[QuadList] OT: is S-VHS "obsolete" in copyright law's eyes?

[Dennis Degan]

		On Feb 27, 2012, at 12:57 PM, James Snyder wrote:

 > SVHS (or "Super VHS") used different carrier frequencies for the  
luma and chroma part of the signal.  If a deck was good enough, SVHS  
could record the luma signal (at 400 lines of resolution based on the  
bandwidth it could record on the tape) better than the best NTSC  
signal (which tops out at about 330 lines of resolution based on  
actual bandwidth).  The chroma was still color under and still  
suffered the vagaries of VHS processing, but it had better resolution  
as well.

		I politely contradict:

	James, S-VHS did have much better luminance resolution, but its  
chroma resolution was exactly the same as standard VHS:
		<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-VHS>
	"The often quoted horizontal resolution of 'over 400' means S-VHS  
captures greater picture detail than even NTSC analog cable and  
broadcast TV, which is limited to about 330 -lines. In practice, when  
time shifting TV programs on S-VHS equipment, the improvement over VHS  
is quite noticeable. Yet, the trained eye can easily spot the  
difference between live television and an S-VHS recording of it. This  
is because S-VHS does not improve other key aspects of the video  
signal, particularly the chroma signal. In VHS, the chroma carrier is  
both severely bandlimited and rather noisy, a limitation that S-VHS  
does not address. Poor color resolution was a deficiency shared by S- 
VHS's contemporaries (Hi8, ED-Beta), all of which were limited to 0.4  
megahertz or 30 -lines resolution."

			Dennis Degan, Video Editor-Consultant-Knowledge Bank
					     NBC Today Show, New York