It'll take time, just like the way music is still released on cassette but CDs are always the better sellers.
Exactly. A lot of people thought that DVD was going to kill VHS right away, but it didn't. Because it is a recordable format, VHS will be useful for some time to come, and therefore the installed base of VHS decks isn't going anywhere. There is good reason to have
both a DVD player and a VCR. So there will also be a market for prerecorded VHS. Recordable DVD is still several years away from an agreed standard and a price point where it can become a mass-market product.
What DVD killed was
laserdisc, just as CDs killed LPs, at least as mass-market items. The superior play-only format killed the inferior in both cases, while leaving the cheap recordable alternative in place.
But the change is coming. VHS was never a big direct seller to consumers, at least in this country. The trend was moving that way, with more people having bigger TVs and better soundsystems at home. Even widescreen VHS was starting to take off. But then DVD came along. VHS will continue to sell in large numbers to rental stores, and most people who watch VHS will rent their movies. But its days as a retail format for movies are limited. In the past five years I've watched my local Best Buy go from a single rack for DVD to about six aisles for DVD and one lonely half-aisle for VHS. Rumor has it that after Christmas the Best Buy chain is going to drop VHS entirely in favor of DVD. There are still several times as many VHS decks as DVD players in this country, but the people who
buy movies instead of renting them are overwhelmingly DVD users. And with cheap players going for sale prices as low as $50 with manufacturer's rebates (1/20th the price of a DVD player when the format as introduced six years ago) it won't be too many years before there are as many DVD players are there are VCRs. (And those numbers don't count DVD-ROM drives in computers.)
Regards,
Joe
