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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.
Netcraft confirms.....VHS is dead.
Maybe in the early days of the video wars, but Beta turned out to be a far superior format than VHS. The quality was better, less quality was lost when copying, the tapes were a bit smaller, Beta tapes last longer, etc. The reason VHS won was because a Beta would only hold one hour and a VHS would hold two when they were released. Later Beta tapes would hold 5 hours in an extended play format, and they'd lose less quality in the extended format as well. Sucks that VHS had to win.
Why buy a new one?
DVD players are new(ish), so of course they're gonna outstrip VCR's in sales!
DUH!
Not as long as I have my original, unLucasfuckedup Star Wars tapes.
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.
> Please, spare us the netcraft jokes.
Russint confirms... Netcraft jokes are dead.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Netcraft joke community when Slashdotter russint confirmed that Netcraft joke market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all Slashdot posts...
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.
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.
You must be 16.
"VHS is dead." - Ronnie Coote
"Ronnie Coote is dead." - VHS
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Lying on the counch just staring there at you
If I was young it didn't stop you coming through
They took the bandwidth and sold it for low cost you see
The internet burst in with and gave me kickass p2p
And now my TV suffers it's redundancy
I blog my life, bro. Why do I share so?
Digital killed the video star
Digital killed the video star
In my mind, and in my car
We outdo rewind with our PVRs
You're not the first one. You're not the last one.
Digital killed the video star
Digital killed the video star
In my mind, and in my car
We outdo rewind with our PVRs
The web it came, and copyrights it bent
So get all your media through a bittorrent.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?