Last ditch effort to save a dying format. Look at the price, fer cryin’ out loud! Anybody remember S-VHS?
You can get a DVD recorder with a 40Gb hard drive.
Face it VHS, you’re dead.
Dead? Right. So all of the millions of VCRs out there now are useless, right?
Maybe it’s “dead” to high-end techies, which I suspect has been the case for a while, but not for the average consumer, especially since no one in the right mind will spend $1000 for that DVD recorder unless they absolutely positively have to be on the cutting edge of technology AND have money to burn, since the price will come down at some point.
Will a DVD recorder record HDTV broadcasts at full resolution?
Also, I am sure that VHS players will be around for quite some time, there is too much software available to abandon the format, including home movies etc.
We still have our record player and our records (and use them too). I know other people who do the same thing. But don’t you consider, for all intents and purposes, that records are “dead”?
Hell, I can buy Rob Zombie’s newest album on vinyl, which I guess means that records are just comatose. 
But even though you can still buy new records and many people still have record players, cassettes, CDs, etc have replaced them (and even cassettes are on their way out).
Relatively soon, VCRs will be in a similar position to record players, but I believe they’ll manage to gimp around for a long, long time.
I think the argument can be made, though, that record players have a superior sound quality than CDs. Or something. Anyway, I don’t think there’s any way to justify that VHS is better than DVD, besides current availability of software, current relative cost differences, and current ease of recording. Once those factors even out (or become negligable), I don’t think there’ll be a way to justify VHS.
So, I’ve touched a nerve. Sorry, bout that, Chief. 
Let me try again.
VHS may not actually be dead, but the end is in sight.
As each year goes by, DVDs gain quickly on VHS tapes and will eventually overtake them. As the technology gets cheaper, recordables will do the same to the VCRs.
DVD technology has gained acceptance much faster than VCRs or CDs.
With other devices such as TiVO-type PVRs (personal video recorder), perfect digital copies are possible. I’m sure it won’t be too long before DVD-R units CAN record HDTV signals without degradation. Until HDTV standards are worked out, I wouldn’t worry a lot about that, though.
All the digital technology is slowly coming together so that, one day, all (or nearly all) of the various digital functions will be available in one unit.
As for the price of the Panasonic. I have seen online prices as low as $750. Remember when VCRs were $1000+?
If you told anyone at Sony in 1976 that a)Beta would lose out to VHS, and b)VCR’s would be available for as low as $50, they would have thought you crazy. So don’t be surprised when DVDRs are down to the sub $200 price range.
BTW, I know quite well that “popular does not equal good” except in the world of economics.
If you want to do a little reading and like the challenge, you can record HDTV broadcasts with a $300 HDTV capture card for your PC and burn yourself a copy with a $250 DVD-R/W drive.
I’ll keep my VCR anyway, just because I have 200+ videos at home. Working at blockbuster for a couple of years can really cause a desire to collect films. I left, but then my sister started there, so I still had access to her discount. Movies kept piling on. Once I get a DVD player, then I might change over, but not until then.
Low end digital video recorders like TiVO use lossy video compression in storing programs. The loss of quality is quite noticable to many people, including me. Note that digital satellite and digital cable also use such methods, also with a quite serious loss of quality. And that’s on top of the loss of quality of going from analog (which is Real Life) to digital in the first place.
People are in love with the term “digital” nowadays despite it being inferior to analog.
The issue is media. Analog media has had problems. Hiss on tape, pops on records and VHS. Well, VHS was total crap to begin with. The issue is media, not format. Never, ever, join those mindless masses who think “Oh, digital, so that’s going to be better, right?”
Not quite. It’s a similar comparison to vinyl vs. CD. Right now I own a fairly low-end RCA DVD player and an aging Philips 27" TV. Most of the time the image and sound quality is dramatically better than pre-recorded VHS movies. But often I get horrible Moire patterns (like a JPG image that’s been greatly increased in size) and the “jaggies”, which are non-existent with VHS. So, just as some people prefer the “warmth” of vinyl, there are probably just as many who hate the above disadvantages of current DVD playback enough to prefer VHS. I don’t know if progressive scan eliminates these digital defects, but right now it’s not a clear home-run for the DVD format.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a small percentage of VCR owners actually record their own content, either for time-shifting or archiving broadcast shows. So it will take quite some time until DVD recording “trickles down” to a decent price point, especially if TiVO sales continue to rise.
VHS is still way more convenient and economical for time-shifting programs and sharing video.
Although most of the TV that I grab is in VCD or DVD format, 95% of the sharing that I do is VHS… People lend me tapes, and if I want to share the love, I transfer stuff onto VHS for them.
Personally, I would buy a DVHS unit long* before I considered buying a stand-alone DVD recorder. A stand alone DVD recorder wouldn’t give me anything I don’t have already, (for a much lower price) with my PC, but the idea of being able to stick 24 hours of video on one reusable tape really appeals – especially since the same tape could be used to record analog stuff for my friends. I hope that this format catches on enough that the price comes down a bit.
I did see a combo VHS/DVD player for about $160 at Radio Shack today; not bad for saving space, though you could get them separately for not much more.
VHS is definitely on the way out, at least in terms of popularity - there will always be those who think it’s superior to other forms, if only for nostalgia’s sake.
When DVD recorders are under $200, things’ll really take off…
A couple of advantages to VHS not mentioned (I think):
1)robustness: less hassles with skipping and compatibility issues or with dirty DVD’s.
2)stopping in the middle of a cassette:With a VHS it starts where I stopped but not with the DVD (unless you keep it on).
Still I agree that VHS will die eventually but not for a couple of decades at least. Even apart from home recordings there are many older films which will never get a DVD release so some movie buffs will want a VHS player for a long time.
Most DVD players I have seen (including mine) will start at the point where last watched, even if you turn the unit off, unless you remove the disc.
Boy, color me stupid. I don’t know how to do that with mine… 
Neither do I. I have a 60 dollar Apex so maybe it doesn’t have this feature.
Aside from the hardware, fewer stores are carrying VHS movies. Circuit City has eliminated them from their retail shops – you can still order them online, but don’t go looking for them on the shelves.
There’s an interesting article in Wired about the rise of digital media.
2002 was the first year where DVD player sales exceeded VHS player sales. But digital camcorders aren’t projected to overtake analog ones for another couple of years.
For perspective, portable CD player sales exceeded those of portable tape players starting back in 1995, but apparently the sale of portable tape players isn’t declining all that much. They’ve consitently sold around 8 million players a year for the past three years.
Inferior to what analog? C-Band satellite maybe, but most of us don’t have that much money to blow. Otherwise, I’ve heard nothing but favorable comparisons of compressed satellite streams to analog cable. Maybe if you had a fancy rooftop antenna, you could get some pretty results over the air, but it would only be the major networks.