History -
History of the home video tape format and how VHS emerged triumphant!
Originally it was Sony who had demonstrated a prototype home
video recording system way back in 1964. They assembled a top technical team led by Nobutoshi Kihara. Together they developed the
CV-2000, the world's first VCR intended for home use. This was the first step
toward Sony's aim to produce and market a video player that would be suitable
for home use in terms of both size and price. However, although
manufactured as the first home-use VCR, most of the CV-2000 machines were
actually used for medical and industrial purposes before finding their way into
schools and, eventually, homes. So in spite of the 
home-use
label, in reality the black and white reel-to-reel CV-2000 was not truly a home
recording system for the mass market. For such a system to have universal appeal
Sony's teams recognized they must incorporate three
major challenges: 1: To incorporate color. 2: To develop a video cassette
tape. 3: To design an automatic loading function. They developed countless
prototypes, but most were unusable. Despite the obstacles, and after many failed
attempts, Kihara eventually delivered the first usable prototype in 1968.
However, it would be a number of years before the first home systems appeared.
Originally it was Sony who had demonstrated a prototype betamax home video recording system to the other electronics manufacturers in 1974, expecting they would all agree to back a single format for the domestic and global market. However, as is often the case in business the good of all was not good business for the other manufacturers as they would all have to pay Sony for the rights to use the betamax format franchise. So not surprisingly they looked at developing there own systems. JVC in particular decided to go with its own format (despite Sony's appeal to the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry) and the classic format war began.
The videotape format war was a period of an intense competition between rival manufacturers of incompatible models of video cassette recorders in the 1970s and early 1980s. It has gone down in marketing history as the classic example of this kind of market competition with a now commonly used "it's been betamaxed" meaning an now obsolete product.
Home video cassette recorders finally became available to the home user around 1975 and the first system to be successful was Sony's Betamax. This was quickly followed by VHS (Video Home System) from JVC, and later by Video 2000 from Philips.
Competing technologies
The first battleground was recording time. The original Betamax systems could record for a maximum of one hour, which was not enough for a whole feature film. VHS could manage two hours, due to larger cassettes and slower tape speed; Sony responded with the "BII" speed which allowed for longer recording time at the expense of recording quality, quickly replacing "BI" as the default speed. Thinner tape allowed both formats to increase still further, and by the early 1980s Beta could record for 3 hours and 15 minutes, compared to 3 hours for VHS. With Long Play (LP) technology (available by the mid-80s), a VHS cassette could run for up to 8 hours.
Betamax offered a slightly higher horizontal resolution (250 vs 240 lines for PAL), lower video noise, and less luma-chroma crosstalk than VHS, and was marketed as providing superior pictures to VHS. In practice however VHS picture quality was very similar to that from Beta, as the actual picture performance depended on other factors including the condition or quality of the tape, and individual video recorder models.
Market share
When home VCRs started to become popular in the UK, the main issue was one of availability and price. VHS machines were available through the high street rental chains such as Radio Rentals and DER, while Beta was seen as the more upmarket choice for people who wanted quality and were prepared to buy it. By 1980, out of an estimated 100,000 homes with VCRs, 70% were rented, and the presence of two competing formats meant that rental was an even more attractive choice, since one didn't have to worry about spending a fortune (about £2000 in today's prices) on a system which was going to become obsolete.
Within Europe there were three choices by 1980, with the arrival of the Video 2000 format from Philips and Grundig. Although featuring technology that was ahead of its time, V2000 took longer to develop and arrived late on the scene. Players were found to be less reliable than their VHS and Beta counterparts, and the format never gained substantial market share. V2000 was cancelled in 1985, the first casualty of the format war.
By the time Betamax machines became easier to rent, VHS had already claimed 70% of the market. At the same time tape rentals were beginning to become popular, and for a while it seemed that every little shop on the street-corner had a rack of tapes. In Britain the famous "video nasties" - films which were deemed too violent or gruesome for general release - were also highly sought, since they couldn't be seen anywhere else but on video.
Yet again Sony missed the boat, being reluctant to sign licensing agreements with studios to have films made available in Betamax. The resulting combination of lower market share and a lack of hardware both strengthened VHS's hand, and gradually the public turned away from Beta. In 1983 the top selling video recorder in the UK was the Sanyo Beta VTC5000. 1984 was Beta's best year with a 25% market share, but by 1986 it was down to 7.5% and the writing was on the wall.
The End of Betamax and start of the VHS being the widely used format
Betamax sales dwindled away and VHS emerged victorious - despite being the least sophisticated of the three main rivals. VHS however benefited from continuous development from multiple manufacturers (including Sony) over the years, and innovations such as high speed picture search, Hi-Fi stereo sound and fast-load tape mechanisms saw it keep pace with and eventually surpass Betamax, making the format war largely academic by the turn of the 1990s.
By 1988 Sony had began to market their own VHS machines, and despite claims that they were still backing Beta, it was clear that the format was dead -- at least in Europe and the U.S.. In parts of South America Beta continued to be popular, and in Japan the format was developed into ED-Beta and SuperBeta, and was still produced up to the end of 2002. Ironically, despite the failure of Betamax for home use, its technological successor, the Betacam tape, would become an industry standard for professional video recording, production and presentation. Despite the many improvements in VHS for home use, Beta technology remained at a higher quality and continues to be used to this day in the broadcast industries in the form of BetacamSP, BetacamSX and Digibeta. This is only now beginning to be made obsolete by direct hard drive storage of digital video in high definition formats like HDV (High Definition Video) at previously unheard of resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels.
The End of VHS and the dawn of HD formats
Dear home video lover,
It is with a heavy heart I have great regret to inform you that after a long illness, the groundbreaking home-entertainment format VHS has died of natural causes. The format was 30 years old.
No services are planned.
The format had been suffering a long illness, but high-def formats and next-generation HD formats hastened its final decline.
"VHS is survived by a child, DVD, and several grandchildren HD-DVD, Blu-Ray and HDV. It was preceded in death by Betamax, Divx, mini-discs and laserdiscs.
Although it had been ailing, the format's death became official in this, the video biz's all-important fourth quarter. Retailers decided to pull the plug, saying there was no longer shelf space.
As a tribute to the late, great VHS, Toys 'R' Us will continue to carry a few titles like "Barney," and some video chains will still handle cassettes for those who cannot deal with the death of the format.
Born Vertical Helical Scan to parent JVC of Japan, the tape had a difficult childhood as it was forced to compete with Sony's Betamax format.
After its youthful Betamax battles, the longer-playing VHS tapes eventually became the format of choice for millions of consumers. VHS enjoyed a lucrative career, transforming the way people watched movies and changing the economics of the film biz. VHS hit its peak with "The Lion King," which sold more than 30 million vidcassettes in the USA alone.
The format flourished until DVDs launched in 1997. After a fruitful career, VHS tapes started to retire from center stage in 2003 when DVDs became more popular for the first time.
Since their retirement, VHS tapes have made occasional appearances in children's entertainment and as a format for collectors seeking titles not released on DVD. Despite VHS continuing to make as much as $300 million a year in USA sales alone, the studios have stopped manufacturing the tapes.
Good by VHS, you will remain in our hearts forever.
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