Pop culture is finally hitting the eject button on the VHS tape, the once-ubiquitous home-video format that will finish this month as a creaky ghost of Christmas past.
After three decades of steady if unspectacular service, the spinning wheels of the home-entertainment stalwart are slowing to a halt at retail outlets. On a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a Palm Harbor, Fla., warehouse run by Ryan J. Kugler, the last major supplier of the tapes.
"It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt," said Kugler, 34, a Burbank businessman. "I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I'm done. Anything left in warehouse we'll just give away or throw away."
In the space of my life, I've seen the change from cinemas being the only way to watch movies to the development of the home cinema. Even the iPlayer and youtube owe their existence to the concept of ubiquitous VHS recorders.
I have a pile of videos that I never watch but can't bring myself to throw out. It's all over now.
9 comments:
I still have hundreds of LPs that are in the same plastic bags as they were a year ago when we moved home and will no doubt stay in those bags until we buy a house again in a couple of years and I have some nice shelves in which to display them. I will never throw those out either.
I don't actually listen to any of my CDs, come to think of it, because I've got them all on the iPod or iTunes.
How odd! Only last weekend I was having a clear out of my old LPs dating from the late 1950s. I called the guy from the local flea market who came by and bought all my old LPs for his stall. Problem was he did not wany any of the classicals as "that was not my clientele". So I shall have to look further afield to get rid of them. Cassette tapes and videos to follow in due course, although I will hang on the my CDs as they can be played on the hifi, computer and in the car.
Blank VHS cassettes are still widely available in this country and millions of people continue to use them for recording from the TV. The format is a long way from being dead yet.
VHS is like LPs to me in a way. Amazingly, the long players are making a comeback as of late.
I do not see this trend being lent to VHS. Ever.
So long, VHS. It was a fantastic ride.
................... Ruprecht
I luv VHS but remember both Betamax and Phillips2000 ( both were superior technically but less well promoted ).
I have about 100 films in VHS format but to be honest it is very easy and inexpensive to replace them in DVD.
Like vinyl records, there is something more tangible about a 'proper' VHS copy though they are prone to the vagaries (?) of ageing.
My neighbours teenagers look upon my VHS collection with bemused contempt, they cannot recall their home having ever had such an oldie thing.
It's amazing to think that when I was a kid, we had no TV until my dad brought home a small black-and white set. Most of the transmission was the test card.
We had a tape deck. It used six-inch reels and I couldn't lift it.
My grandparents grew up in a world where cars had just become available, but only to rich eccentrics.
Now, kids grow up with miniature sound systems, mobile phones, and the ability (with sky plus) to record two channels of permanently-on TV at the same time.
They see VHS as old hat, but I remember when they were so new hardly anyone could afford one!
Technology hasn't been entirely beneficial to these new kids. They can't add up without a calculator, they can't survive without headphones, they can't think of anything else to do other that watch TV and they can't go anywhere without motorised transport. Everything they eat comes in a packet ready to be warmed up in a microwave (I recall my mother's oven built into the fireplace. She hated it, but food didn't taste the same when she bought an electric one).
There won't be many capable of surviving when the power goes off.
@ Leg-Iron, maybe that's why the Global Warmenists want to shut down our electricity generating capacity, just to see what happens?
Mark, I'd like to turn off the power for a day to see what happens.
Might wake a few people up! Let's face it, there'll be no rebellion as long as Eastenders is on.
VHS - good riddance to a crap format.
It took years to get it to perform as well as other systems.
VHS was like Windows. Just about good enough for those who neither knew nor cared.
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