It’s time to face the fact that VHS won’t be making a comeback. While video tapes might still hold a special place in the hearts of a select few, there’s really no use clinging on to the past – especially when you can embrace the future by doing a transfer of VHS to DVD. If you’re about to go down this route, here are four reasons why you can rest assured that video tapes won’t be making a comeback.
1. Availability
For VHS to really make a come back, shops would have to get on board with the idea if they were ever to make it back into the mainstream. However, this is very unlikely. The majority of outlets were happy to wave goodbye to video tapes upon the introduction of DVDs as their popularity grew. Shops went from selling just VHS, to selling VHS and DVD of the same film, to eventually just the DVD. Shops will always try to give customers what they want, and they saw the decline in the public’s want for VHS so eventually stopped stocking them.
The last film released on VHS was back in 2006, so more than ten years later it’s not very likely they will be put back into production. The only places you’re likely to see VHS for sale is charity shops and car boot sales, and as time goes by it’s likely that this will eventually come to an end, too.
2. Degradation
VHS just wasn’t meant to stand the test of time. Not only did it quickly fall out of favour with the general public once DVDs were on the scene, but the actual tapes were – and still are – prone to degradation. This, of course, makes them unattractive to modern consumers. The tapes were particularly susceptible to damage in environments where there was just the slightest bit of moisture. Comparatively, DVDs are much more durable and can last longer when kept in a variety of different environments.
3. Compatibility
These days technology is sleek, compact and generally compatible with each other. For instance, disk drives on laptops and computers cater for all DVDs, as well as a lot of game consoles. This isn’t the case for VHS tapes and most people no longer own a VHS player. Whilst you could maybe still find one in a charity shop or online, chances are it will be incredibly old and unreliable. Unlike record players that are still in production and have made a resurface, it’s very unlikely that the same will happen to VHS when the format is just so inferior to the likes of DVDs.
4. Ease of Use
Lets face it, VHS tapes are just not very good. You have to rewind them after watching, they’re prone to getting damaged from the likes of pausing the video too much and the tape itself is incredibly fragile. DVDs offer so much more in terms of what you can do. You can pause, rewind, fast forward, skip, skip back and go back to the main menu to your heart’s content without worrying about damaging the disk. Also, alongside the film itself DVDs contain all kinds of special features and extras that you just don’t get on VHS.
Embrace the future!
Old technology has been known to make a come back, such as the record player or the Polaroid camera. But the difference is that these technologies offer something that new technologies don’t. A lot of people prefer the way music sounds coming out of a record player, and people like the novelty of getting their photos instantly out of a Polaroid camera. VHS tapes just don’t have any unique benefit that can revitalise people’s love for them.
Fear not, you don’t have to wait for an unlikely comeback to happen before you can watch the footage on your old video tapes. Instead, you can transfer what’s on your VHS to DVD and just watch it that way instead. For more information, contact us today.