We already gave VHS
a proper burial after JVC became the last firm to shut the door on VHS player production, but there was still one nail in the coffin that wasn't quite hammered shut. Today, it all ends. The last notable distributor of
VHS films -- Distribution Video Audio out of Palm Harbor, Florida -- has shipped its final truckload of tapes, probably to a small town library or a mom 'n pop shop in a place you'll never hear of. According to co-owner Ryan J. Kugler: "It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt." An unceremonious way to exit, sure, but we have a sneaking suspicion that it'll one day be able to say it
made it longer than practically every other physical film format that succeeded it. Here's one last tear for the format that was -- now, time to plan a trip to the local flea market.
[Via
CNET]
posted Dec 23rd 2008 2:10AM
So sad... an end of an era.
Dude, the era ended long ago. But yeah still sort of sad...
And there goes the last medium that had no DRM on it. *sigh*
VHS cassettes did have DRM... I think it was called macrovision ... to prevent home copying.
@ Aguiluz
actuialy your wrong it was called "macrovision vhs"
o and ashes to ashes dust to dust
Goodnight sweet prince - 1976-2008
***Sigh***
Sad indeed.
But if no one wants that copy of Better Off Dead, I'll take it.
Well I hope they don't stop selling DVD players cause I've got almost as many VHS Porn Tapes as I do Gigabytes of Porn on removable HDD's.
True story -- a friend of mine was in a Rogers video. A couple came in, probably around 40 years old. They wandered around for a while until the man finally blurted out loudly "These are all DVD"?! Then they left.
So I guess there are still plenty of people out there still holding out on buying a DVD player. The mind boggles.
For some reason this nearly made me feel a little sad at First. Then i remembered dvd's.
same here, I also remembered how crap VHS's were....
For those who can't remember: VHS tapes were so bad that I never owned a VHS set, even in the absence of any competition. That's how bad it was.
how many people have heard people refer to VCRs as VHS players? i think it's funny that people have forgotten the proper name (except for when it's in a joke about puerto ricans).
VHS tapes may have been technically inferior to DVDs in just about every way, but man, I loved the feeling of shoving one of those big plastic tapes into the machine and hearing whirr to life. Discs just aren't the same.
Rewritability and durability were pluses too. I wish today's formats could be piled on the floor without care and/or erased to make way for something better. AOL CDs would have been so much cooler.
So at this rate, DVD's will be phased out 2-3 years AFTER the launch of Blu-ray's successor (mass digital distribution?)
technically no, VHS was phased out years ago, there was just a small percentage of people who still used VHS which is funny because in small towns far from a metropolis I will still see NEW movies on VHS in gas stations and what not. but it really depends on your definition of phased out. id say VHS was phased out when the major retailers stopped selling VHS, but someone else might say it was "phased" out when this no name company was the LAST company in the world to finally shut down VHS production.
Wrong!. Blu Ray has no known successor, don't start this Digital Distribution crap just yet I will never succumb to it... A Blu Ray is thinner than any HD or any SSD and is able to hold just about the same as any SSD, and yes i do know about the 512gb SSD but don't forget the 'X' layered 400GB Pioneer Blu Ray. Oh and Disc's have Light scribe...
Then after 2K (1080 x 1920) blu-ray, what would they called for a better HD? What resolution would be next? 4K? 6K? 8K?
What is the resolution of real life? We'll just keep forever trying to attain that limit.
I heard that the eye is 576 megapixels (from deviantart lol)
@soulsaber
i would beleive you, but you ended your sentence in lol. really, why would you laugh at 576 megapixels.
It's actually weird that when I look at a 1080p screen it looks better than real life.
@Paris
Have you ever thought about using glasses?
Thats because your looking for the Detail in it, in real life you just look and dont take it all in, when ur looking at a tv, your not just looking, your examining the image for quality.
I believe it was Wikipedia, but possibly some other site, that told me the eye works much different from a camera, and has no "refresh rate" or "resolution". Every photon that enters is, as I understand, processed instantly.
Though there's still the question "what resolution/refresh rate would be completely indistinguishable from reality by the naked eye?", so the point is not completely moot.
As far as most movies filmed on 35mm 1920 x1080 is more than adequate I think.
Limits of the human eye is 74 Megapixels...
just playing Soulsaber was right its 576 Megapixels but his lol was probably how impossible it is to reach with todays technology...
So long VHS, I salute you for your many years of service!
no more of all thi sgreat VHS porn... well back to Betamax
I have no idea why I'm sentimental about VHS. I love DVD, and I will probably switch over to blu-ray in the near future. To be honest, I don't even have a VHS player or any tapes anymore... but this still makes me a little sad.
I still have a stack of about 40 VHS tapes that I've been carting around with me for the last 3 moves. I also have a VHS/DVD combo player to watch them, even though it's been over a year since I popped one in.
Aw, RIP, VHS.
LOLWTFBBQJK
...Sorry, I just felt like I needed more acronyms.
Will the age old question of how to adjust the clock on VCR ever be answered???
You still have one of those old machines with numerous knobs and levers? You need to upgrade. Most of the new ones set themselves. That or take a page out of automotive repair and take a piece of duct tape and cover up the blinking "12:00."
I think DVDs have another 3-4 years.
Is that you're prediction when Hollywood will stop putting out movies of even poor quality? Because I can't even remember the last time I went to the theater to see a movie I was only remotely interested in.
VHS is alive and well and going into full production next year
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2008/12/16/new-croatian-vhs-assault-rifle/
;)
Haha, that's what I thought of too.
Haha, I thought the link was about a rifle made from vhs:s.
That would be totally awesome.
Oh snap Real genius FTW also loving the monty python
I wonder if their is a community out there that sees VHS's as being the epitome of video quality, akin to the vinyl crowd in the audiophile community.
That's not even remotely analogous.
See what I did there?
+1 for you, Robot. Witty comments that are actually witty are a rarity around these parts.
-1 for Robot for saying "See what I did there?" instead of letting someone else say "I see what you did there!"
No, the epitome of video quality is 70-mm film (not exactly video, but beats video several times over and over, and still beats Blu-ray in terms of visual resolution which is in terms of grains and not pixels)
damn! what took so long? there were still people buying VHS tapes up to now, WTF!
Japan hell thay still use beta max and lazier disk hell thay probably still have HD-DVD @_@
They never really used VHS casettes, they mostly had VCD players.
And what the hell is a lazier disk? The one that just sits there collecting dust?
Engadget manages to slip Real Genius into another unrelated article picture.
Great job, keep it up!
That movie sure is well remembered for a throwaway summer comedy. I remember Ebert didn't even review it, he reviewed "My Real Weird Science Project" ,which was an amalgam of the three dumb teen movies released that summer, Weird Science, Real Genius and My Science Project (the weakest of the 3 and the one least remembered).
Sir, let me take this moment to compliment you on your fashion sense, particularly your slippers.
Say it ain't so...
Merry Christmas!
Speaking of old film.. look what I made my parents for Christmas...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XO_D6m4mkQ
cool
Damn, i still have 40 VHS tapes and my VCR is dead :(
Even my dad who is still living in the stone age (no computer or internet) has switched to DVDs last year.
My dad has over 200 VHS tapes, that he still watches from time to time. He also has a huge stash of old porn. I may buy a VCR off ebay just for the old porn, I like em' better for some reason. The only problem with jerkin it to porn stars from the 70's & 80's is that they are either grandmothers now or dead.
it's like masturbating in a time machine.
you do realize there are tons of DVDR-VHS combo decks out there that you can convert your VHS to DVDs with?
Not if the VHS tapes have Macrovision. Those DVD-R/VHS decks can still detect Macrovision and prevent a Macrovision-ed VHS from being burned into a DVD-R, much less into a DVD-RW.
I kinda miss VHS, It's the only format which you can record, view, and erase immediately without any encoding or decoding.
We also get 480i/576i video without any compression artifacts.
VHS wasn't 480 by 640 it was like 320 by 480 and of course their weren't any compression artifacts it was an analogy format; and to get all the other stuff you mentioned all you need is a t.v. tuner/capture card in your computer. But anyway yea good bye VHS I'll miss puting you into my little car shaped rewinder.
I know that it isn't 640 by 480 that's why I said 480i and not 480p!
Also, even if you had a TV Tuner/Capture card, you'll still need to encode if you don't want a 1 minute video that takes up 2GB.
@Link2877: you can still buy that chinese DVD rewinder ;)
dude 480i is 640x480. Its just interlaced instead of progressive.
Link's right. VHS on a good day may have 300 horizontal lines. S-VHS was slightly better, but still lousy.
In the 1980s, the best pictures were, in order, C Band satellite, LaserDisk (both used FM modulation and digital audio), off air (if you had a good antenna and lived close to the transmitter), cable TV (if they had a clue), Super Beta, S-VHS, normal Beta, normal VHS, RCA select-o-vision, Fisher Price Camcorder (the one that used metal oxide audio cassettes).
Look into DV.
It has all the attributes you speak of and is also editable on a hard disk if you'd like since it is digital (the compression is trivial so it is done on the fly in the recorder).
Protip: When looking at any two number (AxB) resolution, take the smaller number, then apply the scan type to the end, now you have your screen definition!
Its funny HD DVD made it to the grave before VHS did. How pathetic HD DVD is.
how pathetic HD DVD *was*
Make no mistake, HDDVD wasn't killed due to poor quality, it was killed due to Sony's business alliances, just like how Betamax was killed back in the 80s despite being better quality than VHS(higher price didn't help either).
If HDDVD was still around, it would have been able to provide cheaper HD discs since the licensing fees were cheaper than Blu ray's.
Glad you're so quick to celebrate business losing competition and any need to drive down prices.
I bought a hd dvd player the other day:)
dirt cheap and hd dvd's i'm finding for less than 5£!
So when are the blu-ray recorders coming to the US?
I actually saw a commercial on TV earlier this month for something that came on VHS tape. I couldn't believe it, I was in such shock that I cant remember what the product was. Anyone else seen it?
Barely legal 2 ?
It was an AARP commercial for reverse mortgages.
hahaha, shocked, they make VHS tapes cuz of the old people. but your right, i gotta palce my orders before they tell me they ran out of tapes.
One day I'll get around to capturing all of my old VHS tapes (they're positively not porn) and I'll disconnect my VCR. But the way I procrastinate that will be long after Blu-Ray has moved on.
I wasent aware anyone still used VHS. You can get a DVD player from wall-mart for like 20$. Heck, I even switched my mom over a couple of years ago.
I watched my first porno on VHS. I damn near broke the pause and slowmo button.
Can't wait until Microsoft finally announces HD VHS ...
/scnr
There was HD VHS. Its first iteration was called W-VHS and it only existed in Japan merely for use with MUSE Hi-Vision, Japan's analog interpretation of 1080i HDTV. And W-VHS decks were (and still are) the only consumer-grade recording machines in the world that can record video via component (which, like VGA and SCART, is an analog interface unlike DVI-D, HDMI, or DisplayPort). Today, the only consumer-grade thing that has component inputs is an HDTV and it cannot record video (only display it).
Then Japan killed MUSE (then barely a few years old) and pushed ISDB, her own digital interpretation of HDTV, thus spelling the end of W-VHS. But then industry quickly responded with the second iteration of HD VHS: D-VHS. This one supported up to 1080i in digital MPEG-2 format, and the highest-capacity D-VHS tape held 52 GB (2 gigs more than Blu-ray!), large enough for 4 hours of 1080i MPEG-2 video. And best of all, unlike W-VHS, D-VHS was exported to ATSC countries like USA. It, however, lasted only a few years, most probably because of its very steep entry price (US$1000, just like Blu-ray in 2006!), its very poor adoption rate (the same bug that plagued and eventually doomed S-VHS; besides very few people was into HDTV back then, preferring to flock to DVD, TiVo, DirecTV, Dish, and digital cable instead), and the MPAA's refusal to allow the release of movies on D-VHS until some DRM could be cooked up for them (in the form of D-Theater, and they would play only on D-VHS decks carrying the D-Theater compatibility label). Only 21 D-Theater movies were ever released in America, among them one of the two Terminators.
So this is how my parents felt when the 8-track was gone for good........old
Maybe now I can get that multi region dual deck vcr that i've been wanting for years.
Dude, you're asking for some sort of professional thingy. I was once looking all over eBay for a cheap S-VHS deck, and some of my search results were for professional-grade rack-mount multi-format NTSC/PAL/SECAM S-VHS decks pulled from telecom/news-gathering warehouses. And those did really do 480i (NTSC) and 576i (PAL/SECAM) and sported S-Video.
And their bids were running as high as US$600 AFAIK
Nostalgia from this era will be signs that say "Be kind, rewind!". Kids won't know wtf it means.
Yep, right up there with saying that someone sounds like a broken record.
I remember the first time I saw a TV show that I recorded and was in awe that you could watch a TV show later on and then hit FF to see commercials zoom by at 4X...8X was too fast I always missed the show coming back on after the commercial using 8X...LOL!
But for those that have recorded memories (home movies) on VHS, you better convert them now! I pulled out some old VHS tapes recently, well over 15 years old and the picture quality was severely degraded with tons of snow. And this was definitely degradation and not just lousy quality VHS format.
I suppose I can pull my VCR out from the entertainment center, other the recently to check out some old home movies, I don't remember the last time I actually used it for anything!
DId you put them thru a series of rewinds and fastforwards? The tape does stick over time, it's the only way to "unstick" it but if you do it too fast you run the risk of breaking the tape.
I still have a bunch of VHS movies. Some movies just suit VHS better. MEGAFORCE and YOR The Hunter From The Future... I'm looking at you.
JVC stopped production of their stand alone VCR's over a year ago. get your facts right
But JVC still makes DVD/VHS combo decks (and I believe DVD-RW/VHS decks too)
Well it's a sad day for VHS, the format that could never die, though I don't think blu-ray will really be able to take DVD over like how DVD did it to the VHS. Also in the article how they said until it "strikes back" (or something like that) it reminded me of the Dreamcast, how even after 7 years it's still getting some games there and there. Some things just won't die!
Well, I hope that ALL those old 1970's, and 1980's movies come out on DVD! I'm lucky to have the campy Valet Girls, California HUNK, Teen Witch, Body Rock, Lambada, and Campus Man on VHS format!
Six String Samuri was a weird movie.
simmer down.
I have a Philips VCR sitting on the floor next to me right now that has a tape stuck in it from the last time I tried to use it at least a year ago.
I pulled it of a telecom businesses trash pile...some 8 years ago.
Viva magnetic drums.
Ah Nostalgia, I remember Blockbuster getting steaming mad when me and my friends would rent a movie and not rewind. Though it is sad to be gone let's face it, it is much better to have DVD's or Blu-Ray's.Way better picture and way more convenient.
My last VHS player was a TV/DVD/VHS combo.
It went into the garage after I bought my 50 inch plasma and PS3.
One day my kids'll be asking me "Daddy, whats this thing?" but they'll be asking about the whole damn tube tv!