For Whom The Bell Tolls?...VHS, that's who!
 

It's inevitable. The price of DVD players is quickly getting on par with VHS decks. I've personally seen DVD-RW's at the dollar store, right next to the 2(6)-hour VHS tapes. Spindles of 50 discs for less than that can't be far behind. DVD recordable decks are set to plummet in price, as well - already crossing the magic $99.99 barrier.

Now the U.S.'s largest and 2nd largest retailers will stop selling movies on VHS by early next year:

http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/13/news...0/walmart_vhs/

I welcome the change for the durability, random access and flexibility that discs offer, but I'll never get used to MPEG artifacting. A VHS tape recorded in 6-hour mode was often watchable, but I can't say the same for a low-bitrate DVD.

I apologize if this post is more opinion than hard news, but I'm curious about your opinions on the imminent demise of a dominant delivery medium.

Although I almost never watch VHS anymore, I have to agree with you that a VHS with 6 hours of recording was still watchable, where with DVD, if you record 4 hours, the image is just unbearable.

And somewhere I still feel for all the people that don't have DVD... They are forced too, in some ways, but I understand, they can't keeeeep making them for those few, but still...

The downside is, I often throw a junk tape in to catch a show for my wife, or myself. You just can't do that with a DVD.

You can't? I thought there were DVD recorders out there that function just like VCRs?

I know they had DVD recorders, but they rewrite too? Hmmm...

Oh yes they rewrite. You can use DVD+-RW to write a number of times.
And some of them even have hard drives.
The thing is DVD recorders are still expensive.

True, but easily done with a TIVO or other hard-drive based PVR. Our cable company made available a Motorola DCT6208 box when they began to deliver HD channels and it records an incredible amount of programming before the drive fills up. I think I've got about a 20 hour backlog of Discovery Channel programs and CSI reruns waiting for me to watch and it's still only about 40% full.

My wife is an avid soap fan, and she has about three shows that she routinely records on VHS, and it was a hassle cycling tapes, etc., until I picked up a pany HDD DVR. We only have standard cable (no Tivo), and no cable box. But access to TVGuide online provides one button scheduling. Now she browses her shows using a DVD like menu/navigation structure (video crouton's etc). Never missing a beat, in fact skimming through boring parts (uh, they're all boring to me) and commercials. Which saves me the hassle of dealing with VHS tapes altogether. I have since moved my Sony VHS player to my edit station for those occassional times where I need VHS (yup, some of my friends and relatives are still using them).

The unit also has a DVD-ram recorder, but image quality and speed is no match for hard drive recording. But it's nice to create an archival copy of interesting shows, etc using the highest rez that'll fit.

Pete

Blu-ray disks
 

I cant wait for the blu-ray tech to come out. 25 gig single layered and 50 gig dual layered disks. It will be expensive at first though, but will go down within 2 years or so. You'll be able to make one crazy game/movie on something like that, not to mention storage.