DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) is a new video platform that  is supposed to bring affordable high quality video playback to your home. VHS video tapes are based on a technology that is very old . . . in fact, it was outdated by the time it hit the market some twenty plus years ago. DVD will change all this.

· DVD has a much better performance at the same price. The picture and audio quality is substantially better than even the best VHS VCR can offer.

· Handling and storage of DVD is a lot simpler than VHS. The discs have the size of a regular audio CD and thus require the same space.

· They are easy to handle and relatively unaffected by everyday wear. Compare this to the blocky and bulky appearance of VHS tapes and the problems inherent with tape wear. No matter how many times you will watch a DVD, it will always have the same quality. This becomes even more important in the light of disc rental.

· When I used to rent VHS tapes I always feared for my VCR because I never knew what the previous renter did to the tape. Did he spill soda over it and just wrap the tape back into the case? Did he tear the tape, scratch it, or bend it? After all, this can be fatal to video heads. All this fear is history, as is the loss in performance with heavily watched movies.

· Apart from all the technical aspects, DVD is also richer in features. It offers multiple language versions of the movies on a single disc, interactive menus to access parts of the movie directly, and there’s no need to rewind it.

Combine those features with an attractive pricing that is equal to or even lower than VHS and you have the perfect medium. DVD is simply the better choice no matter how you look at it, and therefore is not only for ambitious home-theater owners. It is superior for everyone!

“All right”, you might say, “but what about recording?” To this date, DVD does not offer recording capabilities. This seems like a major drawback at first, but taking a closer look at it will reveal that it is really not so bad. First of all, there is a recordable DVD in sight so the problem will soon become redundant anyway, but when was the last time you recorded a movie? What did you gain? TV does not lend itself to recording movies very well and that is especially true here in the US. Movies on TV are systematically violated. They are re-edited for content, shortened, re-formatted and most of all they are cut into several small unwatchable pieces, strung together by minute-long nuisances called commercials. I don’t know how you feel about it, but those movies are barely worthwhile. I would like to ban these edited televison movies since they hardly have anything in common with the source from which they originated. If you want to record a movie in its entirety, you have to go through Pay-Per-View or Rental. Since Pay-Per-View is TV, again we face many of the above mentioned problems, even though they might not be intercut by commercials. And everyone who has ever recorded from a rental tape has probably never done it again because the quality loss from one tape generation to another is simply too high. That leaves us with buying tapes as the only serious alternative for watching and enjoying a movie. So why would you want a recordable medium in the first place if there is hardly any use for it? For my part, I’d rather stick with DVD and its superior qualities than go back to the Stone Ages of video technology. If I need to make a copy of my camcorder’s recordings, I will still have the good old VCR around, because DVD does not necessarily mean I have to banish it for good. But for a movie, I’d rather have something better… like DVD!

If you are not a DVD owner yet, why don’t you just go out and see for yourself? Most electronics stores have DVD on display these days, and I promise you that you will see and hear the difference.

Also check out Jim Taylor’s enlightening column, “DVD Myths”. It is a factual explanation of some of DVD’s features, seemingly misunderstood by many.

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