Variety Reports on the Demise of VHS

CHATSWORTH, Calif. – The popular entertainment trade source Variety today marked 2006 as the year the VHS format officially died in the United States.

Diane Garret playfully wrote, “After a long illness, the groundbreaking format VHS has died of natural causes in the United States. The format was 30 years old.

“No services are planned.”

Garret predicted that “high-def formats” and “next generation vidgame consoles” hammered the last nails in VHS’s proverbial coffin. And now, as Garret puts it, “VHS is survived by a child, DVD, and by Tivo, VOD and DirecTV. It was preceded in death by Betamax, Divx, mini-discs and laserdiscs.”

The slow demise of the VHS has certainly been seen in the adult entertainment industry. VHS played an integral part in porn’s “great crossover” in the late 1970’s and early 80’s as the format started to replace film.

Though flourishing through a good portion of 90’s, now VHS has almost all but died out in the adult industry. As an example, this year’s AVN Award nominations went without the Best DVD category, now, considered a relic of days when DVD’s were considered the novelty.

Garret ends her article by saying that “VHS continued to make as much as $300 million a year until this year, when studios stopped manufacturing tapes.”