Electrical chain to stop selling VCRs

[SatStorm]

VHS/ SVHS has a 10 year + future

[Capmaster]

I tend to agree with SatStorm. It's been 20 years since CDs hit the mainstream, yet you can still buy albums on vinyl

[bugster]

I tend to agree with SatStorm. It's been 20 years since CDs hit the mainstream, yet you can still buy albums on vinyl

Not in many mainstream high street stores you can't! (at least not here).

I don't think VHS will dissappear altogether for a long time, but it will become less mainstream, then niche market (with prices probably rising!) until it all but dissapears.

[ZAPPER]

Ain't no doubt about it, times are a changing. VCRs are eventualy going the way of the Dodo bird. But as good as DVDs are they wont be here for 26 years in their present form either. I think that a newer tech will replace them. I don't know what it will be, but DVD has too many weak points. Just to give an example, the physical durabilty of the disk is a problem. You have to handle them like they are nitroglycern or they become scratched or fingerprinted (not good for kids or klutzes like me) Also there are too many variations as to type and quality and methods of use and so on. I mean that flexibilty is great for a hardcore users that have taken the effort to learn, but the general public needs super simple. Just look at what has happened to the tech in the past five years. Do you really think that DVD tech is going to just level off and stay consistant for even the next five years? I am thinking that some sort of chip with no moving parts in the read/ write process will win over. When a memory stick type gadget hits the 200gig range and the price gets low enough, DVDs will be going to the wayside too. I am actually suprised at the slow speed of the internet evolution. I would have thought that instant access to huge data banks would have made having to physically own a copy of any movie or song kind of obsolete by now or the near future. But, Hey what do I know?

[Capmaster]

I tend to agree with SatStorm. It's been 20 years since CDs hit the mainstream, yet you can still buy albums on vinyl

Not in many mainstream high street stores you can't! (at least not here).

I don't think VHS will dissappear altogether for a long time, but it will become less mainstream, then niche market (with prices probably rising!) until it all but dissapears.

I didn't mean to imply that vinyl albums were still mainstream ..they're not. But you can still buy them. It's just a bit more effort to find sources.

Heck, I think you can still buy 8-tracks

[midnightsun]

However if you have digital TV with good image quality, it may be worth a DVD recorder, because you could get near DVD quality, at the expense of very short running times (2 hours is really the maximum). For everyone else VCR is the way to go.

yeah, digital->analog->digital, that's some really nice "digital recording".

[ejai]

I would have thought that instant access to huge data banks would have made having to physically own a copy of any movie or song kind of obsolete by now or the near future. But, Hey what do I know?

I prefer to own my own copy of media. I don't want to be spoon fed, I don't like the feeling of big brother. What happens when the giant database goes down and I want to experience some form of entertainment that only comes from that particular source.

Gimme my own copy. 8)

[monzie]

Anyone remember those DVD 'advertsizing trailers' on commercial VHS tapes.. the one with the 'pin drop' (from about 7 or 8 years ago)?

If so, HOW BLOODY COME THE PICTURE AND AUDIO FOR THAT TRAILER WAS SO GOOD COMPARED TO THE SHITE PICTURE AND AUDIO OF THE ACTUAL MOVIE????????????????? WHY DIDNT THEY JUST ENCODE THE MOVIE AT THAT LEVEL?????????????????? Was it a trick? Anyone know?

[Nilfennasion]

It is a well-established fact that the longer over two hours a VHS tape runs for, the more likely it is to suffer from tape warping artefacts and breakage over time. So the fundamental limits on how much material one can put on a DVD and still have it looking okay are not a new problem. They're just expressed differently.

Having just the one format to record with also does not make for a better situation. Sure, consumers are sometimes confused by more choices, but competition is good for the industry.

Oh, and monzie, if you want to see an excellent example of DVD being advertised, you cannot go past Roadshow's "replay on DVD" ad.

[Capmaster]

It is a well-established fact that the longer over two hours a VHS tape runs for, the more likely it is to suffer from tape warping artefacts and breakage over time.

Yep. The mylar was thinner on the longer-run VHS tapes so they would fit in the cassette. Which means more stretching, more curling, etc. :P

[Nilfennasion]

Yes, and that pretty much carves what I had to say in stone. Sure, you can fit four hours plus on a video cassette without compression or information loss, but people are nuts if they think it will last any longer or play any better. When I first saw Braveheart on a VHS tape, several frames went missing from one scene due to problems with that much tape being in the cassette.

Not to mention that you get component colour and the whole picture on DVD.

Seriously, though, most family movies I have found tend to clock in at three hours per cassette. I would estimate that using half D1 resolution, they can be easily stored on a DVD+R DL with space to spare. If it looks bad, well, that's what you get for doing your recording with VHS. :P

[SatStorm]

4 hours of VHS tape per DVD5 (DVD-/+R) is already possible with excellent results, when you use 1/2 D1 and you know how to filter your source. Dual layer may rise that to about 7 and a half hours... Exactly how people use the 4Hour tapes (LP mode...)

[Nilfennasion]

I have always found that LP mode makes a bad format even worse. What I cannot understand is why they are keeping DVD recorders with hard drives so expensive. It only cost me $380 to bump up my computer to about 235GB of hard drive space. The same kind of storage in a recorder seems to jack up the price from $300-500 to about $900-1200, depending on brands. Hardly what I would call conducive to market dominance.

[solarfox]

I don't know what it will be, but DVD has too many weak points. Just to give an example, the physical durabilty of the disk is a problem. You have to handle them like they are nitroglycern or they become scratched or fingerprinted (not good for kids or klutzes like me)

Well, that's partly due to the materials they chose to use -- there are plastics which would be near-impervious to minor nicks and scratches from everyday handling, but they're more expensive to use. (Not to mention that the entertainment industry probably prefers them to be somewhat non-durable, since it increases the odds that you might end up having to buy the same product more than once.)

I, personally, would have preferred to see DVD's permanently encased in a protective shell, like Minidiscs or magneto-optical cartridges (or DVD-RAM, for that matter), but they didn't ask my opinion when they designed it... Sooner or later, though, they're going to have to reconsider this...

Do you really think that DVD tech is going to just level off and stay consistant for even the next five years? I am thinking that some sort of chip with no moving parts in the read/ write process will win over.

It may, eventually, but I think it'll take a little longer than five years, unless there's a revolutionary development in nonvolatile-memory technology that shifts the price-per-megabyte ratio by several orders of magnitude...

I am actually suprised at the slow speed of the internet evolution. I would have thought that instant access to huge data banks would have made having to physically own a copy of any movie or song kind of obsolete by now or the near future.

Who says we have instant access? Half the U.S. market still doesn't have access to broadband internet (cable or DSL) yet, and the existing wireless technologies don't provide nearly sufficient bandwidth to provide instant, on-demand, individualized, continuous streaming to every potential listener or viewer in even a medium-sized town, much less a huge city like New York or Dallas...

And as ejai points out, most people would still prefer to own their own physical copy just because they don't want to be forever dependant on a single centralized source. I, personally, would never voluntarily use such a system -- the potential for abuse is simply too great. And by that, I mean the potential for the RIAA, MPAA, etc. to abuse the end users.

[ZAPPER]

solarfox

I always thought the perfect futuristic media would be credit card sized and shaped. It fits your pocket and hand about right, it is large enough to have printing on it that can be read by eye for like a description of the contents and could be handled by a mechanical devices if the need were there. I have no idea as to what the interface between the card and PC should be. An electrical conection would require delicate pins or pads that could present a weakness at the interface. Optical or laser reading requires that the "veiw" be crystal clear. I have thought about radio waves being used to read the cards, kind of like how a antishoplifting device reads the diode in the tag on merchandise, but I dont know if the signal could be focused down enough to be tighter than a laser. And the same for magnetic type storage. (although there is a big size difference between 2.25 tape VHS tape and mini DV tape) At any rate I think that physical contact between the storage media and the reader/writer is a weak point, the interface is always the weak point.

I believe that soon someone is going to hit on the ceramic chip type device in a big way in so far as capacity, but I fear that the cost will kill it. As fast as technology is growing it can still seem painfully slow and to reach the mass consumer market price, even worse.

I too like the idea of a casset encased disk and if you could put four hours of DVAVI (or a better file on it ) my search would be over. Basicaly all I want is to be able to transfer my camcorder tapes to one of a differnt but at least equal quality media and as long as it is equal in quality a little more time(for the Hollyweird movies) would make it even better, that's why I say four hour.(and really who wants to watch more than four hours in one sitting anyways)

I know that the internet infastructure and technology is not good enough for the whole world to be streaming along at an everybody watch a differnt movie at the same time pace. But I kind of fell for all the hype and still dream of it. If I had to wait five minutes to download a two hour movie to my new futuristic media (in a picture perfect easy to edit format) I think that I wouldn't complain as much (btw I am still on dialup so you know that this is a B I G dream) And I would gladly pay a dollar a movie to download and be able to keep the movie forever. (I would agree that if I lost or damaged the copy before I backed it up that I would have to pay for another download)

Oh well...Maybe someday. Maybe soon.

[Nilfennasion]

The trend in electronics to make everything smaller is diminishing, and for a good reason. Put simply, it is getting to the stage where people with normal-sized hands cannot comfortably operate a lot of electronic devices. I am ever so slightly larger than normal in the hand area, and it turns the size of a keypad or storage card into a major, major consideration when choosing what to purchase. Put simply, I will never buy a digital camera that uses MemoryStick or any of those fingernail sized discs. Compact Flash all the way for me.

Which brings me to a point people seem to miss a lot. Consumers like having tangible products for their money. When you buy a CD or a book, having something there in your hands to manipulate leaves you feeling satisfied. Maybe that would change in a few hundred years, given enough social manipulation in the right direction. However, I would not expect things to get smaller just because they can. It might sound impressive to be able to store the complete works of Stephen King on a disc the size of your smallest fingernail... until you try to pick the bastard up.

[ZAPPER]

The trend in electronics to make everything smaller is diminishing, and for a good reason. Put simply, it is getting to the stage where people with normal-sized hands cannot comfortably operate a lot of electronic devices. I am ever so slightly larger than normal in the hand area, and it turns the size of a keypad or storage card into a major, major consideration when choosing what to purchase. Put simply, I will never buy a digital camera that uses MemoryStick or any of those fingernail sized discs. Compact Flash all the way for me.

Which brings me to a point people seem to miss a lot. Consumers like having tangible products for their money. When you buy a CD or a book, having something there in your hands to manipulate leaves you feeling satisfied. Maybe that would change in a few hundred years, given enough social manipulation in the right direction. However, I would not expect things to get smaller just because they can. It might sound impressive to be able to store the complete works of Stephen King on a disc the size of your smallest fingernail... until you try to pick the bastard up.

I agree about the ergonomics of devices, and the camera is a good example. After following the camera thread here for a while I swung into a camera store to see what had developed (pun) in the pocket digital camera dept. A 5mp camera the size of a pack of smokes by Casio (I think) was the item of intrest. However everything on it in the line of buttons or switches were so small that I had a hard time operating it. Another thing is that I come from the old school of 35mm SLRs and one of the things that is number one, is to hold the camera with two hands to help keep it steady it or ensure a smooth motion when panning. Hell you can barely put two fingers from each hand on it.

Like I said above, credit card size is about perfect IMO for a removable storage device/media. If they can cram more storage into a smaller space, great but put some handles on it to make it useable!

As for movies, if there were an instant or near instant download service that had the selection of Blockbuster at a very low cost per flick ( I mean like a buck or two) I wouldn't mind useing it. I would like to plop down on the couch, pick up the remote, select a genre, then from the list pick a flick and watch it. If it cost two bucks, fine, It aint like I would want to watch it again in the next ten years anyways. I do like tangible things and the bigger the better. I am a man after all and the risk of breaking it or it hurting me is what makes it fun to hold. But with movies, the best part is when they are playing, not when they are sitting on the shelf.

[Wile_E]

You wouldn't see macro-blocks on DVD either if the designers had been realistic about how much data space would be required for 720x576 full-motion video. 10.0 MB/S is pretty paltry when you factor in the amount that soundtracks eat up.

I hope Blu-ray and HD-DVD will fix these problems. I believe blu-ray is supposed to offer 36MB/s bitrate? That isn't even close to DV50 format of 50MB/s. I would like the ability to put DV encoded material on a blu-ray disc. That would mean, no need for encoding to mpeg.

[Nilfennasion]

36 MB/s is not too bad if you're talking a mere doubling of the resolution, but yeah, it doesn't leave a lot of space to go. Uncompressed DV would also be good, although I would probably never use it.

I can just see in fifty years' time when all the devices we are arguing the merits of now are in junk shops. Someone will ask why we made devices so small. Elderly me would grumble at them that people were idiots in these times.