Jim Bahler, who operates Jim's Comics in Wisconsin, writes about the article I linked to on the slow demise of VHS…
That was a very enjoyable article; quite well written. However, I must take exception to a few of the statements that were made.
Video tapes may be gone from Los Angeles, but here in the midwest, Home Depot and at least one other major chain, one which caters to the rural, farming population, carry VHS tapes. Each store has at least two 4 foot sections of video tapes. But no, I don't buy them. However, I check out the video tapes at Goodwill whenever I'm there. Having an interest in steam trains, I was extremely pleased to buy over 25 VHS tapes last summer for less than one dollar each. There are a lot of "specialty" VHS recordings that will probably never make it to DVD — titles like Nolan Ryan: Feel the Heat, With Love and Respect: A Reunion of the Lombardi Green Bay Packers, and Time Out With Britney Spears. Certainly, there are collectors of these three subjects, among many other subjects which will most likely never see the light of day on DVD. I doubt that VHS players will die as quickly as the article implies. As with vinyl records, there's too much material that's on VHS and not on DVD.
I guess I'm too old to master the "nimble navigation of DVD." With VHS tapes, I could take a tape out of my tape player, watch something else, put the tape back in right where I left off. I can't do that with DVDs — it can be very difficult to figure out which "chapter" I was in the middle of, when I pulled out one DVD to watch another one. Even if I can discern what chapter I was watching, I still have to go forward or backwards to return to the same spot I left off. I find this very time-consuming and a royal pain, and yet the article states, "Fast-forwarding and rewinding to any particular spot was the worst new tech irritant." The article applied this to VHS; I'd say this about DVDs.
With VHS, you could write down the number of feet or the time/mark you stopped at if you wanted to go back to a particular spot, and you could write it on the video cassette label for later reference. Yes, I know VHS tapes are worthless — I went to an auction this summer where I purchased between 2 and 3 thousand VHS tapes that a fellow had recorded from TV shows — a mixture of movies, A&E, History and Discovery Channel material, primarily. Each tape was recorded EP style with commercials eliminated, so there's a lot of programs on each tape. Each tape shows the time/mark as to where one show ends and another begins. I paid a total of $2.00 for all those tapes, so yes, they're worthless. But enjoyable material, nonetheless.
I grant, also, that the quality of any VHS tape is quite inferior to DVD's, and that Blu-ray is better than standard DVD. But the article goes on to conclude that the "days of DVD's (are) numbered (due to) Blu-ray." Well, not necessarily. Articles in the trade magazines have discussed how Sony fought so hard to win the battle for their Blu-ray discs that they have not evolved their players. Toshiba, however, has evolved their DVD players to the point where they are selling overseas a DVD player that allegedly upgrades the picture quality of a standard DVD to full high definition. It's my understanding that these are being sold in limited numbers in the United States, and that they are quite expensive at this time, in the area of one to two thousand dollars. (Much like early video players.) If this is successful, we won't need to pay an extra ten bucks per disc for Blu-ray discs, and we can just enjoy what we've already bought on standard DVD. Gosh, what a thought!
Anyway, many thanks for creating the most enjoyable blog. Keep up the great work, and have a great holiday season!
There are advantages to VHS over DVD…just as Beta was probably a superior format in most ways to VHS, save for the fact that it got out-marketed and went away. There's also a certain advantage to sticking with a format after others have abandoned it. I have a friend who began collecting the old RCA Selectavision laserdiscs after they stopped making the players and the discs for them. For very little money, he got a couple of players (because he knew once one broke, he probably couldn't get it repaired) and a very nice film library. Of course, he can't buy or watch recent movies that way but he doesn't particularly like recent movies.
I long ago came to the conclusion that we are all merely pawns in the Format Game; that, as I've said, all of home video is a massive conspiracy to see how many times they can make me buy Goldfinger. I dunno if I'll go Blu-ray. That's a decision that will probably be made around the time there are things I want that are available only on Blu-ray. (Actually, I already have one. I did an on-camera interview that's only on the Blu-ray release of the 1966 Batman movie and they sent me a copy of it…but I have no Blu-ray player. Yet. Fortunately, I don't care enough about seeing myself to purchase one just for that.)
It's maddening, I know…but if VHS works for you, great. I'm not throwing my player out, and I probably have 300 tapes for which there are no DVD versions. But there are powerful forces out there that want us to abandon the old formats and purchase Goldfinger anew…and I don't know how long I can fight them.