I honestly can’t believe it’s taken this long…but at the same time, I can’t believe it’s actually happening. VHS tape is officially dead. The last company that was actually buying VHS tapes has ceased, and now there is no market left.

The last film to actually be released on VHS was “A History of Violence” in 2006. Since that time VHS tapes have made their way into bargain bins across the country, but now the man that fills those bins is giving up, and dropping the format all together.

I think i will always love VHS for what it was. In this day of DVRs, digital downloads, DVDs, and Blu-Ray Discs, it’s hard to even look at a VHS and get all the way through it. The quality is just terrible…BUT…I remember very well the VHS collection we had at my house.

I would buy blank tapes and fill them to the brim with recordings of my favorite bits from SNL, MadTV (the early years), and sitcoms galore. I’d record comedy specials on HBO and watch them into the wee hours of the morning. George Carlin came into my life thanks to VHS tape. Godzilla too.

Every crazy bit of entertainment I loved as a kid went through a VHS tape at one point.

In high school I worked at a video store, and DVD came in shortly after I exited. It was one of the best job’s I’ve ever had – and I can still very clearly remember what was like to take a busted VHS tape and perform surgery to move the tape contents to a new case, to make the video playable again.

Even though we’ve had movies recently like “Be Kind, Rewind” that sort of remind us of how interesting and simple VHS was – it’s time has long passed. It’s successor is about to be successed, and whatever is coming after that is on its way to the horizon.

I’m guessing we’ll be watching things digitally in the next few years, and that’s where it will stay, in one form or another, for a very long while. We’ll see though. You never know what’s going to happen next in the world of recordable media – but the grandfather of home movies has passed away, and it’s finally time to lay him to rest.