VHS And VCR (Edited from Wikipedia)

SUMMARY

A videocassette recorder, VCR, or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the recording.

Use of a VCR to record a television program to play back at a more convenient time is commonly referred to as timeshifting. VCRs can also play back prerecorded tapes. In the 1980s and 1990s, prerecorded videotapes were widely available for purchase and rental, and blank tapes were sold to make recordings.

Most domestic VCRs are equipped with a television broadcast receiver (tuner) for TV reception, and a programmable clock (timer) for unattended recording of a television channel from a start time to an end time specified by the user. These features began as simple mechanical counter-based single-event timers, but were later replaced by more flexible multiple-event digital clock timers.

In later models the multiple timer events could be programmed through a menu interface displayed on the playback TV screen ("on-screen display" or OSD). This feature allowed several programs to be recorded at different times without further user intervention, and became a major selling point.

The Video Home System (VHS) is a standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes. Developed by Victor Company of Japan (JVC) in the early 1970s, it was released in Japan in late 1976 and in the United States in early 1977.

From the 1950s, magnetic tape video recording became a major contributor to the television industry, via the first commercialized video tape recorders (VTRs). At that time, the devices were used only in expensive professional environments such as television studios and medical imaging (fluoroscopy).

In the 1970s, videotape entered home use, creating the home video industry and changing the economics of the television and movie businesses. The television industry viewed videocassette recorders (VCRs) as having the power to disrupt their business, while television users viewed the VCR as the means to take control of their hobby.

1 In the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a format war in the home video industry. Two of the standards, VHS and Betamax, received the most media exposure. VHS eventually won the war, dominating 60 percent of the North American market by 1980 and emerging as the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period.

Optical disc formats later began to offer better quality than analog consumer video tape such as standard and super-VHS. The earliest of these formats, LaserDisc, was not widely adopted. However, after the introduction of the DVD format in 1997, VHS's market share began to decline. By 2008, DVD had replaced VHS as the preferred low- end method of distribution. The last known company in the world to manufacture VHS equipment—Funai of Japan—ceased production of VHS equipment in July 2016.

FORMAT WAR: BETAMAX VS. VHS

The first video cassette recorder (VCR) to become available was the U-matic system, released in September 1971. U-matic was designed for commercial or professional television production use, and was not affordable or user-friendly for home videos or home movies.

The first consumer-grade VCR to be released was the Philips N1500 VCR format in 1972, followed in 1975 by Sony's Betamax. This was quickly followed by the competing VHS format from JVC, and later by Video 2000 from Philips. Subsequently, the Betamax–VHS format war began in earnest. Other competitors, such as the Avco Cartrivision, Sanyo's V-Cord and Matsushita's "Great Time Machine" quickly disappeared.

Sony had demonstrated a prototype videotape recording system it called "Beta" to the other electronics manufacturers in 1974, and expected that they would back a single format for the good of all. But JVC in particular decided to go with its own format, despite Sony's appeal to the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry, thus beginning the format war.

Sony had met with Matsushita executives in late 1974 or early 1975 to discuss the forthcoming home video market. Both had previously cooperated in the development and marketing of the U-Matic video cassette format. Sony brought along a Betamax prototype for Matsushita's engineers to evaluate. Sony at the time was unaware of JVC's work. At a later meeting, Matsushita, with JVC management in attendance, showed Sony a VHS prototype, and advised them it was not too late to embrace VHS "for the good of the industry" but Sony management felt it was too close to Betamax production to compromise.

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While VHS machines' lower retail price was a major factor, the principal battleground proved to be recording time. The original Sony Betamax video recorder for the North American television system could only record for 60 minutes, identical to the previous U-matic format, which had been sufficient for use in television studios. JVC's VHS could manage 120 minutes, followed by RCA's entrance into the market with a 240- minute recorder. These challenges sparked a mini-war to see who could achieve the longest recording time.

RCA had initially planned a home video format around 1974, to be called "SelectaVision MagTape," but canceled it after hearing rumors about Sony's Betamax format, and was considering Sony as an OEM for an RCA-branded VCR. RCA had discussions with Sony, but RCA felt the recording time was too short, insisting that they needed at least a 4-hour recording time (reportedly because that was the length of an average televised American football game).

Sony engineers knew that the technology available to manufacture video heads wasn't up to the task yet, but halving the tape speed and track width was a possibility. However, the picture quality would be degraded severely, and at that time Sony engineers felt the compromise was not worthwhile.

Soon after, RCA met with execs at the Victor Corporation of Japan (JVC), who had created their own video format christened "VHS" (which stood for "Video Home System"). But JVC also refused to compromise the picture quality of their format by allowing a four-hour mode. JVC's parent corporation, Matsushita, later met with RCA, and agreed to manufacture a four-hour-capable VHS machine for RCA.

RCA would go on to market "four hours, $999", forcing a price war and also a "tape length" war. Betamax eventually achieved 5 hours at Beta-III speed on an ultra-thin L- 830 cassette, and VHS ultimately squeezed 10-and-a-half hours with SLP/EP speed on a T-210 cassette. Slower tape speeds meant a degradation in picture quality, as adjacent video bands created "crosstalk" and noise in the decoded picture.

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