As DVDs abound, start clearing storage space for your VCR
By Julie Hinds
KRT Campus

It’s no use hitting the pause button. Your VCR is on the fast-forward track to becoming obsolete.

Everywhere you look, the writing is on the wall. At video rental stores, VHS tapes are being crowded off the shelves by DVDs. Home electronics stores are scaling back on VCRs and giving DVD players the prime display space.
The week before last, a Detroit grocery chain unloaded a limited number of name-brand VCRs for $39.99.

KRT Campus

How the mighty have fallen. Not so long ago, VCRs were still a respected luxury item. In a 1997 survey, they were named the No.1 invention that has made life easier for Americans.

And today? They’re a few aisles over from the dog food and paper towels.
Here we go again. Whenever a new technology emerges as a must-have item, an old technology must take a slow, sad journey to history’s junkpile. It’s a trail littered with the carcasses of Victrolas, black-and-white TVs, eight-track tapes and Betamax recorders.

For the humans who own the machines, the trip isn’t always easy. For each person who rushes to buy the latest gizmo, there’s someone else who holds off and harbors twinges of sorrow and resentment over having to make a change.

Already, some consumers are experiencing the techno-version of the textbook stages of grief as they prepare for the VCR’s demise.

First comes the anxiety. Symptoms include feeling like a loser because you don’t have a DVD player and fretting over the fate of the dozens of home movies and entire seasons of “Star Trek” you’ve amassed on videotape.

“People are concerned about it,” says Gary Reichel, co-owner of Thomas Video in Clawson, Mich., which stocks mainstream films and cult favorites. “They’'ll come in and go, ‘Oh, DVD, I hear it’s really good, but I’ve got all these movies on VHS. I don’t know what to do.’ They’re obviously a little worried.”

Then comes denial. Judy Dery, an actor from Detroit, tapes programs on her VCR because she works evenings at a local theater. When she comes home, she unwinds with dinner and a tape.

Who needs DVD? Not her.

“I’m not about to switch, nuh-uh,” says Dery. “I’m not spending $100 on a DVD player, because I’d have to buy a new TV. My TV is 25 years old and doesn’t have a plug for a DVD. I don’t need high-quality this and that. I’m fine with my VCR.”

Then comes acceptance. You purchase the DVD player. Finally, you see the light.

“I’d like to talk to those people who are hanging on to their VCRs, because I need to straighten them out,” says Paul Cook of Bloomfield Township, Mich., a portfolio manager for Munder Capital Management’s NetNet Fund who made the switch to DVD early on and has given away most of his movies on VHS. “I look at a VCR machine as somebody else would look at a record player. I have no use for them.”

Don Heth, a DVD devotee who lives in Birmingham, Mich., urges all VCR owners to visit a friend with a DVD player and spend two hours watching what they’re missing.

“Some people are very happy driving a Pinto,” he says, reaching for a comparison to VCRs. “But if you can get a bigger engine and better brakes, you should. It's an enhancement to your lifestyle.”

Heth is sold on the superior picture and sound quality of DVDs and the extras that movies on DVD contain, such as alternate soundtracks and scenes from the cutting-room floor.

He’s not sentimental about life with VCRs.

“We’re the generation that has ‘12:00’ blinking across the country, because we don’t know how to work them. If we do manage to tape a TV show, we forget about it and tape over it three weeks later. I must have a million tapes where I have no idea what I put on them.”

If you have warmer feelings toward your VCR, that’s perfectly normal too. People often stay attached to a technology that has peaked.

“We’re profoundly techno-nostalgic,” says Jerry Herron, director of American Studies at Wayne State University. “We love to tinker with old cars and restore old radios. We buy vintage TV sets to signify our cool, ironic stance. We built the Henry Ford Museum to celebrate old machines.”

Ten years from now, aging hipsters may relive the past by throwing VCR parties, Herron predicts. “Everyone would dress up in clothes from the ‘80s, play John Hughes movies and eat microwave popcorn.”

Ten years is also how long the VCR is expected to stick around. Until recordable DVD technology permeates the mass market, the VCR’s ability to tape TV programs will help it stay viable. Its life span also could be stretched by consumers who are reluctant to try new systems and those who want to avoid the hassle of converting their tape collections to DVD.

“I usually tell people to relax when the future of VCRs comes up,” says Reichel. “For now, if you’ve got a great VHS collection, you might as well hang on to it.”

To get a sense of the fate of VCRs, think back to the lingering decline of turntables and vinyl records, says Stephen Jacobs, an assistant professor of information technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

“We’ve gone through this before and survived,” jokes Jacobs.

Jacobs says two types of people will have the hardest time making the adjustment: VCR diehards, who’ll keep insisting their technology is better even as it’s kicked to the curb, and videotape collectors, who've compiled vast quantities of stuff that’s meaningful to them.

“These are people who’ve taped every episode of ‘Friends’ or ‘This Old House,’ whatever,” says Jacobs. “To have to rebuild that collection is daunting, just as it was to go from vinyl to cassettes to CDs. You've invested all this time and a significant chunk of money.”

One day, older-model VCRs may be treated like vintage cars, since a few aficionados already are collecting and repairing them.

“A lot of those machines were built like tanks,” says Reichel. “The motors in them, they were so heavy. The ones they make now are light as a feather. Those old models, you could run them forever.”

But don’t start a classic VCR club yet. Not for a few more years.

“There’s no reason to walk away from your VCR now, because you can keep it and use it,’ says Jacobs.

“It can coexist with your DVD player peacefully.”

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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002