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Monday 22nd November 2004

Dixons wipes the VCR from its stores 12:01PM, Monday 22nd November 2004

The news that the Dixon's group is to stop selling the venerable VCR is the end of an era. As with the launch of Dire Straits 'Brothers in Arms' CD in the early 1980s which was seen as the tipping point between the LP and the CD, so today's announcement will be seen as the day we all moved to digital video.

Since the first machines hit the shelves in the 1970s, Dixons has sold millions of the devices and by 2002 90 per cent of UK households had one. However, since then sales have collapsed and now DVD players are outselling VCRs in Dixons stores by 40 to one.

DVD players not only give a better picture, they are also easier to manage, are more reliable and offer a more convenient format. A cheap DVD player can be had for as little as Ł30. More sophisticated models fitted with hard disks and recordable DVDs allow user to record and 'pause' live action as well as record favourite TV shows.

The movie industry is keen to move everyone over as they see it as a way to cash in. As in the early 1980s when the music industry contrived to sell everyone their own LP collection on CD at a higher price, so the film and TV industry is currently trying to resell us our video collection on DVD.

Take for example, the latest Harry Potter adventure 'The Prisoner of Azkaban'. On Amazon, this will set you back Ł13.99 for the DVD, discounted



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from a ridiculously high Ł24.99 rrp - yet it costs pennies to press a DVD. The video cassette costs Ł13.49, but it actually costs a lot more to copy a video cassette as they have to be spooled onto tape. Of course movie companies will tell you that a DVD will contain extras such as 'trailers' and 'interviews with the stars' all of which the company will have had lying around as part of the marketing push anyway.

But before the movie industry starts to celebrate, they should worry that they are the record industry's history only in fast forward. The standard DVD player has now eclipsed the VCR. Yet within a few years, it is itself likely to be overtaken by the new generation of blue-laser DVDs which have capacities ten times that of today's recordable DVDs.

However, as with the CD, broadband internet looks set to destroy DVD as a format altogether as streamed video onto PVRs allows people to time shift their TV programmes, summon video on demand or simply download a film from the internet.

Of course, this is music to the ears of the computer industry, which has been fitting out systems with TV cards and the like for years in a bid to launch an assault on the living room.

Joel Davies, Windows Client Business Group, told us: 'The decision from Dixons to abandon sales of VCRs in its stores is indicative of consumer trends within the home entertainment space. This move highlights the growing popularity of fully integrated digital home
entertainment solutions. This is also a strong proof point that technologies such as Windows Media Center are the next generation of home
entertainment.'

Steve Malone

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