Not the most controversial topic in the world, but perhaps worthy of some debate.

For those of you who know a lot more than I do (I've never even seen a DVD player), do you think that videotapes will go the way of the 8-track tape?

Videos are already becoming obsolete. i dont even have a VHS player, and i can get about anything short of home recordings on DVD.

I dont know how long it will take them to totally die, mostly because they are easy to record on. but the DVD is superior in a lot of ways and is becoming very affordable for about anyone.



Quane

I think that VHS won't become totally extinct but it's quanity & usefullness will be decreased drastically.

For example, instead of using a regular video camera, people use digital cameras that use floppy disks. There is one use for VHS gone.

Also, the recording on a DVD is slowly coming into the picture, and until then, VHS will still be used to record stuff. That is what is keeping it from becoming extinct

Movies still come in VHS because there are not many who can afford DVD players. That is also what is stopping the VHS tape from becoming extinct

What do you mean people can't afford DVD player. Look 69.00 for a DVD player
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product_lis...3A62055%3A95987
and VCR are 46.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product_lis...irect_query=VCR
Atleast one good thing is that Disney is forced to rerelease all the old movies.

Already, DVD rentals surpass VHS rentals. So, yes, VHS is dying. VHS probably won't go the way of 8 tracks, but probably go the way of vinyl records.

vhs will only die when people can record shows and such to disc (and with the technology out there, it shouldn't be long) my personal favorite DVD player is the PS2. you can watch movies AND play games.

It is just like CD vs Tapes in the music industry. VHS will be around for about 10 more years but year after year it will be harder to find new movies, DVD recorders will become more prevelant, and everyone will have digital camcorders.

Think about the current state of the US economy for a minute then get back to me. There are people who are on or are A: Fixed incomes B: Unemployed and falling income or C: dirt poor

DVDs are useless as rentals. In five years or so most people will have enough personal experience to realize this. I worked nights for a friend of mine when he opened a video shop and couldn't hire any kids in time to keep the store open during the first couple months. After 2-3 rentals most dvds are scratched. After about 20 rentals action scenes like the fights in Gladiator or the opening scene to saving private ryan are totally unviewable.

As a medium they're simply too fragile for and sort of rental setup. Disney has these new disposable DVDs that ruin themselves after 3 days or so. But thats so wasteful it sickens me. There is so much excess fiber optics in the ground that I'm pretty sure you'll just "rent" all your movie like you do with pay-per-view now. Except they will have libraries in their servers. Like that Qwest commercial in the desert.

I hate DVD's as rentals. I rented Patriot Games with Harrison Ford and disc was scratched and the movie was unwatchable.

But i think they have something that can cure that

I've heard all of these stories about bad DVD rentals elsewhere, but I've had a different experience. I haven't been to a video store since I signed up with Netflix, and by now I've watched several dozen movies on DVD from there. Maybe half a dozen had some sort of glitch. Half of those were fixed by taking the DVD out and cleaning it with a soft cloth. The others could either be worked around by switching to a different format (widescreen vs. fullscreen) for that section, or were of such short duration that it just didn't matter. Defects have never seriously affected my ability to watch and enjoy a movie on DVD.

Personally, I think DVD or some derivative (e.g. Blu-Ray, SFFO) will totally supplant videotapes. The higher capacity and random access are just too much of an improvement to pass up. I'm actually a little surprised that there isn't a robust market in devices with a VCR-like interface but DVD-R as the recording media. I know a few geeks who've cooked up their own versions of such things, but I haven't seen one for the mass market yet.

That was just to show there is little difference between VHS and DVD price wise. And for all three of those group usually entertainment is the first thing to go.
Yes there is alot of fiber but it all runs in the same place. It's too expensive for the telcos and the other communication companies to run fiber to the house. Then most people wouldn't even be able to afford the FOT to terminate the signal and convert it back to electrical signals. I think Tivo is going to be as good as it gets for a while.
And this is for unabomber, its the PSX or PS2.5, it has everything the PS2 has plus a tivo and more.
http://us.playstation.com/news/LatestNews/2003_06_13_8.asp

A nice thought, but the reason you still see vinyl is that to many audiophiles believe it has the best sound quality of any type of audio media. The reason records or LP's fell bell the wayside was not the quality but the fact that it wasn't portable and tapes were. A tape could be in your car you could carry a boombox and so on and so forth.

DVD's represent a higher quality in movies not a lesser quality.

Monty

DVD's do require the user to exercise care when handling the disc as damage can be caused rather easily by mishandling.

As a result I can understand the frustrations rental customers encounter when renting a DVD that is in questionable condition.

However the DVD format despite the drawbacks described above seems to be killing off the VHS format, at least in the studio movie rental/purchase market.

If the DVD format itself doesn't finish off the VHS tape I suspect the growing technology of video on demand will.

Most any title available on DVD is now available through this distribution channel at competitive prices and doesn't require the customer to leave their home to view a DVD quality movie.

I generally purchase any DVD that interests me rather than rent it which seemed like a good enough idea at first but what I've realized is unless I get a blizzard that keeps me at home for about a week the collection is about useless.

What I would really like to see happen is video on demand offer movies at the same time they are making their first run in the theater. I'd likely be willing to pay 15-20 bucks to watch a newly released movie in the comfort of my home rather than a theater.

Ive never actually rented a dodgy DVD, and we (as in me and the girlfriend) get 7 free rentals a week (and by golly do we use them!). From personal experience VHS is more unreliable. I have to clean my VCR with spirits every so often as tapes get stuck in it and chewed up, yet all my DVDs and my Playstation 2 work perfectly and have never faltered.

However I have found the cheaper DVD players seem to ware more easily, my parents DVD player cost £60 last christmas and already DVDs are jumping and freezing on it, when they play perfectly on mine. As with CDs, I think its more a case of the quality of the hardware than the fragility of the software that is the problem.

I'm not impressed with the idea of renting DVD due to about half the rentals not working. Then we have to exchange them for VHS.

The real wave of the future is when broadband comes to everyone's houses and we can watch the MPEG stuff over the web. But now the bitrates are too slow.

Yeah, I see wireless in-home networks and HDTVs on the walls. Video rental outfits won't be around in brick-mortars. Movies will be shot and delivered without any physical media except memory chips.

So DVD is an intermediate medium.

We own a lot of VHS tapes which we rarely watch, so we mostly rely on renting the new releases that we want to watch anymore. We watched as the shelf space at the Video rental went from about 5% DVD to nearly 50% DVD. (and they can put more DVDs in the same shelf space) We made the decision to purchase a DVD player.

The industry puts more information on a DVD than on the same VHS copy of a movie; such as a choice of formats, directors notes, the ability to watch the movie without fast forwarding through umpteen trailers, etc. Ergo, if I have a choice of format when I rent a film, I always opt for the DVD. We've purchased a few films since buying the DVD player, and those have all been in the DVD format. My suspicion is that they can record a DVD in less time, more accurately, and at a lower cost. The only reason the film industry is still producing VHS tapes has to be consumer demand, and they are doing an excellent job of creating a consumer demand for the DVD format over the VHS format.

I am retired, living on a fixed income. PE is unemployed at the moment.

I notice that most new computers that are advertised have DVD-RW capability. I suspect that the ability to record your own DVDs will soon be nearly as common as the ability to record on a VHS. Currently, I am connected to the Internet via DSL (telephone) line. At the time I made the decision, the cost of getting Internet over the Cable TV line was comparable, but I already had a telephone line to the back of the computer. Since then, I have noted with interest that I can get cable adapters that allow me to watch television on my computer. I can foresee the day that I will sit at my next computer, note from the TV guide on my home screen that there is a program I want to watch, slip a blank disk in the DVD-RW, and record the program in background to watch later.

I can still purchase an LP at an antique shop, but I would have no clue where to shop for a record player. If I were asked to gamble on whether VHS or DVD will be the dominant technology a decade from now, I would say the DVD hands down. If you were to ask me what will be the dominant audio or home movie technology in two decades, I would tell you that I suspect it hasn't been invented yet.

Until DVD's are presented in a recordable format, they aren't going to convince me that they are the next big thing. That's a big reason I've confined my DVD viewing to the PlayStation 2 instead of buying a stand-alone unit.

Over the weekend I picked up Chicago and Road to Perdition on VHS and The Ring on DVD. I didn't see a noticeable difference in picture quality between the two formats. The DVD has the capability for a few more bells and whistles such as the movie outtakes, trailers, directors commentary and the other stuff, but I look at it as ornaments on a Christmas tree.

Seeing how The Ring didn't move me the extras of the DVD became irrelevant. But I don't feel compelled to seek out the DVD of Chicago just for a few deleted scenes.

For me the jury is still out on DVD vs. VHS. Unfortunately, the choice is being for me by the fact that the VHS format is being phased out.

Right now you can buy a DVD-R for your TV. Yes they are expensive right now how the economy is but they are out there. As well as they have only been available for TV's for a year now so the price will come down just like everything does when more manufactures get into the market making DVD-R and see a demand for it.


http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=cat03021&type=category

I'm a convert to DVDs. For about ten years now I've been increasingly buying sell-through movies rather than renting them.

I'm one of the people who, if they like a movie, want to see it several times, rather than just once, so it makes more sense for me to buy a film and watch it multiple times rather than rent it.

About five years ago I upgrade my TV to a big flat-screen tube TV. Plasma and LCD screens were still prohibitively expensive, and the projection TVs (which at that time were the only ones with bigger screens than the one I bought) were pretty questionable, performance-wise (not very bright or contrasty, with a narrow viewing angle).

When I got this TV home and started watching my old VHS collection on it, I noticed how poor the quality was on some of the older movies in my collection, of my current favourites (which I watched more often). Some of the tapes were almost ten years old, and just playing them caused the quality to fall off, unlike vinyl music (a good quality turntable and a careful owner, and they can last a lifetime) or laser-read discs (CDs, DVDs, LaserDiscs).

So after about a year, I bought a DVD player. This was three or four years ago, so I was a pretty early adopter, and the players were still quite expensive. Now, I've more or less given up on VHS as a sell-through medium. I've replaced most of my old VHS collection, and considerably extended it (I used to have about 200 movies on VHS, and now I've got maybe 50 left, while I've built a collection of 300+ DVDs).

Rentals on DVD are more or less pointless, because the distributors no longer delay the sell-through release some time after rentals begin - so there's no longer any first run on rentals. And DVD prices have come down enough here that an evenings DVD rental costs almost half what it costs to buy and keep forever, so it makes no fiscal sense either.

And, needless to say, films I watch most often are as crisp in both sound and vision as they were the day I bought them, where VHS versions would be starting to look grainy and sound crackly (stereo sound seems to be the first thing to go, and in any case, the kind of sound quality on DVD has never been matched on VHS).

I still use my VHS recorder to catch TV programmes that I would otherwise miss, and as I now have digital cable (bought for the broadband internet that comes with it), the quality is pretty good - at least for things that I'm only likely to want to watch once. Even for my favourite shows - The Sopranos, The Shield, Phoenix Nights - the higher quality and, especially, the extra features that come with the DVD release make it worth waiting to buy an entire season rather than home tape a bunch of VHS tapes, complete with commercials and ever-present continuity announcements over intro and outro titles. If for no other reason, I'm not planning to upgrade to DVDR any time soon, except maybe as a PC peripheral for data storage.

At one point I was hopeful for digital video tape (the kind many camcorders use), but any tape medium is slower to skim through than a disc - after the third episode in a marathon social Sopranos session, the opening titles get a little, er, dull.

Julian, I agree completely.

I too was an early adopter of DVD's, though my player was originally in my computer. I buy a lot of DVDs now, used from the "rental" stores. I have only had to take one back because it wouldn't play in either the pc or the unit in the living room.

Additionally, while the "extras" that come on DVD are not an attraction for some, I enjoy the inteviews, special effects explanations, and the like. It's like the difference between a basic cd, and one with well written liner notes, lyrics booklet, etc.

We still have our vhs machine as well, for taping shows that we might miss while we're away from home, and it's fine for that, but we've already moved out home movies and such to DVD or VCD formats as well.

Well I like DVDs

I guess it because Im a very material person and I love to collect. Seeing as movies are one of my top passions, DVDs are a godsend. I love organising my little collection and adding to it every now and again, sometimes just looking at it is as satisfying as watching special features and whatnot. But then im very strange.

Its also why I fear what the future may hold. A lot of my friends are happier having all their music, movie and game collections stored digitally on computer. Obviously a lot have that has been gotten illegally, but already bands are selling their music online only. When connections get faster and computers simpler (perhaps even a settop box that could download), maybe it will be the beginning of the end for the maerial collectors. I hope not, as even though I reckon most CDs, DVDs, games and books (to a lesser extent) etc are overpriced taking into acount how much they cost to produce and manufacture, I would still happily invest all my disposable income in them

Yeah. In fact, I'm guessing that you too feel cheated when you find out that the "extras" on a DVD are "interactive menus and scene access". Jeez, don't strain yourselves, guys...

Lol! Im not alone then

*burns guilty DVDs*

Im struggling to think of what a DVD with no special features actually entails. No scene access? No menus? Do you have to spin the DVD manually?

LOL, Julian, that is the case sometimes, but in a lot of cases, for me at least, there have been a lot of interesting add-ons.

For "The Perfect Storm", for instance, there were featurettes that showed how they did the special effects for the storm, and creating the "storm" in a sound stage. Interviews with the book author, and some of the actual people portrayed in the movie, etc. I found it interesting. Same with material included with the Lord of the Rings movies.

Anyway, with the price of DVD-R formats coming down, and the DVRs coming down in price too, it may not be too long before you copy your digital camcorder material to your tivo, and then burn it all to a DVD for permanent storage. If you're any good at editing at all, you could do some pretty sophisticated home movies or short films in the next 5 years or so, and relatively cheaply.

Actually, I can tell everbody here that DVD is here to stay but I think most everybody knew that. The interesting progression that will come next will be HiDefinition. Eventually it will be the standard for America and Europe and the rest of the world in time. So people will have to have a HiDef TV and HiDef DVD player, don't worry about the discs though, they can be back converted while they play in the system so your DVD's won't be obsolete. That will last ten to fifteen years and the next format that will follow will be MiniDisk, although in my opinion the MiniDisk will only last very shortly intermixed with regular DVD (alla it's grandfather the LaserDisc) and then Streaming Video Systems will begin popping up, once they can be regulated and source sold... then we'll be able to watch, whatever we want, whenever we want.

Actually, JL, HD-DVD isn't compatible with standard DVD. It may be possible to eventually build a player that will handle both, but not at the present, because the laser frequencies are different, as is the amount of info on each disk.

That said, I just saw an article on this on Wired.com today, and inexpensive HD-DVD may be here sooner than we think:


I don't know about the mini-disk format. Seems there would have to be a heck of a technical breakthrough to get all of the information for a full length HD-DVD format onto one of those. I think the Hi-Speed streaming video will probably advance fast enough that it will be moot anyway. There are already a couple of companies experimenting with this, and making money at it.

Actually Niteguy,

I said that HiDef was the next step, not the currernt. As for the Wired Article. They were way off base on many points, WMV might be a good in-between for people who can't wait for HiDef, but it will never be a norm. As it is now, the US only alots for one Primary standard. Currently that standard is NTSC which runs at 525 lines resolution and most of the rest of the world runs at PAL, 625 lines resolution. So it will be the same in the future, HiDef has been choosen to be the final standard for at least the next long, long while. Even Movie theaters will be on HiDef, as their movies will broadcast feeds from satellites into the theaters, this technology already exists. WMV won't last long. If anything, it's Microsofts first attempt at real HD technology.

As for MiniDiscs. We already have MiniDiscs that hold enough info for a movie

I think we are talking about two different things here, JL.

If you mean that "HiDef" is coming as a new "worldwide" standard of some kind for actual TV transmission, You could be right, I don't know.

Talking about HD-DVD though is something else entirely. here we are talking about the actual encoding program of the movie on the DVD disk, and how much additional info that disc is going to be able to hold. In that regard, there is no standard yet. From the Wired article:



Current DVD's can only hold 4.7GB of info. Any one of the three compression systems for HD-DVD will allow about 30GB of info per disc. But these compression routines have nothing to do with the scan-rate of the TV's themselves. That can be done for NTSC or PAL, or as it's done now for standard DVDs and VCRs to be able to display properly on the TV's display. That hasn't changed. I can still hook up a standard VCR to a Hi-Definition TV, and it will play ok.

So, for home use of HD-DVD, the decoding program may still be one of the three competing types listed. It won't have an effect on how it's eventually transmitted to the screen. But Microsoft, with Samsung already having a player in pre-production, may have a jump on the other two competing groups.

Also, in looking up "HiDef" it appears that this is a special digital camera and projection system currently in use in both movies and TV, for for broadcast and theatrical release in specially adapted theaters. But here, we are talking about the same thing. From the Hidef.com website:


So, if all HDTVs eventually have to be on one standard, rather than PAL or NTSC, I can see where you're coming from. But again, the encoding for the movies or shows for HD-DVD, is something else entirely. In other words, you were talking hardware, I was talking software. Sorry for any confusion.

DVD is replacing VHS. There is no need for any more evidence than to go to the local video rental shop.

I am set up for HDTV. I watch all the local stations on their digital signal channel. If you have not seen Monday Night Football this way, you are missing out.

All three formats, 480p, 720p, and 1080i are being used over the airways. ABC's 1080i format is looking the best but that may be due to my hardware. DVD's are 720P ?? DVD's do look better than VHS, easily, when you have the right monitor. However, 1080i over the air looks better than DVD on my set-up.

CBS has a majority of its primetime shows in HDTV now. The other networks are moving in this direction. Most sports are still in NTSC. All of the baseball playoffs have been in NTSC. It is curious that the baseball playoffs are in NTSC while a concurrent college game this past Saturday was in HDTV. Sports are so much better in HDTV.

Whenever you get your next television, go the HDTV route. It will improve your DVD watching and there is enough HDTV over the air to justify it. The cost is not prohibitive. The improved video is significant. Definitely get a 16:9 monitor.

DVDs are 480i through the composite or S-Video outputs, a progressive-scan player can output 480p through component or RGB outputs. VHS is 240i. There are experimental Blu-Ray DVD players that can output 720p.

One BIG difference with current DVDs besides better picture quality is their ability to output Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 sound to a compatible Home theater audio system.