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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Last VHS manufacturer to cease production
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Justin Hamaker
Film God
Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004
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posted 07-27-2016 06:02 PM
Although it's been nearly 10 years since the studios stopped releasing movies on VHS (I believe Eragon was the last), it's taken until now for the technology to officially die.
Given that DVD sales didn't really take off until 2002-2003,its kind of mind blowing to think that a ubiquitous technology went from common to obsolete in a span of just 5-6 years. This has to be some sort of record for a consumer product.
Last VHS manufacturer to cease production
quote:
The final nail in the coffin of VHS has arrived. In other news, some people were still using VHS! Per Mental Floss (via ScreenCrush), the last remaining Japanese company to manufacture VCRs, Funai Electric, has announced that it will make its final VCR units this month, bringing an end to the first widespread home video format.
The first VCR (“Videocassette recorder” for you young ‘uns) to use VHS was released in 1976, and it enjoyed immense success throughout the 80s and 90s, until the superior DVD format came along. It seems so long ago now, but VHS was controversial upon first release,as the major movie studios went so far as to try to claim copyright violation for the transference of feature films to home video. Eventually the film industry embraced the home video market, resulting in the Blockbuster boon and many a home movie marathons throughout my childhood via the fuzzy, subpar, but somewhat comforting format known as VHS.
vcrWhile the last film to be released on VHS was Eragon in 2007, apparently people were still buying enough VCRs to keep Funai Electric in business. However, with just 750,000 sales worldwide last year, the company has chosen to cease production and bring a final end to the home video format once and for all.
Some folks continue to collect VHS tapes, with some going for thousands of dollars on eBay. The format is starting to hold a bit of a nostalgic appeal, but will they go the way of vinyl and see a resurgence in the future? I’m doubtful given that the VHS format routinely chopped up the aspect ratio of films and the tape itself can become quite worn and therefore doesn’t have the same playability that vinyl does, but hey, who knows?
So pour one out for VHS. ‘Tis truly the end of an era.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 07-27-2016 06:25 PM
I don't think VHS will do a "vinyl revival," and for the following reasons.
1 - The 525 or 625-line image has a unique aesthetic, but very few would perceive it as some sort of a quality standard in the way that they do with vinyl. I like listening to vinyl LPs, primarily because the RIAA curve (especially when combined with tube/valve amplification) was designed with human hearing in mind, and so subjectively to me, it sounds so much more "natural" than even 96kHz, ultra broad range, mega-fast sampling rate and uncompressed digital. I'm not saying that it's "better," just more human friendly. I don't think you'd find many who would try to make a similar argument about VHS versus the consumer standard, lossy compressed digital video formats that dominate physical media and streaming now.
2 - The complexity of the hardware components involved in recording and reproducing VHS is an order of magnitude above that involved with vinyl LP cutting and playback. There are people who make vinyl lathe cutterheads in their garages - you simply couldn't do that with helical scan head assemblies and all the electronics needed to drive them. I can't see how VHS hardware and media manufacture could be maintained as a boutique operation in the way that the vinyl record can be, and is enjoying a growing afterlife as a result.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-28-2016 12:48 PM
Mike must be lucky. Lots of these go bad, and the rate at which they do depends upon the burner, the blank media, and the storage conditions. Like color film, these disks fade when exposed to light, and also get scratched easily. The -RW disks are especially useless.
I will never defend VHS as being a good format, but it does have reasonably good interchangeability. A tape recorded on one machine will normally play fine in another machine (not necessarily optimally, but it will play). This is not true of optical media at all; a DVD that plays in an Oppo player may or may not play in a Panasonic or Sony player. (Note that I am talking about home-made disks here, not commercially manufactured ones, which generally play properly on any player.)
It is too bad that we no longer really have any formats at the consumer level that are shelf-stable for any length of time. I have my grandparents' 16mm home movies from 1950 and they are still watchable and look great. I have VHS tapes from my family that were shot in the mid-1980s that still play and don't really look any worse than they did when they were shot. Will future generations have any of this? Other than printed photographs, probably not. Digital storage is great in many ways, but I do not trust that most people will go to the trouble and expense to properly maintain their files.
As for the future of VHS, I don't really see the point of it, except for watching material that does not exist in newer, better formats.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 07-28-2016 04:14 PM
quote: Scott Norwood
It is too bad that we no longer really have any formats at the consumer level that are shelf-stable for any length of time. I have my grandparents' 16mm home movies from 1950 and they are still watchable and look great. I have VHS tapes from my family that were shot in the mid-1980s that still play and don't really look any worse than they did when they were shot. Will future generations have any of this? Other than printed photographs, probably not. Digital storage is great in many ways, but I do not trust that most people will go to the trouble and expense to properly maintain their files.
Probably the biggest single cause of people's personal archival material being lost is accidental destruction or disposal: "it got lost when we moved house," etc. etc. If you are motivated to look after something, it doesn't much matter what the medium is. If it's a medium that cannot be "stored and ignored," you're going to educate yourself as to what you have to do.
I still have some files that were created with my first computer, between 1989-92. When 5.25 floppies gave way to 3.5, I copied them while machines that had both types of drive in them were commonplace. From there the 3.5s were copied to Zip cartridges some time in the late '90s, and the contents of those were migrated to portable hard drives in the mid-00s. These files now sit on a NAS RAID, along with many others I've created or received in the last 27 years.
My point is that being motivated to preserve something is 99% of the battle. If you have that motivation, you'll figure out how.
In terms of chemical stability of image/sound media in long-term storage, my guess is that the shellac phonograph record probably comes out on top: with a typical shellac/filler mix for mass-pressed records, there is no special atmospheric requirement for storage, and no autocatalytic decomposition process. But even they have weak points, the main ones being weight and fragility.
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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-29-2016 03:35 PM
Super VHS was marginally but visibly sharper that regular VHS, but they both used the dreadful heterodyne color-under modulation scheme (ptui!) that was shared with U-Matic. And while the hardware era may be finally ending, the legacy of the format still lives: I feel pretty confident in correlating the rise of VHS to a decline in interest in video quality in broadcast and cable operations. I remember all too well when in the late eighties the local cable operator finally broke down under pressure and added some cable channels that the public wanted, but that they themselves considered low-profit. They announced that they would add the channels, but that they would be delivered in “VHS quality”. It was a bandwidth saving scheme, but the rationalization from the company was along the lines of “you don’t mind watching a videotape from Blockbuster, so you shouldn’t mind this”. It went on for years until they rolled out their digital/fiber service. Broadcast, the same thing. While prime-time episodic shows still take some care with presentation (mostly to insure ancillary and foreign sales), it’s unbelievable what kind of garbage video TV news puts out these days, what is considered acceptable. The rise of multi-bond cellular/4G systems like Dejero has only made things worse, the philosophy is basically “just put something on the air, no matter what it looks like”, and don’t EVEN get me started on the amount of cellphone video or poorly set-up DSLRs that are used for origination. I can’t even remember the last time I heard the term “broadcast quality” spoken by a producer or director. Has to be twenty years, at least. Some of them can barely tell when a camera is out of focus. It’s just what they were used to looking at while they were growing up.
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