Comments on: The VHS to DVD transition and cost as a factor

By: walt

walt — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:10:39 +0000

(Twiddles thumbs innocently and chooses to say nothing about cable company competence…noting that he’s twiddling those thumbs in front of a computer connected via AT&T DSL, even though theoretically cable modem might be faster, if also more expensive…)

By: Jon Gorman

Jon Gorman — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:37:12 +0000

Oh, just to clarify, the cable company is not doing the best job of representing the issue. I realize we really don’t need anything…or shouldn’t need anything. The cable service should be just fine.

Not that I’d accuse them of doing it purposefully….I mean, they probably are just incompetent .

By: walt

walt — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:30:44 +0000

Ah, now, your second paragraph raises a HUGE issue–if only because it’s not one that the press has focused on. We’ve been told all along, “if you have cable, no need to do anything.” If that turns out not to be true, there will indeed be hell to pay. I don’t remember any warnings from Concast–er, Comcast. (Of course, if we find that, when we do go digital, we can get the broadcast nets on an indoor antenna, Comcast goes bye-bye in any case.)

By: Jon Gorman

Jon Gorman — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:25:55 +0000

Heh, I wasn’t seriously arguing very much in the favor of VHS. It was more intended to be a humorous reflection. I do wish there was a bit of a better alternative to DVR/DVD recording, if only because of all the stupid broadcast protection. I don’t like the idea of not knowing ahead of time if I can or cannot record something. That day happens it’ll be even likelier we’ll stop using cable.

Oh, and I do think there will be many annoyed people as cable companies switch, particularly in rural areas. You can do consumer education all you want, but the folks most likely to be affected are also probably the ones who don’t make regular trips to Best Buy. Wait till they realize the cable service they’ve had for years and the nest of cable wires they have stop working. I know the warnings we’ve gotten from our cable company look a lot like junk mail. (Oh, look, you’ll have to pay us more for a digital box. yay!).

By: walt

walt — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:55:00 +0000

Seth, That’s a good point–except that some of those recycled DVD players are burnouts. While I recognized that our multidisc Sony was a mistake immediately (the pointless multidisc feature just slowed it down), we didn’t replace it until the laser started failing. (First everything shifts toward the blue…then nothing.)

Still, if there is a recycling center and a staff member can afford the 10 minutes (or so) per player to check, and the library has the space…that might be plausible.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:22:11 +0000

“probably buy a fleet of cheap DVD players …”

Don’t buy them – recycle them. Almost every time I go over the local community recycling depot (to get rid of stuff that isn’t picked up curbside), I see DVD players and VHS players in their pile of electronics to be recycled. People just throw them away these days. It’s not even worth selling on E-bay.

You could loan the DVD *and* a DVD player, and if the player doesn’t come back, it’s no problem.

By: walt

walt — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:40:03 +0000

It’s not at all surprising that VCRs are more expensive than DVD players now. They’re considerably more complex mechanically. Mostly, though, there isn’t much of a market, so there aren’t many competitors left, so… DVDs are pretty much at the peak of circuit integration and known-item manufacturing, helped along by the fact that the basic drive is so similar mechanically to a CD drive. One plausible alternative is a combo VCR/DVD unit but those aren’t dirt cheap either…

Actually, most DVD players should include the same boring old cables as the VCR–but they have other options too. Still, I agree that setup can be a problem–nowhere near as much of a problem as these folks will have come 2/09, to get any TV at all.

We still have our S-VHS VCR–and the “S” is a key letter there: It always did produce near-broadcast-quality recordings, so we’ll keep using it until (unless) a DVR makes sense. (I’m not really thrilled about having a hard disk running 24/7, sucking power all the time…) And when we got a replacement S-VHS VCR, it cost more than a Blu-ray player would today, even ignoring inflation.

I’m neither advocating that libraries dump their videocassettes nor necessarily saying it’s ideal that VHS has essentially disappeared. The latter isn’t surprising: DVD wins not only on quality but also on cost and speed of production and on real ecological issues (e.g., comparing the materials required to make a DVD vs. a videocassette and the fuel required to ship one across the country).

I’m just saying that it’s happened–and that, of several reasons libraries might want VHS to stick around, people’s inability to afford a DVD player is probably overstated as a factor.

If a given item circulates more in VHS than in DVD, fine–but you’re not going to be able to replace the VHS in most cases.

By: Jon Gorman

Jon Gorman — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:45:34 +0000

Actually, it seems recently VHS players are more expensive than DVD. I only mention this because after having our old one finally die on use we decided to scout out for another. There are two reasons we finally decided to still get a VHS player. First, we still have some VHS laying around. (Yes, I really should have figured out some way to transfer these before the old one broke. Lesson learned.) Second, we’d still like a relatively hassle free way to get recordings.

Yes, we could join the modern age and get tivo, pay extra to the cable company to get a settop that has dvr, or just buy a dvr unit. But those are all still more expensive than tape…for now.

You know another possible problem? All the folks in a certain bracket who nephew configured their system twenty years ago. They had to replace the vhs fifteen, which luckily he was home for college to do. These new-fangled DVD players have scary connectors and apparently don’t just take cable. They’ll wait till someone else can come and setup their system for free .

I’d be interested to see circulation of VHS vs DVD. Then check to see what happens when there is a copy in both VHS and DVD.