A friend’s 3-year-old was at my house, and I popped “Dumbo” into the VCR.
When the child’s father came to pick her up, I started to give him the classic Disney movie. My kid thinks he’s too grown up for “Dumbo.” When the dad saw that it was a VHS tape, he said he had no way to watch it at home. Not anymore.
Wow, I’m more out of it than I realized. My older kids, raised in “The Little Mermaid” era, are part of the first generation to grow up with their own movie collection. I have videotapes of my daughter’s ballet recitals.
Sometime while I wasn’t paying attention, the videocassette deck approached extinction. I actually prefer watching movies on tape. When you’re about to fall asleep, press “stop,” and the film will be just where you left it when you wake up.
I’m not a complete dinosaur. I have a DVD player, a combination model with a VCR on one side and DVD on the other.
The demise of the VHS format and the VCR was noted in an article in The Christian Science Monitor in November. Writer Gregory Lamb said that in the first six months of 2005, DVDs accounted for 84 percent of the Blockbuster chain’s rental revenue.
When I walked into the Blockbuster on Broadway in Everett on Thursday, the only video titles available to rent were kids’ movies. Nothing new is coming in on video.
Down the street from Blockbuster is Buy &Sell Video. There, owner Brad Swenson sees customers bringing in entire VHS collections. “They’re upgrading to DVD and selling all their old stuff,” he said.
However a conversation starts these days, it always ends up on the subject of the Super Bowl.
Seahawks fans will want copies of the game, won’t they? Technology is moving so quickly, it’s hard to know whether to pop in a videotape to capture a Hawks victory, to buy a digital video recorder, or to sign up for TiVo, a DVR service.
“You can rush out and buy a DVD recorder for the Super Bowl, but next year Blu-ray will be out,” Swenson said.
I’d barely heard of Blu-ray, a next-generation technology. Swenson said there’s a battle brewing over the next big thing, Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD. He likened it to the war VHS won over the Beta format.
“When Sony’s PlayStation 3 comes out, every kid will have a Blu-ray player,” Swenson said. Well, my kid won’t. Anyway, I’m getting a headache worrying that I won’t be able to watch “The Godfather” if my VCR quits working.
Phil LaGrandeur, owner of All Photo &Video Productions in Mukilteo, plans to record the Super Bowl.
“And I’m sure the team will have it recorded. If we win, there will be real demand,” said LaGrandeur, whose business includes transferring customers’ VHS tapes onto DVD.
His prices vary according to content and how many tapes are transferred. One video can cost $35 to put on DVD, or if a number of them are converted, about $10 each.
When he records weddings and other events, it’s now in a digital format. “Videotapes typically last 15 to 20 years,” he said. “They do deteriorate with age, and may not last more than one generation anyhow.”
LaGrandeur said there are so many different digital formats, the technology takes more know-how. “If people want to be able to record, it’s probably going to take even more reading of the manual.”
Easy for him to say. LaGrandeur, 55, is a mechanical engineer.
“Smart manufacturers will have units that are really simplified,” he added. “The general population wants to plug in and play.”
On Super Bowl Sunday, I’ll just pop in a nearly obsolete videotape, hit “record” and worry about posterity later. Good thing I know nothing about editing out commercials.
“They’re fun to leave in,” LaGrandeur said. “Those commercials are nostalgia of the era, and they’re ingenious little pieces of entertainment. But only during the Super Bowl.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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