DVD KILLED THE VIDEO

Dixons said that a boom in sales of DVD technology and a slump in sales of video cassette recorders was behind its decision to pull the plug on what was once the pinnacle in home entertainment systems. Sales of DVD players have grown seven-fold in the last five years, with sales at Dixons now outstripping sales of VCRs by 40 to one. VCRs are expected to disappear from Dixons' shelves.

"We're saying goodbye today to one of the most important products in the history of consumer technology," said Dixons' marketing director John Mewett. "The video recorder has been with us for a generation, and many of us have grown up with the joys, and occasional frustrations, of tape-based recording. We are now entering the digital age and the new DVD technology available represents a step change in picture quality and convenience."

The likely death of the video recorder, as reflected in the decision of Dixons not to stock them any more because of the popularity of DVDs, will come as a post-dated relief for millions of adults who claimed never to be able to programme them in the first place. But if they think their techno-problems are over they have another think coming. Video recorders, which enjoyed one of the fastest take-ups of any consumer technology, changed people's lives by enabling television programmes to be recorded while they were out and by enabling films to be watched at home.

At first film studios, fiercely and misguidedly, resisted them believing (as the music industry today does of digital downloads) that they would destroy the whole business. In fact, video cassettes, and now their successor, the DVD, with bigger storage, better quality pictures and instant access without tape rewinds, is giving a new lease of life to the films, just as digital downloads are likely to do to the music industry.

Today's DVD players have not been subjected to the rancorous Betamax v VHS format wars that blotted the birth of VCRs (except geographically, because of a different system in the US). But the next generation of DVDs, where a war is already being waged between Blu-Ray (backed by Sony, JVC and Philips) and HD-DVD (backed by NEC and Toshiba), won't make choice any easier even before technophobes have to learn how to work them.

Choice is complicated further by the highly popular, and very easy to use, Sky+ hard disk video recorder and the growing numbers of hard disk and personal video recorders which remove the need to buy a separate DVD, even though a single one can store dozens of films.

Soon, as they become affordable, these devices will converge with large thin-screen, high-definition digital TV sets on our walls that replicate the cinema experience (without the crackling of pop corn). It is likely that the device Hollywood once thought would kill films will become the place, in the home, where new ones are given their premiere. What goes around, comes around. (Source: Guardian)