White Screen at the end of old VHS tapes

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Does anybody remember this white screen (or a shady gray) with a test-pattern tone on any old VHS tapes before 1998 at the end. Those things used to scare me.

I used to be scared to death of those things!

I loved the sound and would listen to it.

I have never been bored enough to watch a vhs that far

That always scared me. It would be late at night, I just watched a nice, relaxing children's movie and all of a sudden-- EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

On laserdiscs you get a pretti turtle that tells you you're an idiot for putting the disk in the wrong way.

Nope, just white noise at the end of the tapes.

And someone I knew who liked laserdiscs believed that it was impossible to get a better picture out of a TV without them. I disagreed for good technical reasons, BUT IT IS A FACT that even though Laserdiscs are ANALOG, their picture quality IS BETTER THAN DVD!
(No, this isn't a case of old folks preferring the sound of tube radios because they lost their hearing when solid state electronics came out.)

Analog image quality (and audio quality for that matter) is almost always better because it doesn't contain the artifacts of digital sampling. There are no pixels in analog film, just film grain. There are no bits in analog audio, just a smooth wave.

Flashback!

I grew sleepy. It was usually late at night when the lights were out and nobody cared to pop the VHS tape.

Tell me about it! I used to run out of the room after the credits!

Only once have I ever seen a white screen of death at the end of a VHS. And I still remember which one it was - it was "Barney's Great Adventure" from 1998. I was maybe 4 or 5 and yes, it scared me - tone and startling screen and everything. Because of that, I always asked teachers when they put in a VHS for a lesson, "make sure you rewind it at the credits!" If they didn't care and left it running, that white screen and sine wave tone might have popped up! I don't mind the home-recorded tapes - they just go to blue screen after whatever was on it was recorded. Even at my age, so close to being a grown-up I still refuse to look for that white screen, let alone be startled by that 1000hz tone!
I have heard the best way to find a white screen is to look at the very end of Paramount, Fox Video, or Columbia Tristar tapes. They are VERY PRONE to this.

And, while we are talking about this, who remembers the MGM/UA logo that was right at the beginning of the tape? Usually it would change colors and have a copyright. I didn't mind that - that was silent.

It's a signal to the machine in the factory to cut the tape and splice on a length of transparent plastic leader tape.

I do remember lunging at the VCR in a race between the power button and the imminent high pitched squeal, I think it came after the blue screen, way at the end of the tape. Even the almost inaudible frequency emitted by older TVs has always annoyed me. I could tell whenever a TV was on even if it was in another room with a black screen and the sound muted.