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[elmono311]

Wal-Mart is phasing out VHS and plans to have them all gone by February. With Wal-Mart getting rid of icky VHS, that means the format is pretty much dead except for use to tape things (like me since DVD burners and DVRs are too expensive for us right now).

[LostArtofRolando]

wow, Walmart's phasing out VHS?  Definitely a bad omen for tape fiends, and the end of an era, haha.  Never fond of VHS or Walmart, i say good riddance.  THe only reason VHS was my friend was because some guy named Lucas decided not to put some little unheard of movies called Star Wars on DVD until last September.

[RichN]

As long as I can still play what I have, I'm not concerned about VHS leaving.  The price point of DVDs has dropped to where you can get decent movies for $5 on DVD.  But, as elmono pointed out, it's more about taping things until using DVD or Tivo becomes cheaper.

[disnut8]

Anyone remember how Beta tapes were going to be bigger than VHS?

[LostArtofRolando]

I wasn't really around for Beta, but i did some reading at one time or another about them, and my old barber used to have a Beta tapeplayer... i think he only had it for porn though, (he was weird, and thats why he WAS and not is my barber anymore).  Anyways, what i read, I inferred that it was kind of like Apple and MacIntosh... The company who made Beta (sony?) did not want to license it out to anybody so it could keep the price higher or something... anyways, long story short VHS got licensed out and caught on.  Apple didnt start to rebound until these new IPODs, which are singlehandedly keeping the company afloat right now (largest portion of their sales by far is IPODs or accessories for them.  Apple was smart this time and licensed it out to HP and made it functional for both Apple and PC.  The best part of all that though is the ITunes software which is free for both PC and Apple.  It's a nice ripper/burner/mp3 player which i've never had a problem with.  Good Stuff. 
     I guess with the VHS/Beta Apple/PC Thing, Im interested to see what will happen with the HDD/Blu-Ray thing.  May we have another future Beta? 

[elmono311]

Yeah, Betamax was made by Sony. Now we just have to get geared up for the next format war since Sony and Panasonic decided not to play nice and combine the best features of their formats: Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Blu-Ray WILL win the war. It's superior to HD-DVD in every way and... the killer... it's being used in PlayStation 3

[Catfish]

Yeah, Betamax was made by Sony. Now we just have to get geared up for the next format war since Sony and Panasonic decided not to play nice and combine the best features of their formats: Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Blu-Ray WILL win the war. It's superior to HD-DVD in every way and... the killer... it's being used in PlayStation 3

Though, for non-PS3 usage, there's a new format coming out that pwns both HD and Blu-Ray, the question is, how well will THAT catch on, lol