I've been anxious to jump into this thread for awhile. Here's my pro-DVD rhetoric. I make my living as assistant editor for a DVD review book, so I'm naturally biased.
I've had a DVD player for over 4 years now and absolutely love it. It's the best thing I ever bought- worth every penny. Videotape can't come close for sharpness, clarity, color etc. - the resolution is literally twice that of VHS. Here's the best parts:
1- Terrific picture quality makes films more involving and closer to what the filmmakers intended.
2- No tracking problems common with VHS. (I've had more problems tracking old tapes on newer VCRs and even worse problems with the MPI tapes which frequently suffer from crackle and bad tracking as the tapes age.)
3- Extras- The versatility of the format allows anything from multiple versions of the film or TV show, and a plethora of extra capabilities- multiple language tracks, audio commentaries, etc. The standard videotape releases usually have none of this stuff. You may save 1/3 or 1/4 between the VHS and DVD, but you get a lower quality picture and zero extras.
4- Chapter stops- most discs have dozens of chapter stops so you can jump to your favorite scene instantly instead of fast forwarding or rewinding your tapes and in the process wearing them out.
5- Widescreen letterboxed movies are encoded in such a way that they will look 50% sharper when shown on a widescreen TV.
6- Price- DVD players are much cheaper than they were 5 years back. You can get a good quality player for $200. My only advice- don't buy it from a supermarket, and do a little online research. Sometimes it's better to pay a little more to get that extra feature. I opted for the 'zoom' feature on my player and it's one of my favorites. It lets you blow-up an area of the image so you can read that small newspaper headline or highlight a visible crewperson..
A few people have mentioned they want recordable DVD players, but TV resolution and weak broadcast signals- even in broadband, have never made it very appealing to me. Widescreen movies would look 75% worse if DVD recorded off of TV than they would on a pre-recorded disc. Plus if you were recorded DS or another of your favorite shows on DVD, you'd be saddled with commercials, unnannounced cuts, station logos and poor transmissions.
There are recordable DVD players, they just cost a ton.
D-VHS is interesting but who wants to record off broadcast TV? The tapes are expensive and will look just as lousy as a TV broadcast. It's an interim format until H-Def DVD comes out, but that won't be for 5-10 more years.
