A Very Harsh Side-line.

A Very Harsh Side-line

By Kamran Connelly

Here tucked at the back of the dark cupboard of useless and seasonal things. Usurped and rendered useless by a rendering my kind could only ever dream of; I wallow in bitterly accepted defeat. The door opens. It hasn’t opened in over a year and that was only to retrieve a box a Christmas lights. I assume the box of lights is being returned, but to my surprise, I see an old foe. His power cord wrapped around his body like a shackled prisoner. They dump him on top of the dusty old record player like a discarded corpse. He doesn’t even have his remote control with him. That’s a bad sign.

VHS used to be the only three letters in the game of home entertainment, we brought forth a new dawn of cinema. And birthed a whole new revenue stream, and a new treasure for the avid collector of stuff. Libraries of video tapes accumulated in homes worldwide and fortunes arose around them. First giant rental companies squeezed out the missed juice, catching the dollars that failed to make it to the picture house. Then the stores got their turn and made money for a third time. New money for old tape. The owners of the material hailed me as, the machine that brings Hollywood to your home. And used slogans like, relive the action at home over and over. And so, my reign began. For decades I stood atop the mountain of desired tech, evolving in efficiency over time and altering my appearance to match the desires of whatever current trend happened to be in play. It was glorious. My only ever competition, an early rival, fell to the wayside in the first mile. Betamax. Dead in the water.

My software was favoured by the producers of risky content. Flesh flicks. The tapes beyond the beaded curtain. The kind of movies people watch alone and have very little dialogue. It was their allegiance to my formatting that secured my position. For a while at least. While it lasted, I was good. I was untouchable. No other medium of home entertainment was even close to me, but nothing last forever. Soon enough, a new challenger burst onto the scene. Well, two challengers to be precise. I watched history repeat as Laser Disc battled it out for supremacy against DVD. And once again, the pervert’s choice was what sealed the deal. The adult entertainment industry, as they now referred to themselves, favoured the DVD format. And Laser Disc died like its predecessor Betamax. Relegated to the, what if pile of dead tech. celebrated only by a small of relic collectors.

We shared the space for some time DVD and me. Our creators even introduced hybrids. Abomination machines, both VHS and DVD compatible. Horrid things, huge and ugly. They didn’t fare well. Most people elected to have both machines, sat side by side rather than look at those hideous things. The new clarity of DVD too hard to resist, but the nostalgia of my era too strong to just let go. After all, what would they do with the vast libraries of video tapes? They couldn’t just through them away. And so, they held on. I stayed in heavy rotation for some time. Myopic, I believed it would stay that way, and the new kid on the block would play permanent second fiddle. But as the wall a video tapes stagnated and the small collection of DVDs outgrew the little shelf, my standby power was cut. Then my plug detached from the wall. Only powered up once in a blue moon to watch an old favourite they hadn’t yet replaced with a disc. But in time, one trick I couldn’t perform seemed to pull them away forever. Crystal clear freeze frame. The ability to pause a moving image into a perfectly clear still picture. Yet again the R rated material seemed to dictate the direction of travel. And before long, I found myself relegated to the cupboard, gathering dust next to boxes filled with tapes, they to seem too troublesome for the future. Discs replaced them, and quickly. No rewind, less storage space from the shrunk down boxes, and the machines never chewed them up. I have to admit after being in here for some years and contemplating my predicament, they are a superior format. Even with my ability to switch a three-hour tape into six by engaging my Long Play feature. I just couldn’t compete anymore. But now, the door to this limbo of lament it seems, has closed behind my former antagonist. Which means Mr high and mighty digitally versatile dickhead, has faced the same fate as I.  

After two nights of crying and complaining into the darkness. I learn that the new kid on the block, isn’t a device. It’s something called streaming. New technology that allows entertainment to be beamed in, the software no longer discs. But a signal. The library digital. And stored on a cloud of infinite choice. One that has well and truly rained on our parade. If true, it’s over. I almost feel sorry for my old foe. I remember sitting on the same piece of furniture, watching as they favoured him over me, more and more each week. And longing for the day he choked on one of those shiny discs. Id fantasise about him blowing a fuse or burning a hole through himself with his stupid laser. But he never did, he just outperformed me. Consistently.

The new kid on the block sounds unbeatable. No more will large cumbersome collections of plastic software litter the space. The unfathomable library of content will remain invisible, like magic. No more chewed up tape is what they said. Now it’s no more scratched discs. Digital delivery down a fibre optic cable also means no more machines. No little black box needs to sit near the screen anymore. My glory days will certainly not return. And now the Digital Versatile Disc, has had its very own VHS. A Very Harsh Side-line.

Fin.