Rumor: Blockbuster Dropping VHS

The Blockbuster Guy has sent in another rumor:

Okay people if you don't have a DVD player yet you might want to get one. Blockbuster will no longer sell or rent tapes in its stores, PERIOD. And people, you can start to see VHS tapes fade out everywhere over the next several years. VHS are becoming as obsolete as 8 tracks! Go out and buy a DVD player!

Blockbuster has said that DVD has increased the profit margin on rentals, so it makes sense to move to more profitable DVD titles.

With DVD players available for less than $30 it's no surprise that 83 million households have them now.

Comments

[Manda]

My Hollywood Video looks like it may be moving in the same direction. When I went last week they were selling off hundreds of old videos.

[LaWilson]

What the heck have they been waiting for? This should have been done months ago.

Meanwhile they are getting ready to put out new types of DVDs that won't play on the old players. Lovely.

[Sonja]

Not surprised. I'm actually in the process of trying to replace some of my video titles with the DVD and donating my video titles to the public library near my house. I know until I got my DVD player as a disc I was resistant to the DVD movement, but now I wish I had not taken so long. LOL DVD's take up less space!!

[RAYMOND KNIGHT]

I think it will be years before the present-style DVD disappears. Until they can offer a DVD-PLAYER for $20.00, I think studios will have to produce both kinds. The demise of the VHS tape has been forecast for years and it is just starting to happen and this is only with the studio produced VHS tapes. With the price of VHS tapes and recorders it will be years before blank VHS-tapes disappear.

[REN]

The new DVD format will probably take a long time to become standard. There is apparently going to be a format war between two competing standards.

[vio]

Definitely... It could be years before you see Blockbuster adopt one(or both!) of the HD DVD formats. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, Blockbuster didn't even bring DVDs into their stores until 2000, 3 years after DVD made it's North American debut! And Blockbuster stores(the corporate ones anyway, not sure about the franchise stores) were over 50% VHS up until late 2002 or so. I don't believe it was until mid 2003 that they started getting their shelves half VHS/half DVD. And of course, only now in mid 2005 are they FINALLY getting rid of VHS entirely. That's a pretty fetching LONG time that they held onto VHS... If you think Blockbuster(and any other video rental stores) are going to even bring HD DVD into their stores right away, let alone drop standard DVD anytime soon you're really kidding yourself. DVD has a lot of life in it. The format is only about 8 years old now and there are still millions of people out there that are JUST NOW buying their first DVD players. Of course the fact that are 2 competing HD formats(FORMAT WAR) will slow the growth and acceptance of high-def video and extend the life of regular DVD, and I couldn't be happier about that. Yes, I for one am glad that there's going to be a format war because I'm not yet ready for HD DVD. I'm definitely gonna go high-def, but probably not until 2010 or later...

[Reed Napier]

I love my dvd's but I still use my vhs sometimes just for the nostaliga

[vio]

Likewise Reed. I'm no big fan of VHS, but sometimes it's fun to "pop" in one of those bulky tapes and go all retro.. In a strange way, the blurry video, fuzzy audio and full screen(or PAN & SCAN) presentation make me feel like a 15 year old kid watching a VHS rental all over again. I have a combo deck, so watching either format is really easy. Though, 98% of time I'm only watching DVDs these days. While there's some nostalgia inherent with watching a VHS tape, the format is still pretty much crap and incredibly archaic by todays standards. And a little boring too, probably due to the fact that it's so BASIC and SIMPLISTIC in comparison to DVD.

Oh well. RIP VHS.

BLOCKBLUSTRER