To technology nerds, yours truly included, VHS has been a dead format for many years even though it has still been available on the market, it is almost a decade since I had a VHS player in my house. The fact that the VHS format appeared already in 1976 and is still around is certainly proof of longevity, and JVC was keeping the format alive for long by making VHS players, but has decided that maybe it is time to put it to sleep.
JVC has announced the end of an era as it has shut down the production of VHS players, even if it will continue developing combo players with both DVD and VHS support. This, if anything, should be a sign for that DVD is still a fairly new format and that it has many years to go, even though the said successor has arrived and is incriminating on the market. Blu-ray may be here to stay, but DVD is certainly not going to disappear for many years.
