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The VHS is Dead
Ronnie Coote writes "The UK's largest retailer of electronics is phasing out VHS VCRs. Sales of DVD players have outstripped VCRs by 40-to-1 recently. So how long until the mass market will be saying goodbye to the DVD player?" A few historical links to commemorate the occasion: Sony Kills Betamax, Why VHS Was Better, and How to Preserve VHS Recordings. For the future, maybe we'll have Digital VHS, but I suspect it will mostly be hard drive-based recorders.
Just because something isn't used as much anymore by the majority of the people as it used to be, doesn't necessarily mean it's dead. A group at college that I'm in was designing a database for some rental place. We purposely included because we were certain that a lot of these places would still actually have tapes. And, after a quick check at a local place called Video Land, I confirmed our thoughts. Sure, it might be phasing out. But that doesn't mean it's dead.
I, of course, still have mine around. I already pay enough for TV services without a monthly DVR bill... (grumble, grumble)
Why buy a new one?
DVD players are new(ish), so of course they're gonna outstrip VCR's in sales!
DUH!
I refuse to use DVDs. They offer too little control for my taste
compared to VHS? the only thing you have no control over with a DVD is the intro sequence, where you are often forced to sit through the FBI/Interpol warning and maybe the distributors logo before the main title screen (although some are now including adverts as well). past that, you can just jump the last scene of the movie if you wish, far far faster than possible with a VHS.
If you've got a half decent video collection, then do your self a favour and buy a top-o-the-line VCR now... and treat it good. You'll never be able to replace ALL the vids in your collection. (And ripping them to 'puter is ok, but you'll find this weird vid at a car boot sale in 2014 and think back to this slashdot story...)
You can still buy a good record player thanks to them bieng the tool of choice for DJs and hardcore classic moosic lovers, but if you want to replace your Betamax, thats harder... I think VCRs are more likely to go the Betamax route, than the record player route.
Remember some people still have large collections of movies in VHS format. I don't think they are going to rush out to re-buy all of these movies on DVD. Also DVD Recorders are starting to gain in popularity, but they are still a lot more expensive than VHS decks. VHS is still the most economical way to record.
Dying yes, but not dead yet.
A great majority of TV watching people both like the familiarity of recording shows on the VCR and are not ready to make the jump to using a PVR. Also, the process of being able to record a show on tape, take it out of the VCR and do whatever with it still hasn't become common enough or cheap enough with newer mediums such as DVD-R for many people to buy into it.
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
If a new disk is skipping it may well be your player not the media.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Not to mention if you have kids...
If I have a tape for my kids in the VCR, I can stop and start it right away, without having to wait for the disc to spin up, sit through advertisements, fast forward to where the video ended last, etc...
Toddlers don't have patience for DVDs.
There are other examples of how the Chinese have altered the landscape of history.
Linux is having a tough time in gaining traction in China because piracy is so severe that both Solaris and Windows XP are essentially free. How can Linux compete against them?
The primary use of a VCR is no longer watching videos - but recording things. DVD Recorders are not yet at a price point that makes it affordable for consumers - nor do we have a standard in place for the type of DVD to be recording to. Until DVD recorders reach a price point that is affordable for the average consumers, there will still be considerable demand for VHS to record television. I don't see digital recorders (Tivo, etc) at that point yet either.
After all, with all those cryptic DRMs manufacturers shoving through the consumers, and all the frenzy DVD format wars (DVD+-RW/HD-DVD/DVD-A/DVD-RAM/etc.), nobody's gonna abandon the tape recorder anytime soon. Maybe not making or buying new ones, but they are gonna keep replenishing the VHS tapes and fixing old units.
I mean what happens if the HD crashes? I will probably end up loosing around 120 Gb of movies. CD burning is a pain as well, as those get scratched. So CDs and DVDs are not really the panacea if you want to store your movies. In some ways VHS and Betamax are still better.
I still use my VCR for recording.
It's cheap and it works.
One day it will break down, and then I'll consider recordable DVDs or some Hard disk gadget. But for now it does the job.
But I wouldnt buy a new one.
I pass on DVDs and rent VHS as well. It amazes me how scratched and scuffed the DVDs I used to rent were. Don't people know you're not supposed to touch the surface of the disc? The ones I was getting looked like someone put it face down on the sidewalk and slid on it. Never again.
Here's the deal. I've got this GPU with TV-in, but it doesen't have a TV-tuner. So, what do i do? I hook up my VCR to my puter so i can watch TV on my puter without a TV tuner card. It's cheap and works in Linux.
/do/ want to watch DVD 99% of the computers around have DVD players. With a descent screen it makes a TV completely redudnant!
A run of the mill DVD player doesen't have TV tuning capability, therefore it sucks and is nothing that will replace my VHS and DVD drive on my puter anytime soon.
Eh, that was a mess. That'll teach me not to post drunk.
What i meant is, why discard your VCR when you can tune TV with it? And when you
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
It's a common Slashdot troll (post with the intent to annoy), normally reserved for stories about BSD, but it's spread to all stories in the form of "Netcraft has confirmed ... (some random victim) is dying".
See more information at Wikipedia's article.
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
I want a TiVo/Replay-type device that has no subscription service associated with it. I want to program it the way I program my VCR. No fancy schmancy "Record all occurrences of Seinfeld, and phone home to find out when they occur". Just a simple "Record Wednesdays on Channel 4 at 9:00PM for 1 hour", like a normal VHS VCR. I want recording quality, storage capacity, the ability to pause live TV, and the ability to watch something I recorded earlier while the system is recording something else. And I don't want to build a dedicated PC to do the job. If I can get that, I may even forego the ability to pop out the tape I recorded in the living room VCR and bring it up to the bedroom VCR to watch the rest of the show in bed. Maybe. I'll think about it. Can I get that anywhere? If not, I'm sticking with my VCR.
I read that article yesterday. It basically says the DVD player has replaced the VCR. They aren't directly comparable products. The VCR's main selling point is it allows you to record TV content to watch at another time. The DVD's main selling point is it allows you to watch pre-recorded content.
The VCR originally beat the laserdisc (and destroyed RCA in the process) because people wanted the ability to record. PVRs or set-top DVD-Rs might be the eventual downfall of the VCR but the current DVD players sure aren't.
The article even has a summary of the VCR that talks about how people loved the ability to record. Apparently, the author's microscopic mind couldn't make the connection that DVD players don't have that ability yet.
The CD player also didn't replace the cassette deck. They lived as complimentry products for many years until mass CD-Rs and mp3 players took over the cassette's market. Jason
ProfQuotes
But VHS does have rights management, it's just analog, not digital. It's called macrovision and if the recording unit has macrovision, which most of them do, it will a second generation recording unusable - if it doesn't have macrovision it still might ruin or at least degrade the picture.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Don't like the ability of making recordings without worrying about DRM? That whole "if you can see it, you can record" it thing?
This just means I need to look for a sale, so I can put a couple of boxed ones in the basement, to be carefully opened only after the current VCR is totally dead.
Yes, I know that there are ways around DRM. but are they as simple?
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
There's a few very good reasons to use VHS.
- You don't have hundreds of dollars, but want to watch shows at a different time.
- You want to record an indefinite number of shows, but don't want to buy new units all the time, and don't want to "DIY".
- You want to record something cheaply from your video camera to a format you can play at a friends house (say, a birthday party or a vacation, whatever).
- The pricing of VHS tapes, per minute of TV recording can't be beat (yet). Even with DVD-R, at $1 per disc, recording to a standard format will only gain you up to about 4 hours of VHS quality video. A $0.99 economy VHS tape can do 6 or more hours of recording.
- Ease of use / Familiarity.
- Lack of trust with PVR companies (example, you don't want a nasty TiVO surprise of banner ads when you skip commercials, and when you learned of this, you no longer trust the company's products).
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Seriously, make backups of everything. Blank media is dirt cheap these days, and in our household at least $cost_of_movie * %likelihood_of_destruction is far greater than $cost_of_dvd-r.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I've seen a lot of people complaining about DVDs getting scratched. So why not make a DVD with a protective case on like a floppy? It would never leave its shell so it would never get scratched.
It doesn't take having kids to know how to raise them, nor does having kids make you a good parent. While the anonymous parent may not have any kids, what makes you think he's never spent time with kids? Cousins, nieces and nephews, younger siblings, children of friends, etc; there are plenty of ways to experience child rearing without doing it first-hand. Moreover, if you can't teach your child a little patience and respect for belongings, perhaps you shouldn't have had a kid in the first place? The last thing this world needs is another parent (I'd say "set of parents", but that seems to be the exception these days) who can't control his ankle biter.
For what it's worth, it says a lot about a person's parenting skills when they use videos as a babysitting mechanism. How about you try spending some time with your child, instead? You could certainly do that by watching a video, during which time you also teach him how to handle the media and respect your property. Saying that you can't teach patience to a 2 year old is a cop-out. Have you tried? Do you realize that sometimes you do have to punish a child? If he breaks a DVD, it's a good time to teach him that actions have consequences. "Sorry, but your <Insert kid's movie title here> is broken, so you can't watch it. No, I'm not going to go out and buy you another one. If you wanted to watch it, you shouldn't have broken it in the first place." You might feel bad about doing this, but tough shit. It's your job to educate your child and help him grow up into a responsible, considerate human being. This is a lesson he needs to learn sooner or later, so why not use this chance to teach it? Otherwise, you just unleash another spoiled brat on the rest of us, expecting to get whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, and damn the consequences.
And before you lash out at me with your wonderful wit, no, I don't have children. Nor do I want children, because I know that I don't have the time or patience be a good parent (at least not now, nor for the forseeable future). I don't need babies to fulfill me or give me a sense of purpose, and I'm not poorer because of it.
Sure you can. My daughter will be 2 in January. It is just a matter of not giving into demands. Screaming at the top of your lungs and throwing things gets you a trip to the crib or ignored. Silence and patience gets you a movie and a snack. It is particularly effective if she sees the snack first so she knows what she lost (if she lost it) and knows what is at stake.
Counterpoint: scene selection is almost invisible to toddlers I have been around. That means that when it is nearly bedtime, you can skip past the majority of Finding Nemo directly to the fun bits at The End, and have it look like The End. Toddlers know what that means, and off we happily go to brush our teeth and put on jammies.
Ahh... scene selection. Nemo is MUCH more watchable the 20th time if you go from school to turtles to reunion to THE END.
Yes! My god, someone else noticed that and despises it. The first DVD player I owned omitted that feature (It was a cheapo ;), but when it broke down... bah. Ever since, I've been cursed with unskipable, repetitive FBI warnings >:/.
I like the product I buy to keep on working as it's supposed to at the time I bought it, not have the company reduce its value later. I'll pick something trustable instead of TiVO.
Neurosis and psychosis because the parent refuses to reward bad behavior? You, sir, are what is wrong with America today.
Because you have children with lots of tapes they want to watch?
Because your two-year-old son can handle putting a tape in a VCR but you won't let him near the DVD's?
Because regardless of picture quality issues you balk at the thought of paying again for the same content in another format, assuming it's still available?
Because you're getting sick of being sold the new stuff when the old stuff still just works?
Other than these reasons, no, can't think why anyone would want to buy a new VCR.
Well, yes, I used to think like that and I used to say all sorts of things. For instance I swore that I'd never use the phrase Because I say so as it annoyed me so much when I was a child.
And then I became a parent and everything changed. In particular I learnt the phrase the terrible twos Simply to keep my sanity I learnt a number of tricks to placate the little ball of frutration that cannot articulate his thoughts or his needs (remember this is a two year old we're talking about - no language skills beyond the scream and the gurgle) And sometimes I used the video. To this day the Thomas The Tank Engine theme tune runs in my head.
I don't say I'm the best parent but
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Alternatively, perhaps I decided not to buy a DVD player (because of the aforementioned problems) but received one as a gift.
considering the amount of piracy, the copyright notices are there for a reason.
I don't care why they are there. I find them intensely annoying and have no desire to watch an industry's enforced propaganda.
you're in THAT much of a hurry that you can't look at that for, what, 5 seconds? i bet you nuke your poptarts because "you don't have time to cook."
No, I don't generally eat poptarts -- they are junk food.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
In other words, a caddy drive like Macs used to have, except the disc comes in a caddy already so you don't need to swap discs in the caddys or buy piles of disc caddys.