Since the
VHS tapes hit the market about 28 years ago, VHS has played a major role for movie purchases and rentals and the majority of consumers still use them for making recordings today. However, the entertainment stalwart of North American TVs recons that the VHS tape will be killed off by the digital revolution. So far, many manufacturers have stopped making VHS tapes and most of the movie industry, including 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. will phase them out by the end of 2006. Most rental stores have either completely phased out VHS rentals or just keep a small supply.
So far,
80% of Canadian homes have a DVD player. Back in 1999, VHS sales tape revenues exceeded DVD sales revenues by about 4 to 1. Now this is the other way around, by a factor of close to 12 to 1. According to Newman, DVD sales started off slowly due to playability issues with certain players, discs being easily scratched as well as the player's high pricing, however these issues have been dealt with since then.
As the entertainment industry is preparing for the next generation of optical discs (HD DVD and Blu-ray) to be launched next year, they are now anxious to do away with VHS altogether. However, while these next generation discs promise better picture & sound quality over the current DVD generation, the initial battle between the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats may hinder sales, since it was not until the battle between VHS and Betamax had ended that the popularity of video tapes skyrocketed.
|
After 28 years, manufacturers have decided to stop making the tapes. By the end of 2006, companies within the home-video industry will phase out VHS technology, leaving only DVDs as the way in which people can buy or rent a movie. Nearly two decades ago, VHS was battling the Betamax format. VHS won, but next year, a new king of the TV room will have to be crowned. It's a familiar story in consumer electronics - the past few decades have witnessed the eclipse of vinyl LPs, cassette tapes, floppy discs and photographic film. The full source article can be read here. |
Even though the VHS tape may have suffered from picture
quality issues, it is interesting to see how long this format has been running
for, just like the
cassette tape. Pretty much all other media such as 5.25 floppy disks, backup tapes, 8-track, etc. has been obsolete for many years now.
It will be interesting to see how long the DVD format
will run for before it becomes obsolete. On the other hand, it will likely
take a much longer period for consumers to migrate over to HD DVD or Blu-ray
compared with the migration from VHS to DVD. The first issue will
obviously be the battle between the formats, unless something is done about it
soon. Next, very
few households have a HDTV set: When consumers migrated from VHS to DVD, they could see a clear difference on pretty much any TV, however in order to see much of a benefit of moving from DVD to HD DVD, Blu-ray or any other high definition disc, they will need a HDTV set.
DVD recorders on the other hand may have a fairly short lifecycle, especially if HD DVD or Blu-ray recorders take off well at the start and don't cost much more than the players. Chances are that when DVD recorders finally take over video recorders, Blu-ray and/or HD DVD players may be at their height.
Source: Canada.com - Technology
