Published: December 26, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Last Major American VHS Supplier Goes Out Of Business
By Robert Paul Reyes
When VHS tapes made their debut in the late 70's it was a tremendous technological breakthrough. When I bought my first VHS tape I remember thinking: Wow, I can't believe I'm holding an entire movie in one hand. Before the advent of VHS I went to the cinema almost every weekend, and watching a movie meant loading three huge reels of celluloid into a film projector.
Now we can download scores of movies into our computer hard drive, and even a DVD disc is much more compact than a VHS tape.
The VHS format is as dead as leisure suits and disco. I don't know anyone who has purchased a VHS tape in the last few years. I have many movies on DVD, and until fairly recently I still owned a handful of movies on VHS. But when a friend from my old state of California dropped by to see me, she gave me grief when she noticed my VHS tapes. I thought: Oh God, she's going to tell my old friends in the Golden State that I'm doing so bad that I still watch movies on a VCR. As soon as she left I threw my VHS tapes in the garbage. Now it's only blue-haired old ladies who enjoy their favorite films on a VCR.
I was surprised to learn that there was still a major VHS distributor supplying the American market. But now this last holdout "Distribution Video Audio" is calling it quits at the end of this year.
"Although closing credits for VHS finished rolling years ago, the once-standard home movie format is just now reaching the very end of its tape. The last major American VHS supplier is ditching the tape biz completely at the end of this year - just over a week away.
For most mainstream retailers, the gig was up shortly after A History of Violence, the last major Hollywood movie to be released on VHS, came out in 2006. Retail space was needed to punt more DVDs, which had steadily been cannibalizing the VHS market once the players became affordable.
But as shops unloaded their unwanted VHS inventory, Florida-based Distribution Video Audio was there to scoop up the refuse and make a tidy profit. Distribution told The LA Times it sold more than four million VHS videotapes during the last two years."
The Register
Good riddance to VHS! Barack Obama's first action as president should be to issue an executive order making it a federal crime to own VHS tapes. How can we earn the respect of other nations and how can we instill fear in our enemies if VCRs are still found in American homes?
Robert Paul Reyes is a NewsBlaze writer on Politics, Pop Culture and Pointless Pontificating. Contact him by writing to NewsBlaze.
Robert Reyes
* The views of Opinion writers do not necessarily reflect the views of NewsBlaze
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