WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en-US 00:00:00.130 --> 00:00:05.440 You might think that a VHS cassette is a pretty ordinary thing. I mean, in 2019 00:00:05.440 --> 00:00:05.940 20 00:00:05.940 --> 00:00:06.440 21 00:00:06.440 --> 00:00:06.940 22 00:00:06.940 --> 00:00:07.440 23 00:00:07.440 --> 00:00:12.370 24 it’s not like we’re using these every day, but when you compare a VHS cassette to 00:00:12.370 --> 00:00:13.200 a Beta cassette, you’ll 00:00:13.200 --> 00:00:18.060 --Hold on a minute, you just made this video! What sort of stunt are you trying to pull? 00:00:18.060 --> 00:00:22.300 I’m not pulling any sort of stunt! I just wanted to point out a very clever thing about 00:00:22.320 --> 00:00:24.240 VHS cassettes when you compare them to Beta cassettes -- 00:00:24.240 --> 00:00:28.500 No, that’s exactly the video you just made! Here... 00:00:28.500 --> 00:00:33.280 The VHS cassette was more clever than Beta, you just made this video. 00:00:33.280 --> 00:00:35.840 What sort of fools do you take your audience for? 00:00:35.840 --> 00:00:38.880 Now now, I don’t think of any of them as fools. 00:00:38.880 --> 00:00:40.840 Except for you, Kevin. 00:00:40.840 --> 00:00:43.120 If anything, I’m the fool. 00:00:43.120 --> 00:00:45.020 Aren’t you gonna ask me why I’m the fool? 00:00:45.020 --> 00:00:47.600 Ugh, why are you the fool? 00:00:47.600 --> 00:00:52.020 Because it was the thing I’m about to talk about that inspired the whole video comparing 00:00:52.020 --> 00:00:53.640 Beta and VHS cassettes, 00:00:53.640 --> 00:00:57.300 and yet somehow I managed to completely forget to put it in the video! 00:00:57.300 --> 00:00:58.650 Isn’t that dumb? 00:00:58.650 --> 00:01:00.240 OK that was pretty dumb 00:01:00.240 --> 00:01:01.940 Well I’m glad we agree! 00:01:01.940 --> 00:01:05.820 So let’s not waste any more time and get right to it! 00:01:05.829 --> 00:01:09.080 Have you ever noticed that some things are bigger than other things? 00:01:09.080 --> 00:01:10.600 Like Laserdiscs. 00:01:10.600 --> 00:01:12.500 They’re bigger than DVDs. 00:01:12.500 --> 00:01:14.060 Or like watermelons. 00:01:14.060 --> 00:01:15.430 Those are bigger than grapes. 00:01:15.430 --> 00:01:20.200 Or like the pockets in clothing traditionally made for men when compared to those made for women. 00:01:20.200 --> 00:01:24.780 Ladies, I feel you. I know you don’t have a lot of options out there. Finding clothing 00:01:24.789 --> 00:01:28.269 with pockets you can actually use can be hard, or even impossible! 00:01:28.269 --> 00:01:30.180 Men don’t have to deal with that sh**! 00:01:30.180 --> 00:01:34.380 I can buy pretty much any pair of pants and my giant ass phone and wallet 00:01:34.380 --> 00:01:38.060 and keys will all fit in just one of the pockets just fine. 00:01:38.060 --> 00:01:43.000 There’s no reason you shouldn’t have that luxury, too, and frankly I think we, and I mean everybody, 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:46.080 should take a stand against this fashion industry nonsense. 00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:50.670 I can’t believe I just called pockets a luxury, that’s how nonsense this situation is! 00:01:50.670 --> 00:01:54.364 I think It’s time to embrace a little function over form, whaddya say? 00:01:54.364 --> 00:01:56.680 I may not have a lot of power to change this, 00:01:56.680 --> 00:01:59.960 and my audience is 95% male according to YouTube, 00:01:59.960 --> 00:02:01.640 but to those who will listen, 00:02:01.640 --> 00:02:03.780 [patriotic music plays] you deserve pocket equality! 00:02:03.780 --> 00:02:05.420 I know next to nothing 00:02:05.420 --> 00:02:09.970 about what options are out there, but when you find a good one, grab it! And make sure 00:02:09.970 --> 00:02:14.711 you tell everyone about it! Demand for pockets needs to be sustained! It needs to grow! And 00:02:14.711 --> 00:02:18.750 if you can’t find something in your style with decent pockets, don’t buy it! Let it 00:02:18.750 --> 00:02:21.120 sit on the shelf in protest. 00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:25.520 And if I may make a suggestion to the gatekeepers and tastemakers of the fashion world, 00:02:25.520 --> 00:02:30.690 early '90s colors seem to be all the rage right now. I’m sure you can tell that my fashion 00:02:30.690 --> 00:02:36.460 sense is unparalleled so you can trust me here. How about a dark blue skirt with some 00:02:36.460 --> 00:02:39.100 hot pink pockets for those totally rad accents? 00:02:39.100 --> 00:02:39.960 Huhhhh? 00:02:39.960 --> 00:02:41.980 Or maybe go with some pants in the 00:02:41.980 --> 00:02:47.700 classic teal with purple pocket highlights like a total boss? I can see it now, so nineties, 00:02:47.700 --> 00:02:50.620 so useful, so counter-cultural, even. 00:02:50.620 --> 00:02:53.120 You’ll sell millions and your buyers will have the 00:02:53.120 --> 00:02:56.740 freedom to keep things on their person like they’ve never had before, 00:02:56.740 --> 00:03:00.260 a freedom which frankly they deserve. 00:03:00.260 --> 00:03:01.040 [music suddenly stops] 00:03:01.040 --> 00:03:06.440 So VHS cassettes are a fair bit larger than Beta cassettes. And this means that while 00:03:06.440 --> 00:03:08.560 they’ll fit just fine in the… 00:03:08.560 --> 00:03:12.200 pocket, if you will of a VHS VCR, they’re simply 00:03:12.200 --> 00:03:16.360 too big to fit inside the Beta machine. But. 00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:18.840 What about the other way around? 00:03:18.840 --> 00:03:23.280 If a Beta cassette is smaller, then it stands to reason it will fit in here. 00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:24.490 But it won’t. 00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:29.240 That’s weird. Is it just too thick or something? 00:03:29.240 --> 00:03:31.400 No. It’s certainly not too wide, 00:03:31.400 --> 00:03:33.280 or even too long! 00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:34.520 What gives? 00:03:34.520 --> 00:03:38.920 It’s the most cleverest little bit of cleverness that gives! Ever notice something about the 00:03:38.930 --> 00:03:44.560 lid of a VHS cassette? Well, aside from how excellent of a fidgeting device it is? 00:03:44.560 --> 00:03:45.820 Do you see it? 00:03:45.820 --> 00:03:47.400 How about now? 00:03:47.400 --> 00:03:50.500 There’s a little notch right in the center of the lid, and 00:03:50.500 --> 00:03:55.110 if you look at the underside of the tape, you’ll find an unbroken line carving a little 00:03:55.110 --> 00:03:58.420 path through these various holes which are themselves quite clever. 00:03:58.420 --> 00:04:02.180 You can learn all about how clever those holes are in the video I just made. 00:04:02.180 --> 00:04:03.680 And you can find a card up there. 00:04:03.680 --> 00:04:06.030 Or a link in the description serves as backup. 00:04:06.030 --> 00:04:11.600 See, starting way back at the dawn of VHS, the engineers over at JVC were all like 00:04:11.600 --> 00:04:17.200 “Hey, what a marvelous invention we have made! We shall out-do those Sony people with our amazingly 00:04:17.200 --> 00:04:21.040 better recording time and our much less restrictive licensing policies!” 00:04:21.040 --> 00:04:26.120 But then, some other engineer had just had a thought. This person went to the other engineers and said 00:04:26.120 --> 00:04:30.940 “My fellow engineers! There is a problem! One of Sony’s terribly inferior cassettes will 00:04:30.940 --> 00:04:35.670 fit in our machine! If people try to force the lid down, the misaligned cassette could 00:04:35.670 --> 00:04:37.670 cause some serious damage!” 00:04:37.670 --> 00:04:40.280 So they gathered around and thought of a solution. 00:04:40.280 --> 00:04:41.560 And this is it! 00:04:41.560 --> 00:04:43.640 See this little spike here in the VCR? 00:04:43.640 --> 00:04:45.820 JVC was really fond of spikes. 00:04:45.820 --> 00:04:47.880 That little guy sticks up just enough that 00:04:47.880 --> 00:04:52.860 when you try to put in a Beta cassette, the solid lid prevents you from inserting the tape. 00:04:52.860 --> 00:04:57.500 You can wiggle it around and get beyond the lid, but if you manage to get that far, 00:04:57.500 --> 00:05:02.230 you’ll still be foiled by the body of the cassette. Once the spike is up against here, 00:05:02.230 --> 00:05:04.910 no amount of wiggling will let you get past it. 00:05:04.910 --> 00:05:09.780 And all it takes for the VHS cassette to get around this was a small notch in the lid, 00:05:09.780 --> 00:05:11.820 and a line down to the center. 00:05:11.820 --> 00:05:13.620 Isn’t that just the neatest thing? 00:05:13.620 --> 00:05:18.020 I love how the edges of the notch are tapered so that the cassette will self-align. 00:05:18.020 --> 00:05:23.300 You’ve probably never noticed any sort of resistance from that little spike and this notch in the lid. 00:05:23.300 --> 00:05:27.820 But, no VHS VCR will let you try and put in a Beta cassette. 00:05:27.820 --> 00:05:29.919 Even into the days of front-loaders, that 00:05:29.919 --> 00:05:35.200 spike is still there and it will foil your plans. Which is a good thing, too, as it would 00:05:35.200 --> 00:05:40.320 be pretty easy to get a Beta tape stuck in there if you could get it all the way in. 00:05:40.320 --> 00:05:44.320 Of course, there’s absolutely nothing good that can come from forcing a Beta tape 00:05:44.320 --> 00:05:46.160 into a VHS machine. 00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:49.860 In theory you could record onto it if it were blank, but if there were 00:05:49.860 --> 00:05:55.090 Beta signals on there already, your VHS machine will not be able to play them. You’ll maybe 00:05:55.090 --> 00:05:59.640 get something from the audio, kinda, but you aren’t gonna get a picture. 00:05:59.640 --> 00:06:00.500 Well. 00:06:00.500 --> 00:06:01.560 That’s it. 00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:03.160 That’s this video. 00:06:03.160 --> 00:06:04.640 Yep. 00:06:04.640 --> 00:06:08.800 So uh, don’t forget, we all deserve pockets, 00:06:08.810 --> 00:06:13.790 and also don’t forget that no matter how smug those Beta backers are, you had a product 00:06:13.790 --> 00:06:19.760 that was just as good and had way more clever tricks up its sleeve. And also, it’s 2019 00:06:19.760 --> 00:06:20.260 20 00:06:20.260 --> 00:06:20.760 21 00:06:20.760 --> 00:06:21.260 22 00:06:21.260 --> 00:06:21.760 23 00:06:21.760 --> 00:06:22.800 24. 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:24.300 Give it up already. 00:06:25.200 --> 00:06:28.120 ♫ foolishly smooth jazz ♫ 00:06:29.880 --> 00:06:32.420 That’s gonna be a problem starting in 2025. 00:06:32.420 --> 00:06:34.720 So I would be ashamed if I forgot to mention 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:39.970 that while there were never any VCRs that could record onto both Beta and VHS tapes, 00:06:39.970 --> 00:06:43.800 you could find videocassette rewinders that worked with both! 00:06:43.800 --> 00:06:48.960 For the youngins in the audience, these things are there just to rewind your tape for you. 00:06:48.960 --> 00:06:51.060 Yep. It is a one trick pony. 00:06:51.060 --> 00:06:55.380 But, people bought these because using the rewind function of your VCR would put 00:06:55.380 --> 00:07:00.210 some wear on the components, and while the degree to which that wear mattered is highly 00:07:00.210 --> 00:07:04.630 debatable, it certainly is not debatable that a videocassette rewinder will make that wear 00:07:04.630 --> 00:07:09.800 go down to zero. It’s also just more convenient, especially if you’ve got a stack of Blockbuster 00:07:09.800 --> 00:07:12.229 rentals you want to watch one after the other. 00:07:12.229 --> 00:07:16.180 I’ve seen some of these that have a little lever to switch between Beta and VHS. 00:07:16.180 --> 00:07:17.380 The little cogs 00:07:17.380 --> 00:07:19.980 --or splines as was pointed out to me a zillion times-- 00:07:19.980 --> 00:07:25.580 would simply move a little bit with the lever, allowing the rewinder to accommodate both cassette formats. 00:07:25.580 --> 00:07:31.700 So now you know! Who actually needed a rewinder that could handle both Beta and VHS? 00:07:31.700 --> 00:07:37.010 Presumably almost nobody, and I think it’s a fair bet that the universal rewinders were more expensive 00:07:37.010 --> 00:07:40.750 than a standalone rewinder anyway, so the fact that I’ve seen more than one of them 00:07:40.750 --> 00:07:42.320 in thrift stores is surprising. 00:07:45.880 --> 00:07:49.780 ...the misaligned cassette could cause some serious damage. 00:07:49.780 --> 00:07:51.900 I’m holding this really weirdly. 00:07:51.900 --> 00:07:53.620 ‘Cause I forgot to grab it. 00:07:53.620 --> 00:07:54.540 Again. 00:07:56.760 --> 00:07:57.880 Alright, Kevin. 00:07:57.880 --> 00:08:00.040 We've been over this before. 00:08:00.040 --> 00:08:02.120 BETACAM IS NOT BETAMAX 00:08:04.820 --> 00:08:06.980 Now go apologize to your mother. 00:08:08.540 --> 00:08:10.740 Pockets for all!