By Victoria Carnaghan
VCR lovers had better stock up on video cassette tapes while they can, as one of Canada’s favourite new technologies — the DVD player — might soon be the only home entertainment system in town.
A Universal Studios Home Video Canada survey reports as of January, 68 per cent of Canadians aged 18-65 now own a DVD player. This coincides with evidence of a decline in the demand for VCRs.
Over the last two years, videos have become increasingly harder to spot among the rows of DVDs at video rental giants like Blockbuster and Roger’s Video. And while video stores are offering older video tapes for sale at bargain-basement prices, come the New Year, consumers will find it increasingly difficult to rent or buy new video tapes, if at all.
“By January or February, we won’t have any tapes for sale at all,” says Bank Street Blockbuster manager Jeremy Peebles. “We’ve been phasing them out for a while.”
The same will be true for rentals, says Peebles. He says about 90 per cent of rentals at his store are DVDs. Similarly, Roger’s Video manager Jihad Ayoub says his downtown Ottawa store plans to completely phase out video cassettes by next year.
At Audioshop audio-video store on Bank Street, only one VCR model is on display, and it is dwarfed by more than 20 new DVD players, which owner Jeremy Pentecost says are “twice as good.”
“DVD players are becoming less expensive,” says Pentecost, adding that “the DVD player cost is comparative to the VCR and the quality is twice as good.”
Pentecost says DVDs offer twice the resolution than VCRs, and this translates into a clearer picture. Pentecost says movies on DVD are more vibrant and have better detail.“There’s just no comparison,” he says.
DVDs also have many interactive features: extra footage, behind-the-scenes documentaries and subtitle options.
It’s easy to understand why stores are adapting to this new technology. Manufacturers offer DVDs to rental stores for about 12 cents each, says Peebles. “They’re cheaper by far than cassette tapes,” he says. His store only receives new VHS tapes for major realeases, Peebles says. For movies like Spiderman 2, he expects the store to receive eight VHS tapes and about 60 DVDs. “The ratio is ridiculous,” he says. And VHS buffs will not find any cassette copies of the newly released Michael Moore documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11,” nor this past summer’s blockbuster “Supersize Me.”
Ayoub also points out that with the advent of Personal Video Recorders, or PVRs, consumers can now burn digital television programs onto DVD discs. The ability to record a favourite television program is one of the few attributes that has kept VCRs popular, and although Pentecost says PVR systems are currently “cost prohibitive,” their price tags are already dropping and are likely to soon become more common.
Although DVD player sales have skyrocketed in the last two years, many Canadians still own their favourite movies on VHS. Many people have spent years building up huge video archives. Audio Mart manager Sean Tan says this is the reason he still sees many customers who come in for VCR repairs at his Bank Street store.
“People have too many tapes, they still need their VCRs.”
Also, consumers who own older televisions find their sets are unable to support DVD players. Manufacturers like Sony only started offering televisions capable of handling DVDs about 15 years ago, Pentecost says.