Question for SNM..

[naughtoj]

Hello!!

A while back I purchased many of Cathe's VHS tapes. A few months later I decided to go entirely DVD and purchased her 23-pack. I know that this website proclaims that DVD provides superior visual and sound quality. However, some of my Cathe DVD's have proven to be much LESS superior in sound than my VHS's . For example, IMAX and Circuit Max on DVD are much lower in sound than my VHS tapes. I cannot get my TV to play the tapes as loud on my DVD's.

Is there anything that can be done about this?? I ask because while IMAX DVD is much inferior in quality to my VHS, Rythmic Step DVD seems very loud. So I could not just return the whole DVD, right??

Is this a DVD problem or a problem with the production quality of these videos when they were transferred to DVD?? I am now going to have to get a receiver and new speakers just to get my DVD's to play as loud as my VHS's. It just does not seem right..Please advise...

Thanks,
Janice

 

[jaxgirl]

I'll be interested to find out the answer to this. I have had sound problems with some DVDs in the past (not exercise ones, just movies) but I've always attributed it to the fact that I have a cheap or bad DVD player. Usually, if I just unplug it and plug it in again, the sound problem corrects itself. But it does seem to happen on some tapes but not others - I haven't ever figured out if it's the player or the DVDs.

This is precisely why I haven't converted to DVD for my workouts yet because I wanted to wait until I'm ready to buy a better DVD player - but I'm sure it won't be long.

 

[SNM Videos]

The sound quality of DVDs are better than VHS, but all DVDs will play at a sound level that is about half the level of a VHS tape. The DVD industry standards for volume levels are different than that of VHS tapes and this is why you will hear a difference in sound levels. Also, to answer your other question...You will hear a sound level difference between Rhythmic Step and Intervalmax simply because they were recorded at different times and at different sound levels when the workouts were originally filmed. This is true on the VHS tapes as well as the DVD.
As for what you can do... If you're playing your DVD using only your TV's speakers then make sure your TV is set up to play in stereo. If your TV only has mono then make sure to use a "Y-splitter" for your RCA jacks. Besides that you simply just need to turn up the volume more for DVD.