, but also The Force Awakens. I’ve never tried either of these, but maybe I’ll give it a go just to try something new. I wonder what else would work well? Maybe I’ll try Empire Strikes Back with the Vangelis Blade Runner soundtrack or Rogue One with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
^ this sounds like a neat idea , especially the Vangelis music .It may sound like blasphemy , but now I am thinking of synching some of the original Star Trek movie scores with the OT to see how it feels .
I tried watching The Empire Strikes Back on mute while listening to The Wrath Of Khan score recently . It didn’t really work as a whole , but if you separate certain tracks and play them over certain scenes , it works pretty well . The track "Surprise Attack " from the Khan score worked very well when played over the battle of Hoth , just as the ion cannon fires .
I moved onto another weird way of watching the Star Wars movies , I call it the surreal flashback order. I patched in my little crt,vcr combo to my big 55 inch lcd through the vcr .Stereo tv in front , mono tv in back of me .Started with 95 pan and scan faces vhs of A New Hope , followed by 2000 collectors letterbox Phantom Menace vhs ( turned my tv settings to black and white ) and then TESB 95 pan and scan vhs , followed by pan and scan vhs of AOTC ( again in black and white )and then 95 pan and scan ROTJ. I have gotten this far in my marathon. I don’t have Revenge Of The Sith on vhs , so Iam thinking of watching either the dvd or 2011 blu ray . For that one , my 55 inch lcd is 3d enabled and has color settings which can put a green ,blue or red filter over the image . I am thinking of watching ROTS with a red filter over it the whole time .
While not the way I would watch the movies all the time , it’s been a fun experiment so far .Watching TPM in black and white after ANH , you can really see the parallels and how much it repeats things from the original movie .Plus ,in black and white , it feels more like a flashback and kind of a high tech version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis mixed with the old Flash Gordon serials .The only real “spoilers” are Yoda and Jabba and you could assume Anakin is just Luke’s father at this point ,as they don’t reveal yet that he is to become Darth Vader .Plus , it starts to set up and foreshadow that something is not quite right with Obi-Wan’s telling of events in ANH
Watching the 95 faces set in full screen vhs in this marathon , gives the whole thing a surreal , dream like feel with the slight fuzziness and softer colors .
For AOTC vhs fullscreen in black and white ,after watching TESB, the image gets larger as the back story is made more clear . In black and white , the film noir aspects of the film are enhanced , especially during Obi Wan’s detective like mission , harkening back to old detective film noir of the 30s and 40s .
And watching ROTS completely in Red , I think may give the movie even more of a decent into Hell vibe and be very surreal . It will provide the last piece of the puzzle for the original 6 films and end in tragedy ,with a note of hope at the end .Now that I think of it , I may switch back to full color at the end when Luke and Leia are on Alderran and Tatooine .
I may continue on with the sequel trilogy , but mix in the anthology films with them and watch them on different displays .
I hooked my old Laserdisc player up to my now ancient HDTV and used the zoom button to make it fit the screen. I was watching the Japan Special Collection for Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
I found that they look better on my old picture tube TV that is square and 4:3 standard def.
I’ve read not only does Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon sync nicely with The Wizard Of Oz, but also The Force Awakens. I’ve never tried either of these, but maybe I’ll give it a go just to try something new. I wonder what else would work well? Maybe I’ll try Empire Strikes Back with the Vangelis Blade Runner soundtrack or Rogue One with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
I can confirm Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon does sync up with The Wizard of Oz. It’s a very trippy experience.
“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas
Just watched my 1992 letterbox vhs of the first Star Wars movie again . I recently went to a resale shop and brought home a 4x3 LCD tv that I picked up for 10 bucks .It was manufactured around 2006 and has a warm color setting that gives everything a kind of Technicolor look . Watching it while sitting a couple feet away from this 20 inch set , it reminded me a lot of the color grading of 4k77 . It didn’t quite have the look of true film that that project has , but the color grading of the 92 letterbox vhs release looked stellar on this set . This is probably the best I have seen vhs look on an LCD , almost comparable to a CRT display ,with a little bit of chroma noise . Maybe I will try component instead of composite cables next time to see if there is an uptick in quality . I have had this tape since I bought the boxed set in 92 and I think I enjoyed watching it today almost as much as the day I bought it and watched it on the 50 inch CRT rear projection tv my folks had back then . The tape still plays great after all these years ,only a little tracking issues/static lines right as the credits roll and then it clears up .I also plugged a set of quality stereo headphones into the tv for added enjoyment . Is it just me , or did some of those early LCD TVs have some better vivid colors ,despite the lower resolution ? This TV has a resolution of 640 x 480 . This is the manual for it …https://www.manualslib.com/manual/97694/Magnavox-20mf500t.html
I have had this tape since I bought the boxed set in 92 and I think I enjoyed watching it today almost as much as the day I bought it and watched it on the 50 inch CRT rear projection tv my folks had back then . The tape still plays great after all these years ,only a little tracking issues/static lines right as the credits roll and then it clears up .I also plugged a set of quality stereo headphones into the tv for added enjoyment . Is it just me , or did some of those early LCD TVs have some better vivid colors
You may have to explain what tracking issues are to the younger members on here! 😉
Up until a few years ago some of the architects at my old work place swore by the old CRT screens. They reckoned the CRTs gave far more accurate colours than the flat panels, and a wider range or something like that. I always thought it was because they wanted to keep er the bigger desks, as anyone who had a flat screen had to have a modern sleek (and cheap) looking desk. Maybe there was actually something to those CRTs. They certainly lasted longer than many of the newer flatscreens at our place.
Retro gamers seem to want to play their old systems on CRT TVs when possible, but that could be due to the connectors, and not wanting to pay for expensive adapters?
The reason retro gamers seek out CRTs is due to the fast refresh rates and less lag . Those were the TVs that those games were designed for , though as time has gone by ,this issue has improved some with flat panels . The TV manual for that 4x3 LCD that I linked to lists improved refresh rates for fast motion as a feature also . As for watching VHS tapes , those were also designed with CRTs in mind ,as the large flat panels were not a thing yet when they were in their heyday . Part of it is that the technology is completely different between a crt and an lcd flat panel . Interlaced video vs. progressive scan . The way an LCD or other flat panel progressively scans the image and it’s higher native resolution, plus the size of the screen , makes it difficult to display VHS and older analog video sources accurately ,so VHS and other analog video will always look better on a CRT . Some things can be done to give it a boost , like adding video upscalers and comb filters or using a DVD/VHS combo unit that can output VHS over HDMI . I have one ,and the HDMI connection does provide a boost , but I still have to sit back quite a bit to get the benefits on my 55 inch LCD tv . That older 4x3 is not such an issue as it is only 20 inches . And for those who may be unaware , this is what tracking issues are on VHS …https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_tape_tracking basically , its when the picture has static lines across it or rolls or shudders ,etc . Sometimes it can be adjusted with the remote , sometimes it can’t , depending on the age and condition of the tape . Also , my oldest CRT Tv is an RCA black and white radio /combo from 1984 and it still works great . Same with my 19 inch color Sanyo TV , I bought in 1997 . I’ve had large flat panel LCDs that didn’t last five years .