VHS doesn't have to be that bad but I suspect it can be. I grew up in the 90s and we had a lot of stuff on self recorded VHS and still had VHS for recording and a DVD player for films until probably about 2007. The DVD was better than pre-recorded VHS but mainly in terms of usability, price and sound quality.<br><br>The VHS player made a difference, we had a well made Ferguson 'videostar' which we never used on anything other than standard play. When that eventually failed we bought a cheap new Daewoo videorecorder as a stopgap until getting a PVR, the quality on that Daewoo was virtually unwatchable. <br><br>The tapes made a difference, we used to buy Scotch brand tapes in 180 and 240 minute lengths. If you recorded things on to them from new and kept it for play back only the quality was comparable to pre-recorded VHS. If you used the tape regularly for taping things and then watching them and taping over them the quality deteriorated. There were other tricks as well that were supposed to help like running tapes all the way to the end after watching something before rewinding them. The tapes that were produced towards the end of VHS (mid 2000's) were terrible compared to the older tapes. <br><br>Video source, videos from VHScamcorders were especially awful. If you watched over VHS over SCART or through the "video channel" via the RF modulator in the recorder, the SCART gave a far better picture. I suspect that if you recorded via a cable box (with it's own RF modulator) rather than the VHS's inbuilt tuner that would give a similar effect (which is possibly the cause of the US vs UK arguments below as opposed to NTSC vs PAL) <br><br>I suspect VHS could look that bad if: you used a cheap recorder/player, cheap tape, worn out/stretched tape, recorded over another recording (multiple times), used the recorder in long-play mode and watched via the "video channel" but it was not the norm.