Sunday, February 17, 2008

And The Winner Is...


Remember these?
For you youngerish readers, this is a video tape in Betamax format, as opposed to the VHS format you still remember.


I remember the old days, going to the rental store, and there was Beta on one side, and VHS on the other. The battle tween two formats was raging, and buying a player was a gamble because you weren't sure who was eventually gonna win. And the players weren't near as affordable in those days as the latest tech is now days.

Lately, the battle has been among HD DVD and Blue-ray. I tend to stay in my cave,avoiding new technology, so never really got myself involved in this latest mano a mano.
So, now we have a winner. Well, at least y'all do. (Remember, I stayed out, and held firm to standard DVD.)Toshiba is pulling out, leaving the field to Blue-ray.

Whatever.
Just so long as machines can still play the latest thing along with my soon to be obsolete DVD discs, I don't care who wins.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who are you kidding? I remember further than that - those big-ayss video disks. You rented the disks and the player for a weekend. Like a record on crack. And tempermental - watching a movie on one of those was a production in and of itself.

As I recall, that technology died VERY quickly when VHS and Beta cassette players came onto the scene. Good times...good times...

Gino said...

that makes you the only person i know who had video disc. those are things i only heard about.
i think ebay still sells them.

Jade said...

My brother in law had a laser disc player, but that was between VHS and DVD.

As to BR discs... they won't play on a regular DVD player, you'll have to get a blue ray... but your regular DVD's will also play on a blue ray player.

And YAY! The BR player I got for Christmas wins! WOO! Now I just need "Dune" to come out in BR and I'll be all set.

Brian said...

This constant format shifting goes a long way towards explaining the apparent planned obsolescence of every DVD player I've ever owned. I'm on my third one since 2002, which is ridiculous. And the current one has always been buggy...the video signal drops whenever the picture is too dark.

I can see replacing a cell phone that is constantly being jostled in my pocket and dropped that often, but a DVD player just sits in my living room.

Mr. D said...

8-Tracks. Now that was some technology. You'd get 2/3 of the way through a song, it would fade out, then you'd here a clunk and it would start up again, but usually in a different place. Then again, some bands should only be heard on 8-Track, like Mountain and Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow.

Anonymous said...

LOL.... 8-tracks.

Sometimes, the tunes would be playing ( on a cassette you just bought), there would be that same "clunk", and you`d end up pulling out the cassette with a trailing mess looking like a bundle of brown silly-string.

The player I had in my '67 VW Bug needed major TLC. Usually, I`d have to wedge a piece of cardboard in with the cassette to keep it playing steadily.

I still have the car, but that player is GAAAAAAWWN!

Ahhh, the good ol' days.