From CNN DVD rentals have finally topped out on VHS rentals. I figured this would have happened quite some time ago, but apparently not.

Yeah, it's amazing people still rent VHS tapes or even use their VHS players on a regular basis.

Of course, I still get a laugh from people that complain about there being "black bars" on the top and bottom of the screen when they watch a movie.

I think it's quite logical...
How many movies are available on VHS?
And how many movies are available on DVD?

Yes, newer movies are being released on DVD, but how about older movies?

And what is the retail price for a DVD compared to a VHS?
In norway, the VHS is cheaper...

So why should joe homeowner buy a dvd player, when he's allready got a VHS player, and it's cheaper to buy movies for it...

And that's not taking into account all the hassle with region coding....

As far as using a VHS player on a regular basis, what about those of us who's bought quite a lot of movies/series on VHS?
I'm not about to drop using my VHS since I've bought over 4 seasons of Babylon 5 on that medium...

And it's much cheaper to use to record a program, than buying a dvd writer, and a blank dvd...

Yes, the quality might not be the best, but it won't be too much better on DVD unless you're getting high quality digital signal, which, afaik, isn't too common since most movie/tv series distributors are afraid of piracy.....

So, to me, it's not too strange to see why it has taken so long for DVD rentals to surpas VHS, nor to see that we're going to see a market for VHS for quite some time to come....

.02$

I don't disagree with anything Mr. G said. I've got a lot of VHS tapes and I'm not going to get rid of them. But.....I'm a devout audiophile and I BUY only a few DVD's and they will be music concerts, because of the sound. It's in 5.1 and sounds so much better than VHS. Mostly when I want to watch a movie, I rent it. Another thing I like about the DVD's is the wide screen format, I like to see the whole picture, although I can see why a lot of people don't like this if they don't have a large tv.