LA Times article says VHS is winding down and predicts DVD will be obsolete in 3-4 years. (Blu-ray, CDs)
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Pop culture is finally hitting the eject button on the VHS tape, the once-ubiquitous home-video format that will finish this month as a creaky ghost of Christmas past.
"It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt," said Kugler, 34, a Burbank businessman.
VHS has pretty much been dead for the last 10 years. they don't even make any standalone players anymore, last one went out of production a few months back. The only thing they are making now is combination units.
DVD however will still be with us for many, many, many years. First of all many households don't even have a HD television so the benefits of Blu-Ray are irrelevant. Secondly those with HD are finding their DVD's play just fine and with a decent upscaling player look fantastic. On smaller TV's a BR and DVD will almost look identical when viewed at a viewing distance. Not the equivalent of BR but nonetheless "good enough" for average folks. Joe six-pack is going to be very reluctant to replace the DVD collection that he already owns with a much more expensive format for such little benefit.
Blu-ray I suspect will garner a small following but will never achieve any where near the success VHS or DVD enjoyed. It's an intermediate format that will die and probably the last format that will be released on optical disc.
The future is in on-demand and direct downloads. Possibly flash in a few years once it comes down in price enough.
Kinda depends on what format Hollywood wants to go with. If they are going Blu-Ray, then for darn sure, they are going to Blu-Ray. I just eliminate the middle man, and just buy movies from Pay Per View.
I am sure the VHS player is still popular in many 3rd world countries where most people can't afford to buy a DVD player let alone a Blu-Ray player.
Actually, I think VHS is an inherently more expensive format than DVDs. In the 1990's, the Chinese came out with the VCD format (CD with MPEG-1 video recorded on it instead of audio); VCD players and discs were cheaper to produce than their tape equivalents. DVDs are just an updated version of VCDs, with greater pit density and MPEG-2 rather than MPEG-1 (and Blu-Ray is an updated version of the DVD format).
What does the cheapest DVD player in stores cost? Like $29.99? I don't remember any VCR's under $49.
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