# Will DVD format disappear like VHS has? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 21, 2010, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209 "2010-03-21T04:21:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Todderbob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@Todderbob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Todderbob)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209/61 "2010-03-22T23:41:23Z")
> [@fusoya](#): > > Also, one advantage that VHS still has for kids is they are physically stronger. Even though the tape and moving parts themselves can wear out the more they get played, a kid is going to have a harder time destroying than they will by mishandling a DVD disc. Also, VCR’s are simpler for kids to use - most tapes just start playing the moment you pop them in - no menus or any of that other stuff. > > I imagine there’s still a tiny niche of “new technology scares me!” old people who are still stuck on VHS. One of my grandfathers didn’t get a DVD player until a year or two ago (and he used to have one of those old-people TVs too - the kind that sit on the floor and are enclosed in a wooden case - do THOSE still get made?), and my other grandfather NEVER owned one (then again, all he ever watched was sports and Wheel, so they didn’t even use their VCR either). Fortunately, they’ll die out pretty soon and be replaced with people who are at least used to the concept of optical media, menus and harddrives. DVD’s can be, and sometimes are, made with “pop in and play” functionality. VHS’s need to be rewound, and it’s not uncommon for them to get stuck in the player if you pull them out incorrectly/too soon/the correct way, and the tape to get ruined. I know kids younger than 5 who can properly handle DVD’s. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2010, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209/62 "2010-03-23T00:27:33Z")
> [@The\_Shroud](#): > > Then the public is misinformed. Nobody has to throw away DVDs; they’re backwards compatible. It’s a very different situation than the upgrade from VHS to DVD. The first-gen Blu-Ray players available here _weren’t_ backwards compatible, though, and that’s scared a lot of people off because they’re still convinced that’s true. You and I know it isn’t, but the general public don’t, despite people like you and I trying to convince them otherwise. > [@](#): > > And of course the improvement is subjective, but objectively the horizontal resolution is 2.25 times greater. It doesn’t take a perfect prescription to see the difference on increasingly larger screens. I read somewhere that the “average” consumer in Australia has a 32" LCD TV. At that screen size, in an “average” lounge, I really don’t think Blu-Ray has enough advantages over DVD (especially once you factor the cost in) to topple DVD any time in the immediate future. > [@](#): > > And then when your favorite new movie comes out in disc format, and the difference in cost between DVD and Blu-Ray is negligible (which it already is here in the U.S.), you’re going to buy the Blu-Ray. It has a lot more inertia than standalone products like Laserdisc could have. I should mention a new Blu-Ray movie _starts_ at $45 here and they’re often closer to $50 or $60, depending where you go. A new DVD is $25-$35, so for most people Blu-Ray fails the cost/benefit test. > [@](#): > > I have a feeling (in other words, can’t find a cite right now) that Blu-Ray adoption is already higher than Laserdisc at its peak. For one thing, Laserdisc was always priced for connoisseurs; my Blu-Ray player cost $100. The players are coming down in price but the movies are still priced for connoisseurs or rich show-offs, and most video libraries have a tiny selection of rentable Blu-Ray films. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2010, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209/63 "2010-03-23T15:35:19Z")
> [@IAmNotSpartacus](#): > > What? Are you suggesting DVDs have some magical properties that prevent them from aging or degrading? I would be surprised if archival quality DVDs consistently made it to 20 years, and certainly not the consumer grade crap that is sold at Best Buy, Fry’s etc. The first two CD’s I bought in 1985 still play fine. I ripped one the other day and - no errors. It’s so old it has sub-chapter points too. All the warnings about how discs degrade… maybe they will eventually, but not the 10 to 20 years some were yelling about. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2010, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209/64 "2010-03-23T15:42:34Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > HDMI cables are not readily obtained in Australia for anything like $10, unless you buy them off eBay, which isn’t as popular here as it is in the US for various reasons. The going rate for an HDMI cable in Australia from a retailer is AUD$50-$80, and my cite for most people not using them is years of experience in electronics retail and not selling a lot of them to people, along with not knowing anyone who does use HDMI cables obtained from anywhere except either with their player or a friend/family member in the electronics business. Even in Canada, palces like Best Buy try to sell you HDMI “Monster Cables” for $80 to $120, and the cheapest are $40. If you scrounge around, yo occasionally run across deals like the Superstore $6.99 for 6-foot HDMI. It’s digital, so the signal either works or not. Quality has nothing to do with the result. > [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > “Vast” improvement is relative. (And, FWIW, I have an LCD TV like most other people I know). It might be _an_ improvement, but it’s not enough of an improvement to make me or anyone else I know throw away their DVD player and replace it with a Blu-Ray player. There’s also a fair bit of consumer backlash against Blu-Ray from people saying “Come on, I just got rid of all my VHSes and replaced them with DVDs. I’m not getting rid of my DVDs to replace them with Blu-Ray.” Too true. The first time I had a friend over and he listened to a CD, in 1985, he ran out and bought his own. We were listening to a digitally recorded disc of classical piano music, and he was amazed that he could hear the very quiet piano pedal squeaks during lulls in the music. A quantum leap from vinyl. I agree, BR is not enough of that leap. CD’s greatly benefitted from people rebuying their record collections. DVD, similarly from people loading up on classics. There’s nothing in my collection except maybe one or two discs that I HAVE TO HAVE on the somewhat enhanced BR. In fact, in a store I often have to stop and look closely to see… are they playing HD or regular DVD? The magic is not there… ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2010, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209/65 "2010-03-23T15:58:05Z")
> [@gladtobeblazed](#): > > No, I’m not sure how resolution and bitrate are related, perhaps you could explain? I don’t claim to be an expert at this, but from what encoding I have done myself on video files I know that both resolution and bitrate affect the quality of video. And yes, I know there are other codecs that are used for compression. All audiovisual tech is compressed unless you are using an original CD format. The processing power required to decode is much chepaer than the storage and bandwidth needed for uncompressed. Most such compression throws away some detail, but in return, makes the size much smaller. An MP3 compresses to 1/10 the original size. Your digital camera (unles you are a RAW format afficionado) compresses 3 bytes per pixel to about 1/10 or 1/20 its size and the picture quality is still amazing. MPG and similar take advantage of teh fact that motion pictures repeat elements frame after frame; sending a keyframe and differences for a dozen or two frames saves extraordinary amounts of data; plus the pictures are compressed. Thus, a 3 hour movie with 5.1 sound fits on a 9GB disc, while an uncompressed stero CD is 600MB. ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2010, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209/66 "2010-03-23T16:02:06Z")
> [@JKilez](#): > > Your math is off by a factor of 8. The number is roughly 1.2 MBps which is approximately 9.4 Mbps. That rate, however, is for MPEG2 which is not as good at low bandwidth video as the newer codecs. :smack: Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![phreesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2010, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209/67 "2010-03-23T17:24:20Z")
Physical media is dying. Quickly. There will be huge swaths of the population that skip Blu-Ray completely and jump right to digital downloads solely. iTunes variants (Netflix, etc) will supply a large amount of people, cable companies through PVRs, and some new tech companies will drive the content to people. For the average American, books, newspapers, magazines, TV, Music and movies will mostly come from digital sources in twenty years or less. I am not an early adopter and 2010 marked the end of my CD collection. I am 100% digital now. I expect to do the same for all my movies by 2013 at the latest. I could do it now if I was sufficiently motivated. That’s what’s the key. All technology to eliminate the use of DVDs exists TODAY. We just need costs to come down and distribution networks to ramp up. I think the value of digital downloads of movies exceeds the value of purchased DVDs/Blu Rays by 2013 or 2014. And to the people who cry and moan that the quality of today’s streaming video doesn’t match true HD, you realize you’re in the extreme minority of people who watch movies, right? People don’t really care about the difference. They care about cost and convenience. The difference in quality is not generally a concern. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Evil\_Prince\_Zorte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@The\_Evil\_Prince\_Zorte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Evil_Prince_Zorte)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2010, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209/68 "2010-03-24T00:37:16Z")
Anything that is 720p 1080i or 1080p is HD no matter how much it is compressed or what the quality is. There are always the same number of pixels. The difference is how much data is used to define those pixels. Each one might be called out individually (uncompressed) or there might be a scheme that says “The next five pixels are like this one”. You can’t go entirely by bandwidth either. H.264 can keep more detail in less data than older codecs. The trade-off is it takes more processing power to decode it, but that is being handled more and more by graphic cards rather than the CPU. Current bandwidth might not be enough for all or media to be downloadable, but as broadband grows, the amount of bandwidth needed to stream high quality media will drop due to improvements in compression. Everything will be compressed, but more compression doesn’t always have to mean less quality. An advantage of downloaded content is that improvements in compression and resolution won’t require new standards for physical media and format wars. Just downloaded software and firmware updates. ---
**Author:** ![Khendrask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3e96dc/32.png) [@Khendrask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khendrask)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2010, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209/69 "2010-03-24T01:41:05Z")
Just a thought… EVERY storage technology will eventually become obsolete, at least within out lifetimes. Density increases, encoding changes, processing speed increases… 20 years from now will be as different as 20 years ago was. We’ll probably get to multi-phasic holographic storage within the next 20 to 50 years, at which point you could store the Library of Congress on a crystal the size of a thumb drive now. The point to worry about, is when technology STOPS getting better. Then we’ve either figured it all our, or are in our decline, and the roaches will take over. Regards [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-dvd-format-disappear-like-vhs-has/533209.md?page=3)