To be honest I expected VHS to be around a lot longer still. Not because I see any benefit in the age old video format (please...) but because most people are too afraid to change. In all fairness though, there is still yet to be an alternative to recording your favourite TV shows without either having to fork out hundreds (or thousands) for a home theatre system or pay a monthly premium for the privilege of a Foxtel unit or similar, so maybe that fear is a little justified.

Then there is the other 'problem' associated with technology change that keeps people clinging to obsolete formats. Hands up those who have purchased their favourite movie more than once? I know a guy who owns everything Star Wars on VHS, DVD and now Blueray. I am about to go down that path myself, having already owned 2001 on VHS and DVD, I now have my eye set on a Blueray player for the Home Theatre, and I want that title to be my first purchase.

With this news spare a thought for my eccentric uncle Mark, a man who over the last 20 years has accumulated thousands of VHS tapes with just about everything you can imagine on them. So many tapes in fact that he had to move to a bigger house to contain them. I think if the ABC ever lost it's news reel archive to a fire, My uncle would have a backup somewhere.

Anyway, death is officially knocking at the VHS door with the last major supplier in the US killing the format at the end of this year.