VHS – EOL?

From the Dallas Movie Geeks mailing list, USA Today reports that VHS may be coming to an end:

As a new generation of consumers is lured to the digital format by games and other interactive features, some Hollywood studios are gearing up for the death knell of the VHS cassette. They want to avoid the fate that befell the record industry in the early 1980s, when one popular mail-order house reportedly dumped 2 million eight-track tapes in a landfill because the market had evaporated almost overnight. […]

MGM Home Entertainment has slashed its VHS library, which at one point numbered 1,800 films, to 200. “We didn't want to have a lot of inventory in the marketplace when the bottom dropped out,” says David Bishop, president and chief operating officer. […]

I never collected much in the way of VHS tapes in the first place, though I enjoy buying some movies on DVD. These days, I try to avoid VHS entirely (much of it isn't widescren, for one thing).

When I was back in Pittsburgh over Christmas, my family went to Giant Eagle (a local supermarket chain) to rent some movies. Pittsburgh isn’t exactly a city of early-adopters, but there was still a sizable DVD section there. I suppose I'll have to convince my parents to buy a DVD player someday ;).