1. DVD players make less noise in operation than DVD players do. (That might not be particularly important a lot of the time but if, say, you're trying to watch a movie late at night - with the audio turned down low so as not to annoy your neighbours - the sound of the machine whirring away can be very intrusive).
2. VHS recorders used analogue technology, resulting in a lower picture quality than is available with a DVD.
3. The use of such analogue technology in VHS recorders meant that tapes could wear out fairly quickly with repeated playing. DVDs can last for many, many years if they're stored correctly.
4. If VHS tapes and DVDs are stored in less than ideal condition (such as when there's damp present), VHS tapes degrade very quickly, as they're subject to mould formation. DVDs will eventually become unusable if stored in damp conditions but they can still well outlast VHS tapes.
5. The information on VHS tapes is stored sequentially, so if a user wants to skip from, say, the first episode of a series on the tape to the second one, he/she has to fast forward the tape to locate the required starting point. The digital nature of DVDs permits the indexing of data, so that any given episode can be selected from a menu instantly.
6. Apart from the motor spinning the discs (and the mechanism that opens or closes the drawer), there are no mechanical parts in a DVD player, meaning that there's less to go wrong. A VHS recorder can suffer from wear, or oxide build up, on its tape heads (resulting in lower picture quality) or it can simply chew up tapes that are inserted without the user remembering to pre-tension them.
7. One of the few advantages of VHS machines was that, because the technology for recording and playing tapes was basically the same, even the most basic models could record live TV. However there's a difference in technology between simply 'reading' the data from a DVD and 'writing' it. So basic DVD players can't record TV programmes; you need to pay much more for a DVD recorder (or, these days, more likely for a PVR) to record live TV. However anyone buying a secondhand VHS machine these days won't be able to record live TV with it because the tuners in VHS machines were all analogue ones (and all analogue transmissions have now ceased).