You’ve probably heard of and even used VHS. How about Betamax or Video High Density (VHD)? The latter is a rare Japanese format that had very limited use, which is why you probably haven’t heard of it.
Imagine a world where watching family memories is extremely complicated, you have to get out a special projector even to be able to replay those moments. Or if you missed your favorite show, you could only hope for a re-run in order to watch what you missed. The revolution that happened in the late 1970s was the ability to replay recordings on your home television, from the latest episode of M.A.S.H to your cousin’s Quinceanera.
Today, we are mostly familiar with DVD’s or VHS as “ancient” formats that offer a solution to these problems. But, back then, there were many more and they competed in a very tight market, now referred to as the “Format Wars.” The Format Wars were an explosion of different videotape formats, and later, disc formats that worked in interesting and unique ways.
Out of the gate from Japan are the first two formats and the longest competitors in this struggle for home entertainment supremacy: VHS and Betamax. Betamax was created by Sony and released in Japan on May 10, 1975, following a United States release later the same year. A year later, the Victor Company of Japan (JVC) released its own cassette format, known as Video Home System (VHS). Both used magnetic tape to record video, something that had been used by the industry since the 1950s, but these old devices, called VTRs, were expensive and only used in professional environments.
It wasn’t until these two new formats, Betamax and VHS, hit the market that widespread use of the technology became available. The main difference between them was the amount of time you could record on each tape. VHS could have up to two hours on one cassette, while Betamax could only have one hour. The image quality was higher on Betamax, but most consumers preferred having more time per tape than higher quality video.
Interestingly, the idea of home recording was met with fierce resistance by the movie and television studios. Home recorders were originally marketed for “time shifting”—if two programs you wanted to watch aired at the same time, you could record one and watch it later, erasing the tape after. The concept of building a personal library of movies and TV shows was not the original intent, and it deeply disturbed the entertainment industry. The tension escalated to the point that the U.S. Supreme Court had to intervene. In 1984, the Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that home recording was legal, marking a major win for consumers.
Another tape format of the time was Video2000 (V2000), which was very similar to VHS and Betamax, but created by Phillips. This video format was designed for the color standard used in Europe, South Africa, and Argentina, and was never used in the US. V2000’s short run was only from 1979 to 1988, when production stopped. Although technologically innovative, it never made the jump to bigger markets like the one in the US.
Instead of taking V2000 to the US, Phillips decided to release its more innovative format, known as Laserdisc in 1978. Laserdisc used optical disc storage, which is a technology that uses laser to read the content, in contrast to the cassette formats that used electromagnetic tape readers. The format was too expensive to gain widespread use, but it was extremely popular among cinephiles (movie enthusiasts) who saw the format as higher quality than its competitors. It had modest success in Australia and Europe, but its biggest buyers were in affluent parts of southeast Asia, like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Not every format ended in a success story, and the weirdest ones were the those that used analog video disc formats – instead of using magnetic heads or lasers, these used a stylus, like those used for vinyl records. But in a higher and smaller density, with the ability to playback sound and image. The saddest of these stories is the Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED), created by Radio Corporation of America (RCA), who started first developing the format in 1964, but due to internal conflict and technical difficulties, it wasn’t released until 1981, marking a late entry to the competition. RCA invested heavily in this format but soon realized that it would be a commercial failure, with Laserdisc, Betamax, and VHS being much more reliable (to use as CEDs needed to remain inside a special casing as fingerprints and grime would destroy the recording and needing to flip the record halfway through the movie). It’s estimated that RCA lost $650 million during the debacle of CED and stopped production in 1986.
As mentioned above, a similar format was developed, called the VHD, and was only sold in Japan by JVC. The format was released in 1983 and like the CED, used a stylus and analog disc with the ability to store up to 60 minutes on each side.
The rise of movie rentals played a significant role in the Format Wars. Initially, both Betamax and VHS tapes were offered for rent, as purchasing movies was prohibitively expensive—another tactic by studios to control their property. However, as VHS began to dominate, Beta copies of movies became increasingly scarce in video rental and retail stores. By the late 1980s, Betamax had become a parody of an outdated format.
By the mid 1990s, VHS seemed to be the winner of the competition, but as the old adage goes, “what goes up must come down.” Then, the Digital Video Disc (DVD) format came along, overshadowing and replacing VHS, which halted production in 2010. Interestingly enough, Betamax outlived VHS, making it all the way to 2016. But eventually, as all formats did before, DVD will meet its match.
Even though we have all probably moved onto Blu Ray or streaming, some of these older formats have found new uses. Electromagnetic tape has become particularly useful in storing massive amounts of data that is too sensitive to be stored in a server, or “the cloud.” Researchers have found that by using new technology with magnetic tape, you can compress great amounts of data that can be physically and safely stored away from hackers or server malfunctions. You can put up to two megabytes per second on magnetic tape.
What was the format king in your household?
