Circuit City has decided to phase out tapes in their stores. While this is a decision that would have been made anyway, right now is too early to pull the plug on tapes.
Right now, 95 million households have VCR's, while only 30 million have DVD players. Although DVD players start at $65, people are reluctant to buy them for several reasons:
- DVD is a newer technology. It takes a while before the new kid gains as much respect as the others. The VHS format has been in America since 1977, whereas DVD players have not been sold until around 1997. It will take around five years for DVD to be as common as VHS is now.
- Most people will not see much improvement with DVD. Many people still have cheaper TV's that do not have S-video, let alone A/V inputs. The only advantages DVD will give them is continued quality, as DVD's do not degrade over time, and not having to rewind, but it only takes a few minutes to rewind a tape, especially in a newer VCR.
- DVD recorders still cost too much. The reason many people bought VCR's in the first place was because they want to do time-shifting, aka watching shows that were on at one time at another time. A $65 VCR will let them do that, but to get any such functionality with DVD, one would have to pay around $800. For that reason, VHS will be around until at least 2010, when DVD recorders become cheap enough for one to simply not need a VCR anymore.
- You can watch a Japanese tape, but not a Japanese DVD. Both Japan and the US use the NTSC system, and import tapes will play on VCR's here, so why the h-e-double-hockey-sticks can't you play an import DVD? Because of region coding. Unfortunately, most code-free DVD players that I know of are only available in the UK, and they are of the high-end (EXPENSIVE!) kind. Most will not care about this, but many animé fans will.
Circuit City made this decision a bit too early, and they may end up paying for it.