New device makes Blu-rays and DVDs look like VHS?

An ad on Facebook today announced the introduction of a device that makes DVDs, Blu-rays, and UHD discs look like VHS tapes or grindhouse films, presumably by adding fake lines, scratches, and tracking errors to approximate the look of worn film reels and old videocassettes.

Don't groan yourself to death just yet—the ad was only an April Fools' Day joke.

But the idea actually seems marketable when you consider that many indie horror films are filtered to simulate the grindhouse look, many old and new indie horror films are still being released on VHS, and VHS collecting has hit the mainstream.

If you haven't been following the VHS revival, then you might be surprised to learn that VHS collecting has grown in popularity alongside the resurgence of other old physical media formats such as audio cassettes and vinyl. The cult of VHS isn't new, though; the documentaries Adjust Your Tracking (2013) and VHS Massacre (2016) examined the phenomenon years ago.

Clothing chain Urban Outfitters even got into the act by selling random five-packs of used VHS tapes for $40 each to customers who have indiscriminating taste and don't live near a thrift shop, where you can usually buy used videocassettes for a buck each.

The fictional MK1-Ultra device, by making high-quality images look worse than they really are, is essentially the opposite of the Marseille mCable Cinema Edition, which makes poor-quality images look better than they really are. This product is an HDMI cable with a built-in microprocessor that upscales standard-definition video from DVDs and 1080p video from Blu-rays so that it looks smoother and less pixelated on 4K UHD TVs. The resulting video isn't true to the source, since the microprocessor applies an algorithm that predicts and supplies missing information on the basis of the surrounding pixels, but the results are pretty convincing.

I tried out one of these hundred-dollar cables myself and was impressed by the improvement in image quality when I played DVDs. Unfortunately, the cable stopped working after 10 minutes, but it was cool while it lasted.

The idea that consumers would intentionally decrease the quality of their audio-visual content with a device like the MK1-Ultra, especially after investing in UHD technology, might seem silly, but many music fans have done something similar by ripping their 20-bit mastered CDs to 128 and 160 kbps MP3s. Granted, they do that for the sake of convenience rather than for nostalgia or to intentionally produce a particular audio effect, but who knows? Maybe MP3 nostalgia will one day lead music listeners to purposely down-res their audio for aesthetic reasons. It already happened in the 1990s with lo-fi indie rock.

I'm surprised that no one created a device like the MK1-Ultra to add the snaps, crackles, and pops of worn vinyl and the muffled playback and tape dropouts of cheap cassettes to compact discs. It could've been an audio mode on home audio amps, which would not be very different from the arena and cathedral reverb settings that some units already have.

The time for this idea has probably passed, though, since people aren't buying CDs and home audio systems the way they used to. By the time the wave of CD nostalgia hits—and it inevitably will—I assume that people will appreciate CDs for being CDs and won't want to make them sound like records or tapes anymore.