Post #1130450

2026-04-05 17:19 UTC

VHS stood for nearly 30 years before it was credibly replaced. Just because something was eventually replaced doesn’t mean it was bad. It was an awesome format because it was affordable. You could have always mortgaged a home and purchased a professional deck. There were plenty of other formats that came and went during VHS. Many took away consumers control of content. Only when flash cards came commonplace was the VHS and the ability to make mix and match your own media replicated. You could deck to deck make your own tapes if you wanted and edit with scissors and tape.

Replies (2)

@orclev@lemmy.world 2026-04-05 22:09

It was good for its time, but we need to be careful not to confuse that as an absolute statement rather than a relative one. By modern standards VHS is garbage with many significant problems, it’s just at its time everything else was worse. There were certainly many aspects of VHS that were good some even revolutionary, but it also had many significant flaws.

Open ##1130449
@Jaegeras@piefed.social 2026-04-07 09:41

So, everyone is having a slapfight of confusion over the purposes VHS had. For movies, people were ready as hell when DVD gained ground to change format. DVD has 10 years under VHS, especially when we thought Blu-Ray was going to kill DVD once and for all and when we thought streaming was going to kill it once and for all. But, DVD is going to easily outlast VHS in time. The difference being, VHS was literally ALL we had for its time and for its purpose. DVD, we fall back to because a lot of the other options, like streaming, sucks. However, for camera and studio use, it took nearly longer, so there is a lot more reluctance.

Open ##1984498