VCR And The End Of An Era

By Lee Distad

JVC announced this week that it has ceased production of VCRs. Once existing global inventory is sold through, that’s it.

This is especially newsworthy not only because VHS was such an enduring and successful format, having sold over 900 million units since 1976, but also because I (and I’m sure lots of other people) thought that the company had stopped making them long ago! Granted, it’s not a complete extinction. JVC will continue to make DVD/VCR combos for the near term.

At the risk of sounding overly sentimental, like many other lifers in the CE business, I have warm memories associated with VCRs. The first piece of electronics I ever sold was a Sony VHS VCR. Back in those days, you could make a tidy living just on the commissions from VCR sales. Tapes, too. I still remember pitching the advantages of higher grade and thus more expensive VHS tapes when selling them by the case.

For that matter, as late as the year 1999, I was still selling as many as 100 Betamax cassettes a week, believe it or not. I had four long-time clients in my client binder who were die-hard Betamax owners, and every time my store got a delivery of tapes, I would call each of them up. Whichever of them got to the store first would buy up the lot! They knew each other and all knew the score. It was like a little game between them.

A lot of years have passed since then, and we’ve seen so much technological progress in CE in even the last five years alone. It makes me wonder what technology I’m going to get all sentimental about 20 years from now.

The End of an Era: U.S. Best Buy Stores Say No More Analog TVs

According to a Reuters report, Best Buy's U.S. stores will no longer be offering analog TVs, opting for a digital-only tuner environment. Of course this goes in line with the FCC's decision to stop all analog broadcasts by February 2009.

In Canada, the CRTC has not made a similar mandate, and a spokesperson for Best Buy Canada tells me that the retailer will continue to sell analog products "as long as there is a demand for them".

Although a demand certainly still does exist, there's no telling for how long. After all, even my 60+ year old parents recently expressed to me that they'd like "one of those TVs that you can hang on the wall." Not to mention that both plasma and LCD TVs are available for reasonable prices that even the severely budget-conscious could afford.

That said, I do think it's a good move on Best Buy U.S.'s part to help push lagging customers toward digital TV.

Will the CRTC follow suit with the U.S. FCC and make similar moves for digital TV? Although the organization has taken steps to encourage the adoption of digital TV (like requesting that, by the end of this year, Canadian broadcasters offer at least two-thirds of their TV schedules in HD), there has been no specific deadlines (to my knowledge) that would absolutely ensure that this happens. Stay tuned (pun intended).