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Videocassette Recorder: Difference between revisions
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(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.VCR 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.VCR, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
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Videotape has been around since the 1950s, and the first cassette-based systems came out in the early 1970s (Sony's U-matic in 1971, Avco's Cartrivision and Philips' [[
▲Short for ''Video Cassette Recorder'', now old technology used to supply video for personal use, allowing people to watch television programs they have recorded, and pre-recorded movies, most prominantly in the VHS format.
▲Videotape has been around since the 1950s, and the first cassette-based systems came out in the early 1970s (Sony's U-matic in 1971, Avco's Cartrivision and Philips' [[Names the Same|VCR]] in 1972), but it wasn't until 1975 that the first format to achieve any popularity, Betamax (a downsized, simplified version of U-matic), was introduced by Sony. JVC came out with VHS in 1976 in Japan, and RCA and Panasonic brought it to the US a year later; VHS became much more popular due to the 2 hour recording time (twice that of the first Betamax) and lower price. Sony would retaliate with x2 (later named BII) and x3 (BIII), but Panasonic and RCA had created a 4-hour speed on their machine, and JVC introduced a 6-hour speed (EP/SLP), but stopped there due to issues with quality and tracking. JVC also licensed the technology to many other companies (Magnavox, Sharp, Panasonic, RCA, GE, Emerson, etc.), which allowed for many more machines to be produced. Despite Beta's higher audio/video quality and the introduction of "Beta hi-fi" (copied by VHS with linear stereo, and then with "VHS hi-fi" which worked similarly to the Beta version, but recorded the signal onto the tape differently), their high price and shorter run time made Beta obsolete by the 90s. Rumor has it that the [[The Rule of First Adopters|porno industry's preference for VHS is the main factor for Beta's failure in the 80s]].
While Betamax itself has been dead for years (Sony kept it on life support in Japan until 2002, but popular support for it elsewhere had evaporated a good decade before that), the professional Betacam variants of the format have remained in use well into the HD era, and are only now starting to be replaced with more modern [[Flash Memory]] and [[Magnetic Disk|hard disk]] formats. As for VHS, its high-end formats (Super VHS, W-VHS and D-VHS) never caught on the way Betacam did, and when the broadcast industry started switching to digital in the mid-1990s, they generally chose DV instead. U-matic, Beta's parent format, was never popular for home use, but saw a lot of usage in professional circles and in places like school libraries; it was eventually replaced in those roles by VHS (for educational and low-end commercial use) and Betacam.
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Because of the large data storage capacity of VCR tapes, they were also occasionally used as the basis for computer data backup systems and one or two rare consoles. They were also instrumental in the development of the [[Compact Disc]], which used a specially-modified U-matic recorder for master tapes because no one made a hard drive big enough at the time.
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[[The Stinger|And finally]], a bit of trivia: the last major motion picture released on VHS was the 2005 [[David Cronenberg]] thriller ''[[A History of Violence]]''.
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