quote: Variety.com

---

VHS, 30, dies of loneliness
The home-entertainment format lived a fruitful life
By DIANE GARRETT

After a long illness, the groundbreaking home-entertainment format VHS has died of natural causes in the United States. The format was 30 years old.
No services are planned.

The format had been expected to survive until January, but high-def formats and next-generation vidgame consoles hastened its final decline.

"It's pretty much over," concurred Buena Vista Home Entertainment general manager North America Lori MacPherson on Tuesday.

VHS is survived by a child, DVD, and by Tivo, VOD and DirecTV. It was preceded in death by Betamax, Divx, mini-discs and laserdiscs.

Although it had been ailing, the format's death became official in this, the video biz's all-important fourth quarter. Retailers decided to pull the plug, saying there was no longer shelf space.

As a tribute to the late, great VHS, Toys 'R' Us will continue to carry a few titles like "Barney," and some dollar video chains will still handle cassettes for those who cannot deal with the death of the format.

Born Vertical Helical Scan to parent JVC of Japan, the tape had a difficult childhood as it was forced to compete with Sony's Betamax format.

After its youthful Betamax battles, the longer-playing VHS tapes eventually became the format of choice for millions of consumers. VHS enjoyed a lucrative career, transforming the way people watched movies and changing the economics of the film biz. VHS hit its peak with "The Lion King," which sold more than 30 million vidcassettes Stateside.

The format flourished until DVDs launched in 1997. After a fruitful career, VHS tapes started to retire from center stage in 2003 when DVDs became more popular for the first time.

Since their retirement, VHS tapes have made occasional appearances in children's entertainment and as a format for collectors seeking titles not released on DVD. VHS continued to make as much as $300 million a year until this year, when studios stopped manufacturing the tapes.

Date in print: Wed., Nov. 15, 2006, Los Angeles

---

quote: Charles Greenlee

---

There needs to be a correction. Services are planned, tomorrow at
12:00
12:00
12:00
12:00..........

---

ROFLMAO
 

---

Posted by Paul Gordon (Member # 3320) on 11-29-2006, 08:11 AM:
 
One thing that VCR's had over DVD players though is the ability to plug your cable into them or antenna. Plus VHS tapes don't get scratched! 30 years is pretty good though DVD's won't last that long...
 

---

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-29-2006, 09:05 AM:
 
Actually VHS died when it began... in JVC's labs many years ago... they originally invented but abandoned this format. Matsushita then picked the format up and prefected into usefulness..... I attended the very first factory training for repair of the PV-1000 VHS deck way back in the early 70's when I was a bench tech at Panasonic.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 11-29-2006, 09:41 AM:
 
ßetamax was introduced in 1975 as part of a console TV package, and as a stand alone recorder (SL-7200) in 1976. The first VHS machine sold in the USA was a JVC introduced in early 1977.
 

---

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 11-29-2006, 12:43 PM:
 
Betamax was a superior way of doing it. It used the same media, so if your Beta tapes wear out, you can disassemble it, and either buy the bulk tape, or steal it from a VHS tape, and install it in the Beta cassette, and you have a new blank Beta tape. If I remember, it used the helical head for both the video and audio, so the tracking is always correct between them. There was something else, like the spiral width or something, that allowed them to record at a higher quality than the VHS's at the time. To bad sony was so boneheaded that it wouldn't come out with a longer lenth tape, that and remaining proprietary didn't help either.

Incidently, stealing the tape from a VHS casette also allows you to put higher grade tape in the Beta, though I haven't tried it myself to see if the picture is better.
 

---

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-29-2006, 01:34 PM:
 
They forgot to include VHS's nickname, "Video Home System," invented to make it more consumer-friendly.

I won't miss the bulky tapes, but I will miss the fact that you could go from "off" to "enjoying" in about 5 seconds without having to wait through an endless stream of crap.
 

---

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 11-29-2006, 02:24 PM:
 
VHS's nickname, "Video Home System,"

I always thought it stood for "Vertical Horizontal Suck"...
 

---

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-29-2006, 03:30 PM:
 
However technically flawed it was/is, VHS had a huge cultural and economic impact - changing patterns of film distribution, broadcasting, and home viewing to name but three. For that reason, I'm a bit surprised that there didn't seem to be any 30th anniversary related events, promotions, or anything at that sort. At the Association of Moving Image Archivists' conference last month there was a 'Quad [ruplex videotape] at 50' panel and evening screening, but nothing for VHS at 30.

I imagine the industry would like the format to die quietly and quickly, as digital consumer delivery technologies are now the focus of their marketing efforts.
 

---

Posted by Paul Gordon (Member # 3320) on 11-29-2006, 04:03 PM:
 
VHS is DEAD...LONG LIVE VHS!!!
 

---

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 11-30-2006, 01:25 PM:
 
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7266047463204470405
 

---

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-01-2006, 02:00 AM:
 
This is an interesting page on JVC and when it all began - along with the 'format wars' of yore.

This is that early JVC Vidstar machine.

I remember when this came out in late 1977. This was an impressive machine, only had the single speed of SP, and with it the head size was slightly larger, thus had a better picture output of the later models. - Monte
 

---

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 12-01-2006, 12:18 PM:
 
I think headsize had something to do with Beta's better quality too.
 

---

Posted by James R. Hammonds, Jr (Member # 673) on 12-01-2006, 01:27 PM:
 
It's not the size of the head, it's how well it performs.
 

---

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 12-01-2006, 06:40 PM:
 
Should have seen that one coming.
 

---

Posted by Cameron Glendinning (Member # 3516) on 12-01-2006, 07:13 PM:
 
Beta's better head design lives on today through betacam and professional television ect. I remember replacing my Profesional cameras Super VHS recorder/ back with a Betacam, the difference was stunning. The super vhs looked like colorised B&W compared to Betacams bold colors.
 

---

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 12-05-2006, 01:42 PM:
 
What really hurt VHS, Beta, Super VHS, etc. was the cruddy color-under method of recording color. No matter how much you increase the luminance bandwidth on formats like that, the color remains a cruddy 300 KHz or so.
 

---

Posted by Chad M Calpito (Member # 3736) on 12-06-2006, 01:12 PM:
 
VHS was great and I loved it, especially Betamax. I did like the image quality of Beta. But, nowadays, I prefer the DVD. VHS was doomed to die out someday and I am surprised it lasted this long.
 

---

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-06-2006, 02:16 PM:
 
This news mainly concerns the sale of pre-recorded movies on VHS tape, correct?

I wonder how much longer actual VHS tape players will be sold. Lots of people still have stacks of VHS tapes holding store bought movies, shows dubbed off broadcasts or home videos.
 

---

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 12-06-2006, 05:57 PM:
 
I don't know, but those "combination DVD/VCRs" sure piss me off. It's just SUCH a stupid idea, and it's made even more stupid by how most of them are from the cheapest components possible. It might make some sense to make one with a VCR that could at least do Super-VHS, if not D-VHS and D-Theater (needed to play prerecorded D-Theater tapes, they won't play in a regular D-VHS machine) but NOOOO! They just stick in a crappy made-in-China-by-slave-labor VCR and equivalent DVD player. I've even seen some with just a MONO audio input for the VCR. WTF is with that?

They make some where the DVD side also records, but again what's the point of that when the VCR side is so crappy? Most of the old VHS tapes I've transferred to DVD were made before VHS Hi-Fi came out- 99% of Hi-Fi decks will only play back the older linear soundtrack in mono, so I hunted down an old RCA deck that can play linear stereo and use it for dubbing these old tapes. Most professional VHS machines will play linear stereo too. Assuming you're going to use the VCR to archive your old tapes to DVD, of stuff that will never see the light of day on any format ever again, wouldn't it make the most sense to use the BEST equipment for the job?

Speaking of that, it annoys me how DVD recorders force you to use 2-channel Dolby Digital. If you're transferring a mono recording from a mono video format, you should be able to encode it in 1-channel Dolby, but instead you have to encode it in 2-channel and pro-logic decode the DVD back to the center channel. A lot of people don't know how to chapter DVDs properly either- there's a retarded default setting on most recorders to put in a chapter mark automatically every 5 minutes, so they'll leave that on instead of putting chapters where they should be, relevant to what's actually on the disc. Most of the stuff I get in trade from people, I have to re-author on the computer to chapter them properly.

And by the way, what's with all this crap you can buy on DVD? Who the hell would want to buy the complete seasons of "Reba" or "Home Improvement"? And- and--- oh, sorry, I'm ranting too much. I'll stop now
 

---

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 12-06-2006, 06:17 PM:
 
Hi Andy Rooney, what's up? Still trying to figure out why they put the cotton at the top of pill bottles?
 

---

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-06-2006, 08:59 PM:
 

quote: Jesse Skeen

---

Who the hell would want to buy the complete seasons of "Reba" or "Home Improvement"?

---

Actually, TV-on-DVD is one of the hottest categories in the format. It pisses off the "movie" divisions of the companies because customers have to spend 24 hours or whatever watching a TV package, so they don't buy as many new items.

My latest TVonDVD acquisition is Season 1 of SNL, which has been a lot of fun to watch. ("I'll bet the problem is your pancreas!")
 

---

Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 12-06-2006, 10:04 PM:
 
I have bought all 5 seasons of Magnum PI and will buy the other 3 when they're released. I was buying Married With Children the first few seasons, but then the last few have been issued with altered opening theme song (doesn't bother me much) and some syndicated episodes, which sucks as there's usually a minute or 2 missing.
 

---

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 12-07-2006, 12:03 AM:
 
Stargate SG-1, and Atlantis here. I wouldn't mind having some History channel DVD, or Discovery.
 

---

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 12-07-2006, 02:34 PM:
 
Northern Exposure, The West Wing, M*A*S*H, Animated Star Trek, Airline, Supercar, Fireball XL5, Astroboy, Kimba... Waiting for Picket Fences... The list can be endless.
 

---

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-07-2006, 07:11 PM:
 
Astro Boy is for pedophiles. A mostly-naked little boy running around in every episode? Yeah.
 

---

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 12-07-2006, 07:27 PM:
 
I think this was already covered in another thread a while back...

Anyhow, I have all the available DVDs (box sets) of the following:

Johnny Carson Tonight Shows
Curb your Enthusiasm
Space 1999
The Honeymooners
Queer As Folk
Mr. Wizard

And some others that I can't think of right now...
 

---

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 12-07-2006, 08:12 PM:
 
Mr. Wizard, hahaha, I used to love watching his show. Haven't seen it in ages.
 

---

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 12-08-2006, 12:43 AM:
 
Sorry to derail the topic- my rant mode was meant to be a little tongue-in-cheek (though the lack of linear stereo playback on Hi-Fi VCRs has truly angered me for more than 20 years), and while typing it I was at work and just got a call from a customer asking when her order of a "Reba" DVD season set was going to ship. I'm guilty of buying a lot of crap on DVD too though, but it's mostly old stuff for nostalgia value (though I truly have to ask who the hell else would buy any of this stuff)- the best thing I have is the complete "Pink Lady and Jeff" variety series from 1980, the one starring the Japanese pop singers who didn't know English. I've got tons of 70s and 80s stuff from home recordings, with original commercials, transferred to DVD too- I bought a DVD recorder just to do that.

Anyways, I just picked up a high-definition D-VHS tape of "There's Something About Mary" for 4 bucks at one of the local Tower stores since they're clearing out all their stuff and going kaput in a couple weeks. I've already got 3 other D-VHS movies I got at Big Lots for 2 bucks each, awaiting the day I find a player for hopefully not a lot of money. I think the few studios that put out movies on that gave up right when the HD disc formats came out (which I won't buy into until either one dies or they make a machine that plays both- I refuse to contribute to another VHS vs. Beta war.) I'm still trying to find out what the last pre-recorded movie on standard VHS was.

BTW does anyone know for sure what the very FIRST pre-recorded VHS movies were? The first major-studio films were from Fox, licensed to Magnetic Video which put out stuff like MASH, Patton and Sound of Music. I have a couple Magnetic Video movie tapes with a complete listing of available titles on the back covers. I think before that, there was porno movies and public-domain stuff. The big studios were reluctant to put their movies out on video, but the porn companies jumped right into it.
 

---

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-08-2006, 01:42 AM:
 

quote: Jesse Skeen

---

Anyways

---

Plural?
 

---

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 12-08-2006, 08:40 AM:
 
How 'bout "Anyhoo"...?

Jess--OMG, someone else who remembers "Pink Lady and Jeff!"

HAve you ever seen the SNL parody of it, "Pink Lady and Carl" with Harry Shearer as Carl Sagan? Someone (Paul Shaffer?) came on as Marvin Hamlisch and he and Carl described the "Big Band Theory." Priceless.

Back on topic, sort of. Is anyone around here planning to start a VCR museum? We have an old Quasar Time Machine (vertically stacked tape cartridge) that we've never attempted to play, but it's free to a good home. Just have to pick it up yourself.
 

---

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 12-08-2006, 01:47 PM:
 
I have one of those Quasar VCRs, but can't find any tapes for it so not sure if it works. I've also got 3 Cartrivision machines (the first consumer videotape format which came out in 1972, didn't stay on the market very long) but can't get any of them to work, when I get some money I'll have to pay someone to come get one of them working.
 

---

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 12-08-2006, 02:35 PM:
 
Quasar's were too big and clunky. I prefered the Sanyo V-Cord format, where the tapes looked like fat 8-tracks.
 

---

Posted by Wayne Keyser (Member # 2420) on 12-09-2006, 01:49 PM:
 
Remember the scene in HARDCORE where George C. Scott, trying to track down his runaway-pornstar daughter in the big evil city, goes into a porn shop asking for her movie - and gets offered in in (if I recall correctly) "Beta, VHS, U-Matic, Half-inch, One-inch" [I think two-inch was dead by then] - I believe somebody just pronounced U-Matic deceased as well.

Somebody asked "What were the first VHS tapes you bought?" - Waaaaaay back when the studios were trying to outlaw rentals [*snicker*] I paid the $75 list price for CLEOPATRA. From a porn shop. Stop laughing ... that's just where it was. I wasn't looking for porn. ... Okay, yes I was.
 

---

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 12-09-2006, 02:20 PM:
 
Never heard of U-Matic, Cartrivision, or the Quasar one. I have heard of Selectavision or CED, Beta, verious Reel-to-reels, and the varius film formats.
 

---

Posted by Jeffry L. Johnson (Member # 453) on 12-09-2006, 02:29 PM:
 
Video tape recorder
 

---

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 12-09-2006, 04:09 PM:
 

quote: Charles Greenlee

---

Selectavision or CED

---

This was actually the horrible RCA videodisc format, that involved the disc being played back with a special cartridge and needle, phonograph style. I remember that the disk was inside a slotted carrier, because it was found that the slightest fingerprint could throw the tracking off. Each disc began with the '70s RCA logo set to music from "Pictures From an Exposition" as played by Tomita.

Nose around this guy's site to see a huge collection of all these extinct formats.

My ProScan VCR is still living happily next to my DVD player, I still need it for the hundreds of tapes I aquired thru the years, much of it oddball/psychotronic stuff that'll NEVER make it to DVD. Not to mention home movies, off air records, what have you. I've found that if you keep the tapes wound fully and stored carefully they will still play with little problem, even stuff going back to the early 80s that I recorded on a $975 (yep, that's how much some of them cost back then) Canon VCR.
 

---

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 12-09-2006, 04:20 PM:
 
Wayne, I remember that scene as being from the film "Body Double".

The thing that struck me as the biggest boner in "8MM" was the porno films were 16mm.

(edit for typo correction)

[ 12-09-2006, 09:53 PM: Message edited by: Phil Hill ]
 

---

Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 12-09-2006, 04:43 PM:
 
What a cool site that is of the extinct formats... saw the Fisher Price PXL-2000 that I got for my birthday ages ago... I know I recorded some stuff on it, wish I had kept the tapes.
 

---

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 12-09-2006, 04:53 PM:
 
Love the logo clips. Neato. And the wiki-link on video tape formats was quite interesting. I could probably follow the links within for hours or more.
 

---

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 12-10-2006, 01:55 PM:
 
Instore demo disc for the Selectavision Videodisc: (starts out with tons of movie clips, skip to 4:00 to see the machine demonstrated)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3196982259153601292&hl=en

Click on "related" and you'll find the tour of the RCA Videodisc factory in Indianapolis which was put on a dealers-only disc and later on the "Memories Of Videodisc" disc given to people who worked there after the plant shut down.
 

---

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 12-10-2006, 11:15 PM:
 
I have literally TONS of VHS and Beta tapes and equipment. I've been scooping up some fine VHS and Beta machines lately at the local Goodwill store for $5 each!

I own an operating Sony VO-1600 U-Matic deck from 1972. It still runs great. I have 2 new spare head drums for it, and a spare set of belts. Talk about a klunky unit... It was the first machine I ever saw that had a built-in TV tuner for recording. For many years, I had hundreds of 3/4" U-Matic tapes with lots of shows from the '70's on them. A small fire and water damage did them in.
 

---

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 12-11-2006, 03:24 AM:
 
Nice vid, if watching ithe clip shows any indication of actual quality, it had a decent picture, though the clip itself wasn't too high of quality.
 

---

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 12-11-2006, 08:25 AM:
 
My Quasar "Great Time Machine" has one tape, but I've never been curious enough about what's on the tape to try to resurrect it. It's pretty funky lookin.'

We gave away a couple of top-loading U-matic 3/4" decks two years ago. They probably worked, but needed belts.

But those RCA Selectavision Videodisc clips are very cool! We still have two early-generation players (1 RCA and 1 Zenith version) plus, I had gotten a stereo version when the prices dropped WAY down. I also have about 75 movies on CED disc.

Those clips were very accurate in showing what the picture looked like (allowing for the compression used on the site). The occasional horizontal lines, the part when it started to skip; good times, good times. When they first came out, the picture appeared sharper than VHS, which seamed "smeared" to me, and at the time, pre-recorded VHS tapes were ~$90 while the CED discs were usually $20.

The big problem was that the more you played them, the more chance for dirt to accumulate on the disc, then you get more lines, skipping, or a total picture meltdown. If you've used these, you probably know what I mean. Hopefully, removing and reinserting the disc would clear it up, but sometimes not.

The artwork on the disc caddies were often nice, though.

[ 12-11-2006, 02:18 PM: Message edited by: Hillary Charles ]
 

---

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 12-11-2006, 01:20 PM:
 
Yeah, if it were a normal record, some cleaner and the duster would clear things right up, too bad CED discs are so damn picky and you can't use the stuff of them.
 

---

Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 02-06-2009, 06:06 PM:
 

It has been 788 days since the last post.

 

---