Posted on 11/27/2006 1:02:05 AM PST by Dallas59
After a long illness, the groundbreaking home-entertainment format VHS has died of natural causes in the United States. The format was 30 years old.
No services are planned.
The format had been expected to survive until January, but high-def formats and next-generation vidgame consoles hastened its final decline.
"It's pretty much over," concurred Buena Vista Home Entertainment general manager North America Lori MacPherson on Tuesday.
VHS is survived by a child, DVD, and by Tivo, VOD and DirecTV. It was preceded in death by Betamax, Divx, mini-discs and laserdiscs.
Although it had been ailing, the format's death became official in this, the video biz's all-important fourth quarter. Retailers decided to pull the plug, saying there was no longer shelf space.
As a tribute to the late, great VHS, Toys 'R' Us will continue to carry a few titles like "Barney," and some dollar video chains will still handle cassettes for those who cannot deal with the death of the format.
Born Vertical Helical Scan to parent JVC of Japan, the tape had a difficult childhood as it was forced to compete with Sony's Betamax format.
After its youthful Betamax battles, the longer-playing VHS tapes eventually became the format of choice for millions of consumers. VHS enjoyed a lucrative career, transforming the way people watched movies and changing the economics of the film biz. VHS hit its peak with "The Lion King," which sold more than 30 million vidcassettes Stateside.
The format flourished until DVDs launched in 1997. After a fruitful career, VHS tapes started to retire from center stage in 2003 when DVDs became more popular for the first time.
Since their retirement, VHS tapes have made occasional appearances in children's entertainment and as a format for collectors seeking titles not released on DVD. VHS continued to make as much as $300 million a year until this year, when studios stopped manufacturing the tapes.
VHS won because Sony owned the rights to Betamax and refused to let others make it without a steep royaltyBetamax and Apple lost their initial fights for similar reasons, actually. They got too greedy.
Both are examples of why capitalism is an effective anti-monopoly tool.
-Eric
I agree. Jump drive will be the thing one day.. A little jump drive will hold a couple of movies and dont take up any space.They already have 8 gig SD cards which are even smaller than jump drives. Right now they are expensive, but so were 1G cards not that long ago and I just bought 2 for $15 each.
-Eric
I just picked up the entire 2nd season of The Sopranos in VHS format for only $10 -- the video rental store was running a clearance sale on all its VHS stock.
Yes, that is correct.
The IBM PC came along and was basically an open format where Apple was a closed system. The rest is history...
Buy a tivo and instant record all the time!
VHS machines were cheaper too. Prior to digital tape, the only place I ever saw or used a beta machine was in a TV studio. Beta was actually higher quality. Able to do a side by side comparison, the difference between Beta and VHS were very noticeable. Video recorded to VHS appears more "smudged" than Beta, which appears more sharp, but over time, like audio cassettes of the time, they all begin to lose their quality, as the tape itself slowly deteriorates but if it's not handled properly that process takes less time.
Today we have a battle over HD-DVD vs BlueRay for high definition format. There doesn't seem to be a compelling player in the mix to push one format over the other yet.
Once the industry adopts a standard, one of the two will die the same death Beta did.
LOL... So long friend!
I did the same thing. Burned copies of all my CD's, and the originals won't get scratched, broken or stolen. When one of the copies gets scratched beyond repair, broken, or stolen, I still have the originals, and a pack of CD-R's cost very little.
I've got Sgt. Peppers on CD. It's about 22 years old.
After next year those looking to buy a new TV won't find a regular TV. It'll all be HDTV. If your regular TV works beyond 2009, you'll have to buy a set top HDTV converter, or you won't be able to receive an over-the-air signal. Newer TV's have them built in. My 31" flatscreen has one. It also has a port to hook up to a computer to be used as a 31" computer monitor.
Yes, in theory. If your two year old uses it as a chew toy, it might not last a day.
The joys of cordless phones. :)
Yep. You can get everything at Wal-Mart. :)
My trusty VHS after 10 years of service is showing signs of giving up the ghost. It squeals, it errs and it makes strange grinding noises.
Guess it is time to move into the new age of electronics.
For $150.00 I can buy a VHS/DVR which oddly enough is about the same price I paid for the VHS system.
I have a VCR/DVD combo. The great thing about the death of the VCR is that I can buy tapes of old movies very cheap.
When my standalone VHS system died on me 3 years ago, I bought a DVD/VCR player for far less than I paid for the VHS system brand new 13 years ago. Neat thing about my DVD/VCR was when I first plugged it in, within 10 seconds, the clock set itself.
"Dad? when did IBM make a printer with a built in keyboard? what a cool idea!"
LOL!
Should we start stocking up on cassette tapes? I hear that format is dead too.
<sarcasm>
"Dad? when did IBM make a printer with a built in keyboard? what a cool idea!"
That's another thing that has passed away. When I was a kid any large office(such as telepone company or bank, etc.etc) had the din of IBM typewriters working overtime, and don't forget the bell "ding" to remind the typist that they had to push the bar back.
I would go with just the DVR but I have a few tapes that I will want to transfer over. It really is amazing how the price on these things has come down.
I miss those big album covers, where ne could read the liner notes without the need of a magnifying glass.
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