radio shack

Are Google\’s corporate perks excessive?

Dave Farquhar net.culture , , , ,

Google’s corporate perks are the subject of a Fortune magazine article. I’m going to take what I suspect is a contrarian view on this. I think Google’s excessive spending on its employee perks is a good thing.

Why? Because I’ve seen what happens with the opposite.I know of one company whose ultimate goal is to use temporary contractors as much as possible. The reason is simple: Overhead. Find a company that gives its contractors as little as possible to keep rates low, use those people, and then you don’t have to mess around with giving benefits like vacation and sick time and vacation days aside from Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Personally, I think the guy’s an idiot, and you can quote me on that. I once worked at a struggling company that used a ton of contractors. None of us had any of that messy and expensive sick time. So when a contractor got sick, rather than give up a week’s pay, he or she just sucked down Dayquil like it was water and showed up for work. The result? An epidemic. I’ve never seen so many sick people in September in my life. And guess what? The rest of cold/flu season wasn’t any better.

That particular company wasn’t profitable when I worked there, and it isn’t profitable today. I wonder if it’s because nothing gets done from September to February because everyone’s sick?

I worked someplace else that was paying me about $15,000 less than what the job search engines said I should be making. I was having a hard time paying my bills some months. Did it make it hard for me to concentrate on things at work? Absolutely. I knew from year to year I was only going to get a cost-of-living raise whether I did well or poorly, so I didn’t really try all that hard to excel.

Knowing what I know about that particular employer’s bottom line and customer satisfaction, I suspect they could really have used the results of a couple of my projects from the last year and a half or so.

So when I see that Google gives its employees free food and does their laundry for free and gives them $500 worth of takeout food when they have a baby–among other things–I don’t exactly think that’s a bad idea.When an employee doesn’t have to solve those kinds of personal problems, that’s that much more energy the employee has to devote to the company. And, hopefully, the company’s needs are more interesting to the employee than laundry.

Now I’m not sure that this is universal. A company like Google is going to have a higher rate of return on this kind of investment than, say, Radio Shack.

Let’s take a look at another company. Everybody knows eBay, and the company is always profitable because it doesn’t have to do a lot of work, and it makes money whether the stuff sells or not. It’s a nice situation to be in: Millions of people are working extremely hard to make sure eBay is profitable, simply in hopes of making lots of money themselves (and while some do, many don’t).

Yet eBay’s stock price is in the toilet. The problem is that eBay isn’t growing anymore. They have a monopoly on the online auction business, but they’re pretty much expanded as much as they can, and the company hasn’t had a second great idea. They’ve had several lousy ideas in the past year, and they’re likely to have a bunch more and lose lots of money in the process of chasing the next great idea.

If Google wants to not be the next eBay, it needs to keep cranking out a steady stream of profitable ideas. Its market share in search keeps growing. Meanwhile, it’s turned advertising into a big cash cow. Maybe YouTube is Google’s next big cash cow. Maybe not, and maybe Google Base is the next one. Or maybe it’s something that hasn’t been publicly unveiled yet.

But the only reason Google got to where it is was because it had lots of brilliant people working for it, and they were free to try lots of wacky ideas. Those wacky ideas that succeeded have turned it into a juggernaut. So I think taking care of the basic needs of those fertile minds is a great idea. That means those minds have that much more energy to concentrate on coming up with great ideas. And if those minds are happy, they’re more likely to come up with great ideas for Google than profitable side projects for themselves.

The formula seems to be working. Google can pretty much hire anyone it wants at this point. The few exceptions I can think of, such as Bill Gates, probably don’t have much to offer Google anyway.

Meanwhile, people are leaving Microsoft like crazy. Whether this is a good thing or bad thing for Microsoft remains to be seen, but Google is able to retain the people it wants to retain, while Microsoft appears to be having trouble doing that.

I think the perks have a lot to do with it.

Of course, the perks won’t do much good if Google doesn’t hire the right people–I can think of some people I know and have known whose extra brainpower isn’t worth having–but Google finds itself in the position of being able to pick and choose its hires.

If Google tanks in five years, people will look back at today as a time when Google blew it by wasting revenue on excesses, but I don’t think Google will tank in five years. I think it’s more likely that in five years, everything that comes to mind when people think of the Internet will be something that Google owns.

It’ll be interesting to see.

How to get a Commodore 64 for $20

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , ,

In 2006, Radio Shack sold a Hummer racing game based on Jeri Ellsworth’s C64-on-a-chip design.

A number of people spent time figuring out how to turn the Radio Shack game into a full-blown C64. There is a FAQ available.One cool thing about these is that it’s very easy to add a PS/2 keyboard to them. Having a C-64 with an IBM Model M keyboard sure sounds nice…

I also found a forum dedicated to this and other Commodore-related topics.

Ah, memories…

How to build and paint miniature buildings (and make kids have fun with what they learn in school)

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , ,

I found this tutorial on building a miniature building and a companion article on painting. The intended audience is wargaming, but the same tricks work for buildings for train layouts, or for kids to build cities for their Matchbox/Hot Wheels-brand cars or their action figures.To me, the gem was the technique on painting windows. I have never figured out how to draw or paint a glare on a window that looked the least bit convincing.

The most convincing way to get a glare or reflection on a window is to cut out the window, cut a piece of slide glass–or, in a pinch, plastic packaging–and glue it into the window. Or if you’re not going to detail the interior of the building, cut a piece from a gallon milk jug. Nothing looks more like a window than a window.

But for those times when that’s impractical, or for those times when you want a bit more of a toy look, the technique in this article is exactly what you need.

Don’t discount this as a fun craft for kids. Kids get bored easily, but this allows them to use their creativity, and it teaches them hand-eye coordination, problem solving, and it’s the only fun and interesting application of math I’ve ever found. If a child is struggling with division, like I did, here’s a motivation.

How do you turn this into a math lesson? Instead of eyeballing the size, encourage the child to figure out how big the building ought to be. If the building is intended for die-cast cars, measure a toy car. Then measure a real car. You now have a ratio. (Most die-cast cars scale out to somewhere between 1:64 and 1:76 scale). So, figuring that a one-story house is about 12 feet tall, multiply that by your ratio to figure out how big a floor should be. Measure doors and windows and multiply that by the ratio to figure out how big those should be.

The result will be toys that look better because some thought went into their proportions, and your kids might learn to enjoy math a little bit. I know I would have paid a lot more attention in math class if I’d realized I could use it to make cool toys.

At some point you might want to head down to Radio Shack to pick up some miniature light bulbs and teach your kids a little science lesson too. Horror of horrors, they might find they like that too.

Or, if your child is very inclined towards math and science, and hates art class, this might be a way to give them a bit more appeciation of what they learn in those classes.

Cheap source of parts for projects, electronic or otherwise

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , ,

I went to Dollar Tree today and picked up some of the street lights for their Cobblestone Corners holiday village series. It’s a cheap way to get some parts for projects, electronic or otherwise.

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A link for the artistically inclined

Dave Farquhar Toy trains ,

If you ever need to etch something out of metal–building lettering for your model railroad, funky lettering or a custom fan grill guard for your l337 modded-up computer case, or anything else that floats your boat, here’s a link you’ll want to bookmark:

Cheap photoetching, step by step.You need little more than a bottle of photo etchant from Radio Shack ($4), a can of lacquer thinner ($3 at Kmart), some aluminum cans, a permanent marker (I’ll bet you’ve got one of those), and a handful of other household items.

One tip: The author suggests using a permanent marker to color in the side opposite your drawing. Depending on what you’re wanting to make, that could take a while. You might want to invest in a spray can of the cheapest paint primer you can find, and use that for the opposite side.

Just keep a few cautions in mind when working with this stuff.

Aluminum cans are very light gauge. If you’ve ever sliced your hand open while working in a $12 computer case, the hazards are the same. Wear work gloves while cutting and handling the aluminum prior to etching.

Lacquer thinner is nasty, nasty stuff. One chemical commonly used in it, methyl ethyl ketone (a.k.a. MEK) is alleged to cause cancer, and its fumes are bad for your liver. It would be prudent to wear rubber gloves and a mask while working with it, and only work with it outside.

Troubleshooting Marx remote turnouts

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday I hooked up Dad’s old Marx O27 remote turnouts, and again found one of them dodgy.
I can’t find any troubleshooting information about Marx O gauge switches online. I went to the library and checked out all the toy train repair books I could find. Nothing. One of Ray L. Plummer’s books offered advice on repairing Lionel turnouts. But the Marx turnouts are slightly different. Emboldened, I set off on my own.

Before you destroy what little collector value your switches have (The words “switch” and “turnout” are often used interchangeably; forgive me if I try to feed Google to get more traffic), let me tell you how to test them first. All you need your turnout(s) (don’t connect them–just keep them loose), two pieces of wire, and a transformer. I used a 25-watt Marx transformer from an entry-level train set I bought off eBay for $20. This eliminates the control panel, track, and everything else from the equation. Of course, you should use a transformer that you already know to be in working order.

Some transformers have posts for both trains and accessories. Some (like the one I used) don’t. Don’t worry about it; we’ll just use the train posts for this exercise.

Don’t plug the transformer in yet. Run a wire from the center post of the turnout (sometimes labeled “B” or “black,” although not on Dad’s) to one of the posts on your transformer. Connect another wire to the other post, but leave the other end loose.

Now, before you plug in your transformer, please keep in mind that you’re working with electricity and use common sense. Keep your hands dry, don’t do this if you’re bleeding, etc. I’m not responsible for what happens next, OK? If you’ve never done anything like this before, take it to a hobby shop and let a pro handle it–a switch that will cost you $15 on eBay in working order isn’t worth personal injury. Or you can buy a new Lionel or K-Line switch from the local hobby shop for $30-$35. Yes, a 50-year-old Marx turnout is worth less than a new one from Lionel or K-Line. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

Got all that? Good. Still with me? Great. Plug in the transformer. Turn it on. Switches like to run at 16-20 volts AC, so crank the transformer’s lever to full speed. Touch the loose wire to either of the outer posts on the switch. Then pick it up and touch it to the other one. Alternate between the two a few times.

If the accessory is still in working order, the track should change positions based on which post you touched the wire to. If it doesn’t, there’s probably a loose or frayed wire somewhere inside.

If the switch works this way but not when you connect the Marx control panel, your control panel is dodgy. I read on The All-Gauge Model Railroading Page that Atlas controllers for their HO turnouts work fine with Marx O27 turnouts. I also read in the same place that Lionel and K-Line controllers will not.

You can also pick up a Marx control panel on eBay. I saw one sell for $5 this past weekend.

Or if you’re handy with wiring, you ought to be able to fashion your own with a couple of push buttons or momentary switches from your local Radio Shack or equivalent–just make sure whatever switches you buy can handle 20-24 volts of current. (Always over-engineer on this kind of stuff.) If you want to go this route and you’ve never done any model railroading wiring before, pick up one of the books on wiring Lionel/Marx/American Flyer layouts–many hobby shops, larger bookstores, and even a lot of libraries have them–and follow its precautions. I’m not responsible for whatever happens if you go this route.

How do you fix a Marx control panel? It’s held shut by four rivets, so opening it for cleaning isn’t an easy endeavor. I fixed my dodgy control panel by blasting some Radio Shack TV tuner cleaner ($9 for a big can) into the openings, then flipping the unit over a few times to get it circulating, then working all four of the buttons. Seeing as the switch is little more than a couple of handfuls of contact points, there’s a decent chance that’ll take care of you. There really isn’t much inside there that can go wrong.

If TV tuner cleaner doesn’t help, it’s probably corrosion. You can open it up and clean any and all electrical contacts with a piece of 600-grit sandpaper, or fashion replacements from some conductive material (copper foil would be best, but aluminum would work). But you’re on your own from here.

If the switch doesn’t work, period, there’s probably a loose or frayed wire somewhere inside. Fortunately, there are only five wires inside.

Opening the switch’s case is a bit of a chore. It’s held shut by two rivets, easily found by flipping the turnout over and looking for indentations. Disconnect the outside wires and power off your transformer (of course). The proper tool to remove rivets isn’t exactly a household item (at least not in mine), so you can do what I did: Pinch the edges of each rivet with a pair of needle-nose pliers until it pushes through the case. The bottom should then come right off. You’ll notice three screws inside. There should be a wire connected to each. Overzealous loosening of the nuts on the top of the case followed by some jostling can loosen those wires. Tighten the screws (if they’re severely corroded, you might consider replacing them). If any of the wires appear frayed, replace them, or have someone handy with a soldering iron replace them.

If you find wires detached from screws and want to keep it from happening again, you can solder the wires to the screws, but this is probably overkill.

The small box on the top of the switch is held in place by six or so tabs on the bottom of the unit. This houses the electromagnet. You can gain access by gently bending the tabs with a small slotted screwdriver. Check to make sure those three wires are still soldered in place. The biggest place for something to go wrong on a Marx turnout is over by those screws it uses for terminals, however, so chances are there’s nothing wrong over in the electromagnet’s neighborhood.

Closing up shop can be as easy or difficult as you like. Since I don’t care about collector value on a pair of switches that might fetch $25, tops, on eBay, I replaced the rivets with a pair of very thin and short machine screws. If you care about collector value, procure a pair of small brass rivets to replace the two you just ruined.

Heading back to Way Back When for a day

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Someone I know house-sat this weekend for a couple who are slightly older than my parents. Their youngest daughter, from what I could tell, is about my age, and they have two older daughters. All are out of the house.
It was like walking into a time warp in a lot of ways. There’s an old Zenith console TV in the living room. My aunt and uncle had one very similar to it when I was in grade school, and it spent several years in the basement after it lost its job in the family room. First there was an Atari 2600 connected to it, and later a Nintendo Entertainment System. My cousin and I used to spend hours playing Pole Position and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out and various baseball games down there.

The living room housed a modern JVC TV, armed with a modern Sony DVD player and RCA VCR. But in the other corner was a stereo. The Radio Shack Special 8-track player was the stereotypical 1970s/early 1980s brushed metal look, as was the graphic equalizer. The tuner was also a Radio Shack special, styled in that mid-1980s wanna-be futuristic style. If you lived through that time period, you probably know what I’m talking about. But if you’re much younger than me, you’re probably shrugging your shoulders. Beneath it was a Panasonic single-disc CD player in that same style, and a Pioneer dual tape deck. A very nice pair of Fisher speakers finished it off. It was definitely a setup that would have turned heads 17 years ago. (I have to wonder if the Fishers might not have been added later.)

It seems like there are only two genres of music capable of being emitted by an 8-track player. Once genre includes Led Zeppelin and Rush. The other includes John Denver, Rod Stewart, Barry Manilow and The Carpenters. Their collection was on the latter side, which sent my curiosity scurrying off elsewhere.

But I had to try out that stereo. I kind of like The Carpenters, but I have to be in the mood for them, and I’ve heard enough John Denver and Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow to last me forever. So I checked out the CDs. Their CD collection was an interesting mix, but with a good selection of contemporary Christian (albeit mostly pretty conservative contemporary Christian). I popped in a CD from Big Tent Revival. I don’t remember the title, but the disc was from 1995 and featured the song “Two Sets of Joneses,” which I still hear occasionally on contemporary Christian radio today.

About three measures into the disc, I understood why they hadn’t replaced that setup with something newer. It blew my mind. I heard a stereo that sounded like that once. In 1983, we moved to Farmington, Mo., which was at the time a small town of probably around 6,000. We lived on one side of the street. Our neighbor across the street owned the other side of the street. Any of you who’ve lived in small midwestern towns know what I mean when I say he owned the town.

Well, in addition to owning the biggest restaurant and catering business and tool rental business in town and a gas station, he also owned a mind-blowing stereo system. Hearing this one took me back.

I almost said they don’t make them like that anymore. Actually they do still make stereo equipment like that, and it costs every bit as much today as it cost in 1985.

And Big Tent Revival sounded good. If I’m ever out and see that disc, it’s mine.

Upstairs in one of the bedrooms, I spied a bookshelf. It was stocked with books of Peanuts cartoons, but also tons and tons of books I remember reading in grade school. Books by the likes of Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume, and books by other people that I remember reading 15 or even 20 years ago. The only things I didn’t remember seeing were S.E. Hinton and Paul Zindel, but as I recall, those books hit me so hard at such a period in my life that I didn’t leave those books at home. Or maybe Hinton and Zindel were a guy thing. I’m not sure. But seeing some of the names that made me want to be a writer, and being reminded of some of the others, well, it really took me back.

Next to that bookshelf was a lamp. Normally there’s nothing special about a lamp, but this lamp was made from a phone. This reminded me of my dad, because Dad went through a phase in life where there were exactly two kinds of things in this world: Things you could make a lamp from, and things you couldn’t make a lamp from. Well, this was a standard-issue wall-mount rotary phone from the pre-breakup AT&T Monopoly days. One just like it hung in my aunt and uncle’s kitchen well into the 1980s.

The computer was modern; a Gateway Pentium 4 running Windows Me. It desperately needed optimizing, as my Celeron-400 running Win98 runs circles around it. Note to self: The people who think Optimizing Windows was unnecessary have never seriously used a computer. But I behaved.

I don’t even know why I’m writing about this stuff. I just thought it was so cool.

But I remember long ago I wrote a column in my student newspaper (I’d link to it but it’s not in the Wayback Machine), which was titled simply “Retro-Inactive.” Basically it blasted retro night, calling it something that people use to evoke their past because their present is too miserable to be bearable.

Then I considered the present. Then I thought about the 1980s. We had problems in the 1980s, but they were all overshadowed by one big one–the Soviet Union–that kept most of us from even noticing the others. We had one big problem and by George, we solved it.

So I conceded that given the choice between living in the ’90s or living in the ’80s, well, the ’80s sure were a nice place to visit. Just don’t expect me to live there.

I’m sure people older than me have similar feelings about the ’70s, the ’60s, the ’50s, and every other previous decade.

And I guess I was just due for a visit.

Replacing wall warts with PC power supplies

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

I wrote a long, long time ago about my adventures trying to find a wall wart for my old 8-port Netgear dual-speed hub. The other day I stumbled across a novel idea for a replacement.
I won’t rehash how you determine whether a unit is a suitable replacement–read the above link if you’re curious–but suffice it to say a $5 universal adapter from Kmart is fine for my answering machine or my cordless phone and can probably provide the 5 volts my Netgear needs, but my Netgear also needs 3 amps and the universal adapter I keep around can only deliver 20% of that. The beefiest 5v unit I could find at Radio Shack could only deliver 1.5 amps.

A PC power supply delivers 5V and 12V on its hard drive connectors. And PC power supplies deliver plenty of amperage: one of mine will deliver 25 amps on its 5V line, and 10 amps on its 12V line.

In a pinch, I could just obtain a suitable plug barrel that fits my Netgear from Radio Shack, clip the power connector off a dead CPU fan, and solder the plug to the red wire (5 volts) and a black wire (ground), put it in a PC, and use that to run my Netgear hub. The increased power draw would be equivalent to putting three typical PCI cards in the system. Just be sure to wire things right–reverse polarity can kill some devices.

Rather than using one of the PCs I actually use, it would be better to obtain a cheap microATX case, short the green and one of the black wires on the 20-pin motherboard connector with a paper clip, insulate the paper clip with electrical tape, and then wire things up to the drive connectors. Or, for that matter, you could use some of the other leads available on the 20-pin connector if you have a device that needs 3.3 volts (pinout here.) You could also just use a bare ATX power supply with a paper clip connecting the green wire and one of the black wires on the 20-pin motherboard connector, if you’re into the ghetto look.

An AT power supply would also work and it offers the advantage of being really cheap and common (here’s a nice writeup about an AT power supply’s capabilities), but most AT boxes require you to hook up enough 5-volt devices to chew up about 20% of its rating on that power rail before they’ll power up. I have a 200-watt AT power supply that delivers 20 amps on its 5-volt rail, so my 3-watt Netgear hub probably wouldn’t be quite enough on its own. So it might be necessary to either connect an obsolete motherboard to the power supply or connect a 1-ohm resistor between a +5 lead and ground, if you don’t have a plethora of power-hungry 5-volt devices to plug in.

But PC power supplies provide a cheap and commonly available way to replace odd wall warts, or at the very least, to reduce the clutter around the computer room.

How IBM and DOS came to dominate the industry

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
How IBM and DOS came to dominate the industry

Revisionist historians talk about how MS-DOS standardized computer operating systems and changed the industry. That’s very true. But what they’re ignoring is that there were standards before 1981, and the standards established in 1981 took a number of years to take hold.

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Ways to save money on your DVD player

Dave Farquhar Video , , , , , , ,

If you’re the only person left in the United States without a DVD player, you might want some tips on how to buy them.
I know, I know, since this year was the year of the DVD player, this information would have been a lot more helpful a couple of months ago. I don’t always think of things as quickly as I should.

Believe it or not, your best bet for a DVD player is very likely the cheapest one on the shelf at your local store, the one that’s a brand you’ve never heard of and made in China.

The main reason most people want a cheap DVD player and don’t know it is old TVs. I’ve got a Magnavox console TV that looks like it should be sitting in a shag-carpeted living room with an Atari 2600 connected to it. DVD players have S-Video and composite outputs. The only words of that sentence my ancient TV understands are “have” and “and”.

There are two ways you can put composite inputs on an old TV like mine. You can connect an RF modulator to it–that’s an accessory you can buy at Radio Shack for $30 or most consumer electronics stores for $25 that plugs into your TV’s antenna jack and gives you composite and possibly S-Video inputs.

The second way to put composite inputs on an old TV is to connect a VCR to it. Chances are you already have a VCR. Every VCR I’ve ever seen has composite inputs, which are intended to allow you to chain two VCRs to a TV.

But most brand-name DVD players have copy protection circuitry that detects the presence of a VCR and degrades the picture to an unacceptable level. This is because Hollywood is convinced the only reason someone would connect a DVD player and a VCR in tandem is to make copies of DVDs. And since the lack of composite inputs on old TVs presents an opportunity to sell more stuff, and most big-name makers of DVD players also make stuff like TVs, they’re more than happy to comply.

The brands you’ve never heard of, however, really don’t give a rip. They care about making stuff cheap. And, well, extra circuitry means extra cost. So that’s one reason to leave it out. And China is notorious for thumbing its nose at Western copyright law anyway. (I find it really frightening that totalitarian China is more interested in my rights as a consumer than the supposed Republic of the United States, but that’s another topic.)

Connecting a VCR to a TV through its antenna doesn’t noticeably affect picture quality, because VHS’ picture quality is lower than that of broadcast TV. Connecting a DVD player through the antenna–whether through a VCR or an aftermarket RF modulator–does reduce picture quality. But the picture will still look better than VHS-quality.

Every time I’ve looked, I’ve been able to find no-name DVD players for $60-$65. Name-brand ones cost closer to $100. So a cheapie could potentially save you $70, if it saves you from having to buy an RF modulator.

But even if your TV has composite and/or S-Video inputs, you probably still want the ability to chain your DVD player through your VCR. Because chances are you still want to keep your VCR around for recording TV shows (don’t tell Hollywood) and watching all your old tapes that you don’t re-buy on DVD.

An awful lot of TVs that have those inputs have two sets of inputs, one on the front and one in the back. If you ever connect your camcorder to your TV, you want to save your front-mounted inputs for that, to save fumbling around. If you have a videogame console that you’re in the habit of disconnecting and reconnecting, you want your front inputs for that.

Having the ability to chain your new DVD player to your old VCR gives you more options in setting things up. Options are good.

If you just got a DVD player and you’re having problems with it, you might just want to exchange it for a no-name model.

Finally, if you’re into foreign films and want to import DVDs to get movies you can’t get in the United States yet (if ever), you’re much more likely to be able to disable region codes on a no-name cheapie than you are on a big name brand.

What about reliability? Yes, a $60 no-name model is probably more likely to break than a $100 brand-name one. How much more likely? It’s hard to say. Is it worth the risk? Absolutely. In all likelihood, by the time your cheapie breaks, you’ll be able to buy a replacement cheapie for 40 bucks. Or, since many cheapies use a plain old IDE DVD-ROM drive like your PC, and that drive is the only mechanical part in a DVD player, you stand an awfully good chance of being able to fix the thing yourself. It’s pretty easy to find an IDE DVD drive for $50 or less right now. Within 18 months, I expect them to be selling for $20. If not sooner.

Finally, a tip: If your TV has S-Video inputs, use them. Using S-Video instead of the more conventional composite gives you a sharper picture and better color accuracy. With VHS, this doesn’t make a lot of difference because the format is really low-quality to begin with, and tapes wear out and reduce it even more. There are a lot of things that can go wrong before the signal even starts to travel down that set of cables.

Since DVD has much higher resolution and doesn’t wear out, you’ll notice the difference.