I Had A Random Thought...

[SecretAsianMan]

If anyone here remembers Betamax (I'm just old enough to have seen one on a store shelf), Sony is going to FINALLY stop selling tapes next March.  Time to stock up!

[Spenny]

I once heard that Betamax was the preferred tape format for film schools. I wonder if they still genuinely have any real use for betamax tapes. 3.5 Floppy Discs still get made because there are a lot of old embedded systems that only interface with floppies. 

[SecretAsianMan]

In theory Betamax was a superior format because it had higher quality but it was a commercial failure because it cost much more than VHS given the differences.  For most people VHS quality was good enough that it wasn't worth the extra expense to get Beta.  Plus VHS could record for more than an hour.

[miffy495]

As a professional projectionist from 2006 - 2012, I can tell you that at least through 2012 independent film production companies that could not afford a 35mm print for film festival screenings would send beta tapes to the theatres. As someone born after VHS had already "won", it was definitely interesting to be running digital screenings on Beta in 2011.

[Ben X]

That would be Betacam rather than Betamax, though, right?

[miffy495]

It was digibeta, an HD variant of the betamax standard.

[Merus]

I must say, I'm enjoying how salty Aaron Diaz is being about Nintendo announcing a female counterpart to Link for Hyrule Warriors on the 3DS.

[Ben X]

Sorry to get pedantic, but isn't it more accurate to say DigiBeta (DigitalBetcam) was an HD variant of the Betacam SP standard if we're talking about the professional realm? Betacam was derived from Betamax, but they're not the same thing, and despite VHS beating Betamax in the home video wars, Betacam continued to be used in broadcast for another decade or two (and I assume is still being used today though I haven't been in a post-production house in a few years).

[miffy495]

Fair enough. Like I said, I'm younger than VHS' "win" so I never interacted with Betamax in the wild. All I know for sure is that we kept using Beta in the theatres until I left to finish university.

[seamus2389]

Articles that talk about streaming tv and movies but never mention illegal streaming sites and piracy have started to really annoy cause they are ignoring how alot of people actually watch tv/movies.

 

The best streaming site isn't hulu it's whatever random website you found in a google search after the last one was taken down that has an alphabetical list of every show airing right now in the US.

[Griddlelol]

I have some crazy fond memories of VHS. I, like miffy, am too young to have interact with betamax. 

 

Best part of VHS was lining up all my and my parents' videos like dominoes and setting them off through the house.

[Mawd]

Yeah I wasn't even born for betamax to be a thing but I still remember taping shows on VHS for everyone to see.

[Badfinger]

Articles that talk about streaming tv and movies but never mention illegal streaming sites and piracy have started to really annoy cause they are ignoring how alot of people actually watch tv/movies.

 

The best streaming site isn't hulu it's whatever random website you found in a google search after the last one was taken down that has an alphabetical list of every show airing right now in the US.

 

Even if we pretended momentarily that everyone paid for all their media consumption, the best streaming site sure as hell isn't Hulu.

[SecretAsianMan]

Agreed, Hulu is terrible.

[Dewar]

At least they have a no-commercial version now. (And the thread circles back around)

[Twig]

"Pretentious" is a bad word. Real naughty. Right up there with "peehole" and "poopnugget".

 

STOP USING IT! EVERYBODY! It used to have real meaning, but now it's just shorthand for "this appears intellectual but I don't want to engage with it and I don't want to explain why it's not worth engaging with for me". STOP!

 

NO MORE!!!

 

Please... ):

 

Use your words. Explain WHY you think these things.

 

):

[SuperBiasedMan]

That's very pretentious of you.

[Twig]

You're using it wrong, too! Nobody even knows what the word means!

[Zeusthecat]

Pretentious is such a pretentious word. I just don't want to even engage in it.

[Twig]

Fuck youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

[Ben X]

I use pretentious correctly, so I will continue to use it.

[Twig]

You don't!

[Ben X]

Well you'll have to prove that, otherwise I'll go ahead and keep on using it.

[Twig]

Nobody does! QED!

[Gormongous]

Nobody does! QED!

 

I know this is practically a bit now, but I agree with you on almost all counts. "Pretentious" is one of those awful words that the internet has helped to grow that puts a very logical-sounding veneer on an instinctual or emotional reaction. If you say that a work is pretentious, you're saying that it's pretending to greater meaning or importance than it is, which is an assessment that can only really be made if you know the work intimately... which virtually no one who uses "pretentious" ever does. Instead, they use it as doublespeak to call a complex work shallow and thereby excuse their lack of interest in understanding it, because who's going to bother with something that's only pretending to complexity?

 

I understand the gut reaction that makes people call something pretentious and try to replace their usage with "difficult" or "obscure" in my head, but I'm a fan of two mediums (anime and video games) that frequently suffer from "lobsters in a bucket" syndrome with people who would rather tear down a popular or impressive work than acknowledge their personal failure to appreciate it, so it's still very frustrating even with that understanding.