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New York City in 1993 in HD - DTheater DVHS Demo Tape

Youtube Pedant1 HN recommenders · 2016–2022
8.6M views · other · evergreen · Uploaded 2016-04-20

Six minutes of street scenes from New York City in 1993, captured from a D-Theater HD DVHS demo tape that reused footage shot for the Japanese HiVision market. It shows Times Square and other sights in high-definition video.

Pointed to as striking proof of how good 1990s HD video could look, and as a window into early-90s New York.

Audio & video engineeringWorld historyInternet culture & memes

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5 comments from Hacker News

@cJ0th2016 · in “Japan Will Make Its Last VCR This Month”

yes and no. there is dvhs. But even though the medium looks like a standard vhs cassette it is a different technology. [LINK] Here is a video recorded on a dvhs in 1993. It aged rather well I think: [VIDEO]

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@romeoEtJoliet2018 · in “New York City in 1993 in HD – DTheater DVHS Demo Tape [video]”

Another difference to me is the lack of cabs. When comparing this shot: [VIDEO] and any number of Google Maps images of the same location (looking North towards St. Patrick's) [LINK] it's striking how there are way more black cars and fewer taxis today.

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@Bucephalus3552018 · in “Street View of 1980s New York”

Apparently VHS came out with an HD format in the early 1990’s. Here’s a sample clip from 1993 of NYC: [VIDEO] It’s amazing. It so...looks like today, but it’s not. I don’t know how to describe the realness of image quality that looks like it was filmed earlier this afternoon but is in fact over 20 years ago. Unsettling yet beautiful.

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@nebula88042022 · in “Quiet glimpses of the turn of the century NYC through an amateur’s camera”

Here is some HD footage of NYC in 1993...close enough: [VIDEO] This was way before HD was a common tech (this was during VHS's height right?). This was a demonstration tape of JVC's commercial HD cameras played back on D-VHS which never really took off (Digital HD video on VHS) Some interesting things of note: Clear images of the Twin Towers The guy wearing an SS t-shirt trying to block the camera at 1:42 Did people have differing dental standards back then? Seems like something has changed in the culture(3:58) Camel advertisement at 4:12 And finally....Ponytail guy making a quick peek at 0:58 :)

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@chaos_a2022 · in “After roasting Apple about headphone jacks, Google dumps it from Pixel 6A”

> but there are no VHS cassettes that can match the clarity of 1080p or higher. A rare VHS format from 2002 called D-VHS could do 1080p on VHS tapes. [VIDEO] [LINK]

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