Just use a BFH:
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.
Long Live the DVD!!!
All Hail Tivo!!
Isn't the government going to issue HDTV stamps? :-)
My kids didn't even have plug in phones, so when the power goes out, they're D E A D at home.
Me too!!! I am not a fan of DVDs. Much prefer the primative myself!!....
Where I live cellphone signal is iffy at best. Its a good plan to have at least one of the old phones around somewhere.
Regarding the longevity of discs, I have read that there is a major difference between prerecorded commercial releases and home recorded discs. The commercial ones have the encoding molded into the medium and are essentially permanent. The home recorded ones use a process with a laser to burn a pattern into a dye substrate in the disc, in some formats that process is reversible and repeatable. The home versions are reported to have life span of around five years before they start to degrade. Maybe a techie Freeper can expand on my explanation.
I have one of those. When I got a new Mac, I demoted the old one to the entertainment center. I have some movies ripped from DVD, but use it mostly to record and save or share stuff I've recorded on the DVR.
But it's true, the RIAA/MPAA/TV industry are rabidly fighting this trend and I don't have a lot of confidence in our representatives resisting them.
I have more confidence in technology in this instance than I do in the law. The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Eventually, the RIAA will wise up and treat movies the way the MPAA treats music -- you can buy a download and keep it forever, or you can "rent" a download that won't run after a limited time or after you drop your subscription to a service like the new Napster. Someone will crack the DRM protection, like iTunes has already been cracked, but most folks won't bother with it.
In the early days of VHS, when movies cost $100 per, a lot of folks went to the effort to copy tapes, even buying devices to disable Macrovision. When movies got cheaper, most folks stopped bothering. The industry should learn from its own example.
I dumped my Beta and tapes last year. I still have the VHS around to play some of my old home movies and a few documentaries.
But now that I think of it, I haven't pulled it out in a couple of years.
Beta sacrificed time for quality. By the time they offered a "low quality" mode that actually gave you the same quality as VHS and MORE time on a smaller tape, it was too late, and more expensive.
I used to sell both formats back in the late 70's. People wanted the same format as their friends, end of story. It is why people used to compare Apple computers to Beta. But since you can run windows on a Mac now, and you get more for the higher price, it looks like the Apple machines have successfully carved out, at the very least, a "permanent" niche.
Hmmm. That's an interesting possibility. I think downloads are the next wave, but jump drives could catch on for folks who don't have a fast enough connection or don't want to wait that long. You could tote your drive to Blockbuster to download a movie, or even buy movies on read-only drives. The biggest hurdle is going to be the introduction of consumer devices that can play them back, because not everyone is ready for a computer in the entertainment center.
I still have mine...it's in the garage; of course I only use the radio portion.
Years ago, I hit paydirt when a pal who was the chief accountant for Warner Records gave me cases and cases of 8 track recordings, as they were being phased out.
I'm not of that generation, but music has gotten there for me. When i got a new Mac about five years ago, I shuffled my CDs through, inserting the next one as each one finished, ripping in the background while I did other stuff. It took about two weeks, but when I was done, I had my entire collection on the hard drive. Now the CDs live in a binder, the sleeves and jewel cases in a box in the attic, and I rarely look at either. They're backups.
Just use a BFH:
VHS will survive for years via e-bay. I think you can still find 8-tracks there, too.
Finding a working VCR may get difficult after 10 years or so.
...and gone with the record albums are all the rituals. The way you only handled the albums at the edges, the organizing the albums, thumbing through albums at a friend's house to get a read on their personality, cleaning them, etc. etc.
"Can you tell me how to stop the blinking 12:00 on the face of my VCR?"
That is a feature, not an option. It cannot be changed, ever. Many the delightful hours I've spent watching it, blink on, blink off, blink on, blink off.
I still have mine...it's in the garage; of course I only use the radio portion.
In my storage barn I still have a Panasonic 8-track player/recorder deck. I assume it still works, but my 8-track tapes disappeared years ago!
***Is that at the same store where you bought your 4 yards of calico,***
Wrapped around 25 pounds of flour no less!
I still use VHS all the time....
Then again, I haven't upgraded to the DVD Recorder.
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