William Lamb writes “
“We look forward to working together with our customers to help them navigate through the conversion away from VHS to DVD…” These words are a portion of the concluding paragraph in a letter by Baker and Taylor VP for Entertainment Purchasing Len Cosimano and Baker and Taylor Sr. VP for AV Institutional Bill Hartman published in B&T’s monthly Alert catalog. The letter warns that 2005 will be “a difficult year for maintaining a strong range in VHS.” Cosimano and Hartman also state that VHS now represents only 5% of the total video business. As a consequence of these factors, Baker and Taylor, one of the largest suppliers of video to both libraries and retailers, has shifted to a policy of not allowing any cancellations or return of materials once a VHS video product is ordered.
William Lamb writes “
“We look forward to working together with our customers to help them navigate through the conversion away from VHS to DVD…” These words are a portion of the concluding paragraph in a letter by Baker and Taylor VP for Entertainment Purchasing Len Cosimano and Baker and Taylor Sr. VP for AV Institutional Bill Hartman published in B&T’s monthly Alert catalog. The letter warns that 2005 will be “a difficult year for maintaining a strong range in VHS.” Cosimano and Hartman also state that VHS now represents only 5% of the total video business. As a consequence of these factors, Baker and Taylor, one of the largest suppliers of video to both libraries and retailers, has shifted to a policy of not allowing any cancellations or return of materials once a VHS video product is ordered.
For those of us working daily with audio-visual materials the imminent end of VHS as a viable video format comes as no surprise. In the past two years it has become more and more difficult to acquire new titles on VHS, a growing number of new titles are unavailable on VHS, and a growing number of libraries and retailers have shifted to DVD-only approaches to video.
What is more alarming is the looming war over successors to the current ubiquitous DVD format. The two formats vying to position themselves as market leader are Blu-Ray and HD DVD. Both are formats that can store nearly 10 times as much information on a disc as a standard DVD. This will allow for new applications and higher definition video resolution than previously dreamed of. However, at the current point in time major hardware companies are lining up behind only one format or the other. Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Dell are supporting Blu-Ray while Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo support HD DVD. Is this a Beta vs. VHS type battle? The battle played out in public in early January at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. Stay tuned for more details.
Meanwhile, video vendors are starting to announce their first high definition releases for the fall of 2005. Warner Home Video, one of the largest home video production companies, has announced a list of 50 HD DVD titles due in the fall. Paramount has also announced a list of debut HD DVD titles as well.
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