What was the logic of the VCR/Blu-ray combo?

While many of us still have VHS tapes that we care about, especially in cases of home movies or films that have never been released in any other format, the idea of combining a VHS recorder with a Blu-ray player seems odd for one specific reason: the existence of D-VHS. While it is way to late to think about such things, I would have liked a D-Theater compatible D-VHS/Blu-ray combo. Such a move could have revived interest to D-VHS, being the HDTV-compatible recording format that it is, while still letting people watch VHS and S-VHS tapes on the HDTV's in relatively decent quality.

How come no company put two and two together and made a D-VHS/Blu-ray combo?

D-VHS bombed as a format even harder than HD DVD did. Your average consumer has probably never even heard of it. I never even saw them in stores outside one small display at Sears. It certainly wasn't aggressively marketed.

The studios don't want people recording movies in HD anyway. Note there are no standalone Blu Ray recorders on the market in the U.S., while they have been around in Japan for quite some time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-VHS

I actually have a Mitsubishi deck I got brand new pretty cheap on Ebay, but it doesn't have the logo indicating compatibility with D-Theater movies. I think one other board member has a deck, as they are pretty useful for regular VHS and S-VHS tapes. As they were high end machines, they were better made than most of the cheapo VCR's of the late 90's and early 2000's.

Do thrift stores still accept VHS tapes these days?

8 tracks still have a retro chic thing going for them though. ;)