Variety Declares VHS Dead

An anonymous reader writes "Variety has written an obituary for the VHS format only 3 years after it was surpassed in popularity by the DVD." While VHS is hardly the format of choice these days, there are still many, many home movies and other favorite recordings and commercial releases floating around in VHS. How long until VHS players themselves go the way of the 8-track player?

I suspect most recent VHS use is for recording

[Anonymous Coward]

I only recently (1 year ago) got a DVD. I got a DVD/VHS deck for occasional TV recording and a small back library. Now DVD recorders are reaching the same el-cheapo rate I paid for my dual deck. I suspect DVRs and DVD recorders are really what is driving out VHS, not pressed DVDs themselves.

Re:Consider the source... if you can understand th

[Anonymous Coward]

The section is called "Home Ent," they mention "vidgame" consoles, and there are 2 instances of "biz." I'd call it normal Englzh.

Re:VHS can never die, at least until...

[rjstanford]

Don't you think that you should wait more than 20 minutes before stealing other people's posts (not mine, but one I replied to) for Karma?

Reference : http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207016&cid=168 78422 [slashdot.org] @ 6:25pm

And shame on you.

Re:8-Track

[jamstar7]

I've actually resisted becoming an 8-track fanatic. I've seen good 8-track recorders come up at auctions and just sat on my bidder's paddle to avoid ending up with them. I suspect there are spare tapes available somewhere. You could record tunes off CDs to 80-track. I recently got a 'bonus track' on a BlackCrowes album I bought at WalMart. The slip of paper in the jewel box said to go to the Walmart site and download it, so I did. It was a WMA file so I had to download and install Windows Media Player 9 on a machine here that still runs Windoze to burn the file to an audio CD. Now that Black Crowes track ("Lovin' Cup") is ready to rip to MP3, and if I had the gear, ready to record to 8-track.

I take it you're a penguinista. Yes, you can listen to .wma files in xmms, just need the xmms-wma plugin for it, readily available for Debian, Fedora, & Ubuntu, some assembly required for Gentoo, of course...

Re:More like the cassette than 8-track.

[LiquidCoooled]

Sometimes it can resync, sometimes it can't.
We have had programs showing up lasting -96 hours (or similar unrealistic figures) which were completely unusable.

Mind you, this seems no different to the experience I have had with dvd-rw's.
YMMV

Re:the real question-DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

And that process (if it could even be called a process) is a pain in the balls and a waste of time.

And you are the measure of all men. No other opinions need apply.

I have a friend with an enormous collection of vinyl. He's currently putting it all to a digital format, including scanning all the LP cover art and cleaning it up.

No, it's not a one-click operation and he took some time learning all the pieces. So take your "waste of time" and shove it up your ass, along with your pussified notion of what constitutes pain. You're certainly not qualified to speak about pain as regards balls.

Re:More like the cassette than 8-track.

[ben there...]

For some more anecdotes: I record shows on my comp using SageTV, and toss the DVDs in a pile, sometimes on the floor. Then step on them. Every single one of 150+ still plays without even skipping. Some take longer to read after popping them in, but no biggie.

Re:The real answer

[zigziggityzoo]

This could be fixed with Internet over Power [wikipedia.org]. Then broadband will be exactly as ubiquitous and reliable as electricity. It actually doesn't really take as much to implement; the infrastructure is already there.

Re:Consider the source... if you can understand th

[koreth]

I never thought I'd say this about anything, but Variety's mangling of English grates on me much more than anything I see in a typical day of browsing Slashdot.

Mostly because it's so gratuitous. Where normal people would use "comedy," they write "laffer," which in addition to not being an actual word, isn't even any shorter! They use the word "actioner," which my brain always interprets as "auctioneer" at first glance. But at least that saves some characters compared to "action movie," so I can sort of vaguely comprehend why someone might mistake it for a good idea.

Re:the real question-DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found the least painful way to transfer VHS to DVD is simply to buy a dual VHS/DVD recorder, they're cheap enough these days. Insert tape, insert blank disc, press 'dub' button on remote, and that's it. If there's mutiple items on the tape, just insert some chapter marks afterwards (assuming you're using RW discs).

Re:the real question

[Kelson]

Yeah, that's for sure. I still don't know who my new US Congressperson is going to be, and it's all the fault of the county south of me thinking that touch screen voting machines were a good way to go.

A lot of it has to do with the specific type of voting machine used. I've heard stories of some really bad designs from people who voted in different areas last week, but it can be done...not necessarily right, but at least better.

The machines that my district has used for the last ~2 years are pain to use (basically a click wheel, and the display is slow enough you can watch it drawing rectangles), but at least have some measures against fraud. For instance, activating the machine requires a single-use passcode that's generated by the control unit and handed to you by the official running that station, so you can't sneak into an unused booth when you're done and vote again. (Not that this would have been possible where I was. They were watching the booths like hawks waiting for one to free up so they could get people through the line as fast as possible. It was the most crowded midterm election I've seen since I started voting in 1994, unless you count the 2003 California governor recall.)

Most importantly, each voting machine has a roll of paper inside like the store copy in a cash register. When you finish your ballot, it first gives you a chance to review your choices on-screen, then it prints them out on the paper roll, which is visible through a plastic window. You have one more chance to confirm that the paper copy matches what you actually chose, then it accepts your vote and rolls the paper out of view.

With that type of machine, even if the memory gets wiped by a power outage, there's still a paper record that can be examined.