28th January 2010.

Welcome back to my 1st blog of the 2010,with plenty of up and coming junk to see us through the year.

And what a year its going to be and it just so happens to be the 25th anniversary of the Video Recordings Act, i am sure there is going to be events and articles regarding this in many publications, so lets go onwards with my blog.

The Noughties saw many changes in the way we watch films, buy films and the formats we view them on. So I thought what better way to put the decade that saw the demise of many formats to the great retro junk yard of yesterday that is Ebay to bed, is shine a light on those formats, just like the little engine that could, try and try and try to gain a foothold in your home and never leave.

“They think its all over it is now”

Yes folks just as laserdisc was holding its own in the collectors, format in the 90s, with more reasonably priced players, and prices for pal discs at reasonable £20,for those on a budget along comes this upstart called DVD, sticking 2 fingers up at the stuffy overpriced market of laserdiscs, where a box set could set you back a few hundred pounds for a set that may have been produced in limited numbers, come with a script, photos, a book and the films themselves, DVD was its precocious younger sibling, soon to be found in music and film stores, daring to tread where laserdisc didn’t dare go, and taking on VHS on its own turf, this was DVD, that’s not to say DVD didn’t have its own problems early discs were the flipper kind, DVD players the size of breezeblocks, but soon the DVD had shaped up and were shipping out in such numbers that it was out with the old and in with the new as laserdiscs were traded in, & DVD was soon not to be the format of the few, we chosen few , but like legion we are many and invade every home, ending laserdisc as a format, the last laserdisc produced was Sleepy Hollow & Bringing Out The Dead, disc pressing plants were clearing stock at giveaway prices. Laserdisc player production by Pioneer ceased in 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJtLUyWsj4c

“The end is the beginning is the end”

Just as VHS saw off its Betamax competitor in the 80s, dvd was soon to do the same & again as the evolution of formats progressed as blockbusters soon started to devote more of its space to DVD rentals, VHS was still holding its own until a shiny black console tipped the balance in DVDs favour, the PS2 complete with DVD player built in, soon to be the fastest selling console, and driving SEGA from the home console market.

The days of VHS were numbered, especially when in 2005 blockbusters would no longer accept VHS tapes for trade in, and soon after Dixons announced it would no longer sell video players, VHS was dead, those clunky cassettes that hold so much nostalgia for a generation that grew up in a time of the home video revolution, was soon to be sent to the landfill and judging by the amount of tapes in the bargain bins, there needed to be a large amount of room for them all.

At the closure of our local Woolworths store in January 2009 a lonely VHS tape was on a shelf all by its self for an amount of 0.50p, I wonder who bought that for nostalgia reasons, not me i never really liked video, i must have owned 6 video players, most unreliable machines chewing tapes up all in all not a great format.

VHS leaves a large legacy behind it, the time of the video nasty’s, the amount of films released onto video and the sheer amount of films still unreleased & undiscovered to DVD

“A run for your money”

HD DVD vs. BluRay challenge and in the red corner sitting in its case is the challenger HDDVD punching above its weight, with its dual disc format & opposite in the blue corner in its royal blue case is the heavyweight Blu-ray.

The consumers were invited to a prize fight and the draw back being the fight was rigged from the start, but nobody told us.

With Sony backing bluray and Microsoft and Toshiba collaborating with hd DVD, loyalties, studio backing and the industry was at odds who was going to win the format battle of the noughties of which there had been a few other skirmishes with other formats,( more on that later)

When it came to finding hd DVD discs in stores, many seemed to have a poor selection or were understocked, Microsoft had developed a stand alone HD drive, an own goal if there ever was one, but they would have had to produce games on hd DVD discs instead of cd rom based format most likely adding to the delay of the Xbox 360, and gaining a foot hold on the gaming market before the competitor hot on the 360s heels the PS3 came along.

Once the rug was pulled out from under hd DVDs feet, Best Buy and other stores were allowing customers to trade in their hd DVDs for blurays the uk consumer didn’t have that luxury, it was either re purchase on blu ray or stick with the hd format, almost over night hd dvdplayers were halved and then quartered as stores did their best to part with stock, I picked one up for £60.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qFWtLbKrdo

With some great releases on the HD format for next to nothing HD has a lot to offer for very little outlay but would you want another DVD player?

That’s all for part one, in the next part filmdownloads, DVD resistance and the formats that just wouldn’t know when to die.

Nicola.

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