CompuServe Messages

No, I think you miss the point here. Tape rentals are the big money in home movies; purchases even now, save for the very cheap promotions (i.e. Beauty and the Beast for $16.95 with rebate…) are a very small percentage of the market, while in laserdiscs the vast majority are purchased and there are limited rental outlets in any case. For a medium to overtake VHS it would have to offer significant improvements at a price the public was willing to pay and the rental market was willing to accept. Now, if someone were to bring out affordable RERECORDABLE video laser disks at a price not too much of a premium above VHS tape, I'd say they'd have something as a consumer medium, but what I've seen so far isn't The Product. I think the laserdisc market will endure for at least the rest of the decade until there are dramatic improvements enough to force a switch. A series of marketing surveys trying to determine why the CD replaced the LP so rapidly, even at a premium in disk price, have all come up with the same result. Better sound? Nope. More capacity? Guess again. The vast majority of the public went to them because they didn't develop ticks and pops or needle wear and could be cleaned with Windex! Since that already applies to laserdiscs, and since laserdisc prices are not on the whole much of a premium, you'll have to do better than that to replace them. I am looking at the two new audiotape replacements with interest. The Sony recordable minidisk is superior in a lot of ways to the Philips DCC system, but if either takes over (and neither will until player prices come down dramatically, tape/disc prices ditto, and there's a tremendous inventory of prerecorded stuff in the format as well) I would bet on the DCC simply because it can play the older analog tapes. On the other hand, I don't see anything in either format that will make it the CD of tapes….