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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.
I've rented so many scratched DVDs that at this point I rent the VHS tape before I rent the DVD.
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Long-term effects of Bush deficits
Not when they are preserved for future generations
Monstar L
casue some peopel have hundreds of tapes, and it's kind of costly to replace them all in one go.Plus not all of them will be replacable.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The number of scratched DVDs that I get from my video store, I think perhaps VHS was actually better. These DVD movies are just crap with their pausing and skipping. I bought a retail Lord of the Rings - Two Towers, and the quality and pausing on a new disc half way through were so bad, that I'm lkeaning towards thinking that we were better off with magnetic tapes. Perhaps Betamax gets the last laugh - it seems that it was better than DVD too. Add the problems with legal Linux distro DVD players, and I think the consumer has lost out.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
My old roommate still has like 20-30 VHS tapes full of recorded-off-TV movies that he still likes to watch. (Shhh ... the MPAA's still watching out for those Bill and Ted pirates)
He got his first DVD player in the laptop he bought at the beginning of this semester.
He still watches the VHS.
I can honestly say that I won't miss VHS. I stopped recording stuff to my VCR almost 2 years ago when TiVOs, recordable DVDs, etc. starting coming out. I've just been too poor to plunk down and pay the lifetime fee for a TiVO or build my own PVR.
/. TiVO mavens), DVDs that can't be copied to preserve a copy, and homebuilt PVRs that may become illegal to use to skip commercials or obsolete if content providers start ramping up DRM efforts on the signal level.
However, when I started to craft this reply -- something struck me -- VHS doesn't have DRM that prevents it from recording stuff. Or being passed around with friends. Etc., etc., etc.
Yes, you can't use a VCR to decode a DirecTV signal without a DirecTV receiver, and that might be poor man's DRM. I don't know -- were there ever VCR + sat. receivers?
And popping the write protection tab on a tape isn't so much DRM as "honey, don't you even think about taping that football game over our wedding video."
VHS was mainstream, you could record most anything that you could get a signal into the VCR, and you could pass it around at leisure. There was talk about digital VCRs coming out in the future that would tag copyrighted broadcasts, I think, and would basically introduce VHS DRM, but for the most part, it's been DRM free, right?
Now, we have TiVOs that are getting more and more restrictive or control happy (for the average consumer -- maybe not
I hated using VHS tapes, but they were pretty no-nonsense. Ahhh...the good ol' days. Now I must go back to finding some money to build a PVR, buy a TiVO, pay off my wife when I get an HDTV for the living room, etc.
IronChefMorimoto
I prefer videos to DVD. When I rent a DVD from Blockbuster, I often find that the film just stops when it gets to a damaged part. With rented VHS, the quality may not be quite as good as the best parts of DVD, but it keeps running. I am also not at all amused at the inability of my (Bush) DVD player to skip certain content on the disk. For some reason, it won't let me bypass those ridiculous copyright notices. I have never had that problem with a VCR.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Once in a while, there will be a show on TV I'd like to watch, but am too occupied with other things to pay enough attention. If I know this will happen, I'll pop a trusty old VHS tape into my trusty old VCR, hit record, and forget about it until the end of the show. Later that evening/day/week, I hit rewind, wait a minute or so, and watch what I missed.
I know PVRs are capable of this as well, and yes, I have a computer with an All-in-Wonder 9700 that I use extensively for video capture, but
1) I'm in linux 95% of the time I'm on my computer, and Rage Theater II chips aren't supported yet. (Yes, I can get some decent capture cards supported under linux but at present my VCR just works without tweaking drivers or anything)
2) In Windows, I take a noticeable performance hit capturing video, and if I do anything to put pressure on the CPU, I'll get dropped frames. (When was the last time you got dropped frames on a VCR?)
and 3) I'd have to go through another step in burning the file to DVD/CD to make it portable/archivable. (Just pop the tape out and take it to a friends house right after recording)
While the format of VHS may be phased out in terms of new product releases, the relative quality (with decent quality tapes) and reliability of the machinery has earned a place in my room. I've never had dropped frames, codec/compressor incompatibilities, or my TV lock up while I'm recording with a VCR. Yes, I know I can buy a tivo, but I don't feel like spending that money when I have something that works fine at the moment. I don't plan to buy any new release movies on VHS, but I do occasionally pick up a few blanks in case something comes on I'd like to watch, without buying any new equipment.
I do not have a DVD player. I do not rent much movies. I do however record a lot of TV shows. My old VHS does the job well. Alternative recording devices are still way to expensive for my taste to replace my VHS and VHS offers "good enough" quality for my needs (when I record a TV show, it is for its content, not the quality of the images).
I bet because of the recording needs, VHS will still be with us for a while. Yes, other technologies are comming and gaining market share, but they still have a lot to go (in price) for VHS to disapear from households.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Imagine The data capacity and economics (as far as tape costs go) that would be possible with a VHS data backup drive. Right now it's cheaper to buy a new computer and build a RAID-server than to buy a tape drive & rotation tapes for a small-medium business. $1/Tape is a lot better than the $1/GB you pay for tapes now. If the digital tape format & (USB/FireWire?) interface were standardized, there could be some major competition for the drives (instead of the $1200 drives now on the market).
People might actually start making regular backups again.
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 log
Ever watch one of the older Disney DVDs? They used to make that "intro" into a 10 minute commercial for their other DVDs. It was just like going to the damn movie theatre.
This announcement by Dixons smacks of not telling the whole story.
I don't know how popular PVRs are in the US market (in absolute terms; yes, I know TiVo has a cult following, but what are *most* people using?), but they have *not* yet taken off that much in Britain.
TiVo was introduced to the UK, then subsequently withdrawn (*1). Although Murdoch's Sky have since launched "Sky Plus", that only works with Sky satellite TV.
Basically, I am convinced that PVRs will be phenomenally successful (even more so than DVD players) in the UK *once* you can get a decent 80Gb model for less than UKP 100, and the Freeview (Digital Terrestial TV) electronic program guide provides a full 7-day service.
However.... this hasn't happened yet! I was considering getting a basic PVR for UKP 150.00 in February, but it was very limited, so I got a 50 quid VCR with 12-hour recording capacity instead (as a stopgap). My guess back then, and one I still hold, is that Christmas 2005 will see massive PVR sales in the UK, and the swift death of VHS.
Until then, what are people buying?
I can now buy a DVD recorder for 200 pounds, but I don't see this as a replacement for the VCR. Put simply, most VCRs were used either for watching pre-recorded films (DVD players now have this market) or time-shifting. Sure, a DVD recorder looks like a direct replacement for the VCR, but the PVR is actually a better choice for what they are actually *doing*- time shifting!
Anyway, this is beside the point. VCR sales may be falling, but I don't see recordable DVD, nor PVR sales filling the gap just yet.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it's notable that it's only the Dixons stores (which tend to be smaller and based in the city-centre) are discontinuing them, and the sibling Currys stores (larger, based mainly in retail parks) are not.
In short, I think the Dixons group are trying to improve the profit margins in their smaller stores. They just finished closing down a large number of them (good riddance).
(*1) Possibly due to bad publicity they got when they automatically uploaded a BBC program without prior notification, or maybe just bad marketing in the first place. They pushed the 'pause live video' selling-point over everything else, and.... maybe that wasn't enough to convince people to shell out.
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My DVD player, a cheap far eastern thing, has a cunning feature where if you insert a disk, press STOP twice while the intro is playing and then press PLAY, on about 90% of disks it'll immediately start playing title 1. It misses the intro, the warnings, the menus, everything. It's great.
Region hackable, too --- they know where the money is.