Studios aim to do away with VHS format by the end of 2006

Since the
VHS tapes hit the market about 28 years ago, VHS has played a major role for movie purchases and rentals and the majority of consumers still use them for making recordings today.  However, the entertainment stalwart of North American TVs recons that the VHS tape will be killed off by the digital revolution.  So far, many manufacturers have stopped making VHS tapes and most of the movie industry, including 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. will phase them out by the end of 2006.  Most rental stores have either completely phased out VHS rentals or just keep a small supply.

So far,
80% of Canadian homes have a DVD player.  Back in 1999, VHS sales tape revenues exceeded DVD sales revenues by about 4 to 1.  Now this is the other way around, by a factor of close to 12 to 1.  According to Newman, DVD sales started off slowly due to playability issues with certain players, discs being easily scratched as well as the player’s high pricing, however these issues have been dealt with since then.

As the entertainment industry is preparing for the next generation of optical discs (HD DVD and Blu-ray) to be launched next year, they are now anxious to do away with VHS altogether.  However, while these next generation discs promise better picture & sound quality over the current DVD generation, the initial battle between the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats may hinder sales, since it was not until the battle between VHS and Betamax had ended that the popularity of video tapes skyrocketed.

Source: Canada.com – Technology