It was good for its time, but we need to be careful not to confuse that as an absolute statement rather than a relative one. By modern standards VHS is garbage with many significant problems, it’s just at its time everything else was worse. There were certainly many aspects of VHS that were good some even revolutionary, but it also had many significant flaws.

The biggest problem with DVD in the early days was just price. Early DVD players were ridiculously expensive compared to VHS, and the DVDs themselves were also significantly more expensive than VHS tapes. That of course changed over time, as DVD adoption drove the unit prices down across the board. By the time Bluray came around and began to drive out DVD the players had gotten so cheap you could sometimes find them for as little as $25, and DVD movies would regularly show up in discount bins for $5 to $10.