VHS 1977-2008
After three decades of bringing us the best in home entertainment, the VHS tape has finally been retired. The format was, up until recently, still being bought and shipped by just one US company, but now even they have layed the, let’s face it, pretty crappy, tape to rest.
I have fond memories of the VHS tape. It was this format that got me into watching movies in the first place. Before VHS came along, I was restricted to watching Walt Disney movies at the cinema and nothing else, but on my frequent trips to the local video rental store with my Uncle in the mid-1980’s, I was able to access the likes of Robocop, Predator and my fave Die Hard, along with tons of over 18-rated material that I shouldn’t really have been watching, for the first time. Hell, I could even watch three or four movies a day if I wanted! All in the comfort of my own bedroom. This is pretty what I did during my teenage years. Girls came second. Still do. I remember going to Blockbuster to hunt down and buy ex-rental tapes to add to my growing collection, and in particlar I remember being one of the first kids in school to own a copy of The Fugitive. I found pride in the fact that I had dozens of obscure movies that nobody else had even heard of. Stuff like the very early Jackie Chan movies or the films of Chuck Norris. It was amazing. I remember in the very early nineties I managed to hook up my VCR to my midi-system in my bedroom, thus giving me my very first home cinema system. I would invite friends around for screenings. It was amazing. Then, DVD came along and we forgot about our old friend.
The last Hollywood film to be released on VHS was David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence back in 2006. By then most video rental outlets had shipped out all of their VHS stock and soley kept DVD, a much cheaper and less space consuming product. One company in the United States bought up most of the remaining VHS stock for very little. That company was Distribution Video Audio Inc, run by Ryan J. Kugler. What Kugler did was re-sell the old VHS stock to discount outlets, making a tiny bit of profit on each tape. He sold VHS cassettes in the millions, and over the years, made a mint. But now, the stock has run out, and Kugler’s Burbank based company is giving away the final tapes to libraries and charities.
“It’s dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt,” said Kugler, to the LA Times this week. “I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I’m done. Anything left in warehouse we’ll just give away or throw away.”
So now we move away from VHS and say goodbye. It isn’t a vintage format that we hold fondly in our memories like we do for vinyl and even the CD. No, our love affair is over. I actually said goodbye to VHS a couple of years ago. I think I got about a hundred pounds for my entire collection on eBay. A dark day.
So the question is, how long has DVD got in the days of high definition and the Blu-Ray disc? Ten years? Will we say goodbye as easily as we have done with VHS? Time will tell, but lets look to the future without forgetting the past and the wonderful times the VHS cassette gave us.
