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DVD and VHS Selection at the Disney Movie Club

By: Sume Diang For all the bragging in the home theater universe about the advantages of DVD versus VHS, it really comes down to taste. Of course, you do not have to pull all the VHS tapes off your shelves and trash them like yesterday's garbage. The longevity of VHS tapes is proven. There is no sound logic for abandoning VHS for DVD. Some video clubs, like the Disney Movie Club, elect to offer both DVDs and VHS tapes.

There are claims that the DVD picture has superior vertical resolution, but that only holds true if your television has the capacity to maximize on it. If your older television has a lower standard for vertical resolution, all the higher resolution in the world will do you no good. In a "blind" test pitting VHS and DVD pictures against one another, 63% of the participants could find no difference, and 16% actually felt the VHS picture to be the best. Many consider the analog sound quality of VHS to be warmer than that of its compressed digital competition. Some have no problem with DVD sound.

The question of longevity gets a lot of attention, too. Certainly, there are many individual copies of 101 Dalmatians out there that have been played time and time again without showing any damage. DVDs, however, with the vast amount of info stored on them in comparison to a music CD, can be ruined by the most inconsequential looking scratch.

When it comes to ease, the DVD may be a winner, depending on how much you tend to stop and start or jump from scene to scene. Conversely, it is easy to put in a VHS and let it play. With a DVD, it can be annoying scrolling all over to get it where you want. Scene selection, however, is a great advantage of DVD. Anyone who has ever tried to find a specific scene in a VHS movie can attest to the frustration. If you are concerned about the cost, VHS tapes are often a few dollars lower in price than DVD's of the same movie.

Finally, if you are content with VHS, there is no reason to switch to DVD. That is why the Disney Movie Club offers both choices to its members. You can get all their blockbusters and new releases in the format you like best.