VHS (short for Video Home System) 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 on September 9, 1976, and in the United States on August 23, 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 expensive devices were used only in 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 a means to take control of their viewing experience. 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 VHS and S-VHS. The earliest of these formats, LaserDisc, was not widely adopted across Europe, but was hugely popular in Japan and a minor success in the United States. After the introduction of the DVD format in 1996, however, the market share for VHS began to decline. In 2003 DVD rentals surpassed those of VHS in the United States and 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 (VCR/DVD combos), Funai of Japan, ceased production in July 2016, citing shrinking demand and difficulties procuring parts. VHS originally stood for vertical helical scan.


Prior to VHS

In 1956, following several attempts by other companies, the first commercially successful VTR, the Ampex VRX-1000, was introduced by Ampex Corporation. At a price of US$50,000 in 1956 (), and US$300 () for a 90-minute reel of tape, it was intended only for the professional market. Kenjiro Takayanagi, a television broadcasting pioneer then working for JVC as its vice president, saw the need for his company to produce VTRs for the Japanese market, and at a more affordable price. In 1959, JVC developed a two-head video tape recorder, and by 1960 a color version for professional broadcasting. In 1964, JVC released the DV220, which would be the company's standard VTR until the mid-1970s. In 1969, JVC collaborated with Sony Corporation and Matsushita Electric (Matsushita was then parent company of Panasonic and is now known by that name, also majority stockholder of JVC until 2008) in building a video recording standard for the Japanese consumer. The effort produced the U-matic format in 1971, which was the first cassette format to become a unified standard for different companies. It was preceded by the reel to reel 1/2" EIAJ format. The U-matic format was successful in businesses and some broadcast applications for television stations (such as electronic news-gathering), but due to cost and limited recording time very few of the machines were sold for home use. Soon after, Sony and Matsushita broke away from the collaboration effort, in order to work on video recording formats of their own. Sony started working on Betamax, while Matsushita started working on VX. JVC released the CR-6060 in 1975, based on the U-matic format. Sony and Matsushita also produced U-matic systems of their own.

VHS development

In 1971, JVC engineers Yuma Shiraishi and Shizuo Takano put together a team to develop a consumer-based VTR. By the end of 1971, they created an internal diagram titled "VHS Development Matrix", which established twelve objectives for JVC's new VTR: * The system must be compatible with any ordinary television set. * Picture quality must be similar to a normal air broadcast. * The tape must have at least a two-hour recording capacity. * Tapes must be interchangeable between machines. * The overall system should be versatile, meaning it can be scaled and expanded, such as connecting a video camera, or dub between two recorders. * Recorders should be affordable, easy to operate and have low maintenance costs. * Recorders must be capable of being produced in high volume, their parts must be interchangeable, and they must be easy to service. In early 1972, the commercial video recording industry in Japan took a financial hit. JVC cut its budgets and restructured its video division, shelving the VHS project. However, despite the lack of funding, Takano and Shiraishi continued to work on the project in secret. By 1973, the two engineers had produced a functional prototype.

Competition with Betamax

In 1974, the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), desiring to avoid consumer confusion, attempted to force the Japanese video industry to standardize on just one home video recording format. Later, Sony had a functional prototype of the Betamax format, and was very close to releasing a finished product. With this prototype, Sony persuaded the MITI to adopt Betamax as the standard, and allow it to license the technology to other companies. JVC believed that an open standard, with the format shared among competitors without licensing the technology, was better for the consumer. To prevent the MITI from adopting Betamax, JVC worked to convince other companies, in particular Matsushita (Japan's largest electronics manufacturer at the time, marketing its products under the National brand in most territories and the Panasonic brand in North America, and JVC's majority stockholder), to accept VHS, and thereby work against Sony and the MITI.John Howells. "The Management of Innovation and Technology: The Shaping of Technology and Institutions of the Market Economy" ardcopy pg 76-81 Matsushita agreed, primarily out of concern that Sony might become the leader in the field if its proprietary Betamax format was the only one allowed to be manufactured. Matsushita also regarded Betamax's one-hour recording time limit as a disadvantage. Matsushita's backing of JVC persuaded Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Sharp to back the VHS standard as well. Sony's release of its Betamax unit to the Japanese market in 1975 placed further pressure on the MITI to side with the company. However, the collaboration of JVC and its partners was much stronger, and eventually led the MITI to drop its push for an industry standard. JVC released the first VHS machines in Japan in late 1976, and in the United States in mid 1977. Sony's Betamax competed with VHS throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s (see Videotape format war). Betamax's major advantages were its smaller cassette size, theoretical higher video quality, and earlier availability, but its shorter recording time proved to be a major shortcoming. Originally, Beta I machines using the NTSC television standard were able to record one hour of programming at their standard tape speed of 1.5 inches per second (ips). The first VHS machines could record for two hours, due to both a slightly slower tape speed (1.31 ips) and significantly longer tape. Betamax's smaller-sized cassette limited the size of the reel of tape, and could not compete with VHS's two-hour capability by extending the tape length. Instead, Sony had to slow the tape down to 0.787 ips (Beta II) in order to achieve two hours of recording in the same cassette size. This reduced Betamax's once-superior video quality to worse than VHS when comparing two-hour recording. Sony eventually released an extended Beta cassette (Beta III) which allowed NTSC Betamax to break the two-hour limit, but by then VHS had already won the format battle. Additionally, VHS had a "far less complex tape transport mechanism" than Betamax, and VHS machines were faster at rewinding and fast-forwarding than their Sony counterparts.

Initial releases of VHS-based devices

The first VCR to use VHS was the Victor HR-3300, and was introduced by the president of JVC in Japan on September 9, 1976. JVC started selling the HR-3300 in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan on October 31, 1976. Region-specific versions of the JVC HR-3300 were also distributed later on, such as the HR-3300U in the United States, and HR-3300EK in the United Kingdom in January 1977. The United States received its first VHS-based VCR – the RCA VBT200 on August 23, 1977. The RCA unit was designed by Matsushita, and was the first VHS-based VCR manufactured by a company other than JVC. It was also capable of recording four hours in LP (long play) mode. The United Kingdom later received its first VHS-based VCR – the Victor HR-3300EK in 1978. Quasar and General Electric would follow-up with VHS-based VCRs – all designed by Matsushita. By 1999, Matsushita alone produced just over half of all Japanese VCRs.Cusumano, MA, Mylonadis, Y. and Rosenbloom, RS (1992) "Strategic Manoeuvring and Mass Market Dynamics: VHS over Beta", Business History Review, pg 88 TV VCR combos, combining a standard definition CRT TV with a VHS mechanism under the CRT, were also once available for purchase.

Technical details

Cassette and tape design


Tape loading technique

As with almost all cassette-based videotape systems, VHS machines pull the tape out from the cassette shell and wrap it around the inclined head drum which rotates at 1,800 rpm in NTSC machines and at 1,500 rpm for PAL, one complete rotation of the head corresponding to one video frame. VHS uses an "M-loading" system, also known as M-lacing, where the tape is drawn out by two threading posts and wrapped around more than 180 degrees of the head drum (and also other tape transport components) in a shape roughly approximating the letter M. The heads in the rotating drum get their signal wirelessly using a rotary transformer.

Recording capacity


Tape lengths

Both NTSC and PAL/SECAM VHS cassettes are physically identical (although the signals recorded on the tape are incompatible). However, as tape speeds differ between NTSC and PAL/SECAM, the playing time for any given cassette will vary accordingly between the systems. In order to avoid confusion, manufacturers indicate the playing time in minutes that can be expected for the market the tape is sold in. It is perfectly possible to record and play back a blank T-XXX tape in a PAL machine or a blank E-XXX tape in an NTSC machine, but the resulting playing time will be different from that indicated. To calculate the playing time for a T-XXX tape in a PAL machine, use this formula: : PAL/SECAM Recording Time = T-XXX in minutes * (1.426) To calculate the playing time for an E-XXX tape in an NTSC machine, use this formula: : NTSC Recording Time = E-XXX in minutes * (0.701) * E-XXX indicates playing time in minutes for PAL or SECAM in SP and LP speeds. * T-XXX indicates playing time in minutes for NTSC or PAL-M in SP, LP, and EP/SLP speeds. * SP is Standard Play, LP is Long Play ( speed, equal to recording time in DVHS "HS" mode), EP/SLP is extended/super long play ( speed) which was primarily released into the NTSC market. Several other defined lengths of cassette entered mass production for both markets, but were either used only for professional duplication purposes (often pushing the limit of how much tape of a particular grade/thickness could fit into a standard cassette, in order to hold films that could not quite fit onto a shorter standard size without risking poorer quality or reliability by switching to a thinner grade), or failed to find popularity among home consumers because of a glut of tape length choices or poor value for money (e.g., T130/135/140, T168, E150, E270).

Copy protection

The system was first used in copyrighted movies beginning with the 1984 film ''The Cotton Club''. Macrovision copy protection saw refinement throughout its years, but has always worked by essentially introducing deliberate errors into a protected VHS tape's output video stream. These errors in the output video stream are ignored by most televisions, but will interfere with re-recording of programming by a second VCR. The first version of Macrovision introduces high signal levels during the vertical blanking interval, which occurs between the video fields. These high levels confuse the automatic gain control circuit in most VHS VCRs, leading to varying brightness levels in an output video, but are ignored by the TV as they are out of the frame-display period. "Level II" Macrovision uses a process called "colorstriping," which inverts the analog signal's colorburst period and causes off-color bands to appear in the picture. Level III protection added additional colorstriping techniques to further degrade the image. These protection methods worked well to defeat analog-to-analog copying by VCRs of the time. Products capable of digital video recording are mandated by law to include features which detect Macrovision encoding of input analog streams, and reject copying of the video. Both intentional and false-positive detection of Macrovision protection has frustrated archivists who wish to copy now-fragile VHS tapes to a digital format for preservation. Devices marketed as "Video Stabilizers" may be used to attempt removal of the Macrovision copy protection mechanism.

Recording process

The recording process in VHS consists of the following steps, in this order: * The tape is pulled from the supply reel by a capstan and pinch roller, similar to those used in audio tape recorders. * The tape passes across the erase head, which wipes any existing recording from the tape. * The tape is wrapped around the head drum, using a little more than 180 degrees of the drum. * One of the heads on the spinning drum records one field of video onto the tape, in one diagonally oriented track. * The tape passes across the audio and control head, which records the control track and the linear audio track or tracks. * The tape is wound onto the take-up reel due to torque applied to the reel by the machine.

Erase head

The erase head is fed by a high level, high frequency AC signal that overwrites any previous recording on the tape. Without this step, the new recording cannot be guaranteed to completely replace any old recording that might have been on the tape.

Video recording


Audio recording


Original linear audio system


Tracking adjustment and index marking

Another linear ''control'' track, at the tape's lower edge, holds pulses that mark the beginning of every frame of video; these are used to fine-tune the tape speed during playback, so that the high speed rotating heads remained exactly on their helical tracks rather than somewhere between two adjacent tracks (known as "tracking"). Since good tracking depends on precise distances between the rotating drum and the fixed control/audio head reading the linear tracks, which usually varies by a couple of micrometers between machines due to manufacturing tolerances, most VCRs offer tracking adjustment, either manual or automatic, to correct such mismatches. The control track is also used to hold ''index marks'', which were normally written at the beginning of each recording session, and can be found using the VCR's ''index search'' function: this will fast-wind forward or backward to the ''n''th specified index mark, and resume playback from there. At times, higher-end VCRs provided functions for the user to manually add and remove these marks — so that, for example, they coincide with the actual start of the television program — but this feature later became hard to find. By the late 1990s, some high-end VCRs offered more sophisticated indexing. For example, Panasonic's Tape Library system assigned an ID number to each cassette, and logged recording information (channel, date, time and optional program title entered by the user) both on the cassette and in the VCR's memory for up to 900 recordings (600 with titles).

Hi-Fi audio system


= Issues with Hi-Fi audio





VHS-C / Super VHS-C


W-VHS / Digital-VHS (high-definition)






Signal standards

VHS can record and play back all varieties of analog television signals in existence at the time VHS was devised. However, a machine must be designed to record a given standard. Typically, a VHS machine can only handle signals using the same standard as the country it was sold in. This is because some parameters of analog broadcast TV are not applicable to VHS recordings, the number of VHS tape recording format variations is smaller than the number of broadcast TV signal variations—for example, analog TVs and VHS ''machines'' (except multistandard devices) are not interchangeable between the UK and Germany, but VHS ''tapes'' are. The following tape recording formats exist in conventional VHS (listed in the form of standard/lines/frames): * SECAM/625/25 (SECAM, French variety) * MESECAM/625/25 (most other SECAM countries, notably the former Soviet Union and Middle East) * NTSC/525/30 (Most parts of Americas, Japan, South Korea) * PAL/525/30 (i.e., PAL-M, Brazil) * PAL/625/25 (most of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, many parts of Asia such as China and India, some parts of South America such as Argentina, Uruguay and the Falklands, and Africa) Note that PAL/625/25 VCRs allow playback of SECAM (and MESECAM) tapes with a monochrome picture, and vice versa, as the line standard is the same. Since the 1990s, dual and multi-standard VHS machines, able to handle a variety of VHS-supported video standards, became more common. For example, VHS machines sold in Australia and Europe could typically handle PAL, MESECAM for record and playback, and NTSC for playback only on suitable TVs. Dedicated multi-standard machines can usually handle all standards listed, and some high-end models could convert the content of a tape from one standard to another on the fly during playback by using a built-in standards converter. S-VHS is only implemented as such in PAL/625/25 and NTSC/525/30; S-VHS machines sold in SECAM markets record internally in PAL, and convert between PAL and SECAM during recording and playback. S-VHS machines for the Brazilian market record in NTSC and convert between it and PAL-M. A small number of VHS decks are able to decode closed captions on video cassettes before sending the full signal to the set with the captions. A smaller number still are able, additionally, to record subtitles transmitted with world standard teletext signals (on pre-digital services), simultaneously with the associated program. S-VHS has a sufficient resolution to record teletext signals with relatively few errors.

Uses in marketing


Comparison to Betamax

VHS was the winner of a protracted and somewhat bitter format war during the late 1970s and early 1980s against Sony's Betamax format as well as other formats of the time. Betamax was widely perceived at the time as the better format, as the cassette was smaller in size, and Betamax offered slightly better video quality than VHS – it had lower video noise, less luma-chroma crosstalk, and was marketed as providing pictures superior to those of VHS. However, the sticking point for both consumers and potential licensing partners of Betamax was the total recording time. To overcome the recording limitation, Beta II speed (two-hour mode, NTSC regions only) was released in order to compete with VHS's two-hour SP mode, thereby reducing Betamax's horizontal resolution to 240 lines (vs 250 lines). In turn, the extension of VHS to VHS HQ produced 250 lines (vs 240 lines), so that overall a typical Betamax/VHS user could expect virtually identical resolution. (Very high-end Betamax machines still supported recording in the Beta I mode and some in an even higher resolution Beta Is (Beta I Super HiBand) mode, but at a maximum single-cassette run time of 1:40 ith an L-830 cassette) Because Betamax was released more than a year before VHS, it held an early lead in the format war. However, by 1981, United States' Betamax sales had dipped to only 25-percent of all sales. There was debate between experts over the cause of Betamax's loss. Some, including Sony's founder Akio Morita, say that it was due to Sony's licensing strategy with other manufacturers, which consistently kept the overall cost for a unit higher than a VHS unit, and that JVC allowed other manufacturers to produce VHS units license-free, thereby keeping costs lower. Others say that VHS had better marketing, since the much larger electronics companies at the time (Matsushita, for example) supported VHS. Sony would make its first VHS players/recorders in 1988, although it continued to produce Betamax machines concurrently until 2002.


The video cassette recorder was a mainstay in television-equipped American and European living rooms for more than twenty years from its introduction in 1977. The home television recording market, as well as the camcorder market, has since transitioned to digital recording on solid-state memory cards. The introduction of the DVD format to American consumers in March 1997 triggered the market share decline of VHS. DVD rentals surpassed those on the VHS format in the United States for the first time in June 2003. Though 94.5 million Americans still owned VHS format VCRs in 2005, market share continued to drop. In the mid-2000s, several retail chains in the United States and Europe announced they would stop selling VHS equipment. In the U.S., no major brick-and-mortar retailers stock VHS home-video releases, focusing only on DVD and Blu-ray media. The last known company in the world to manufacture VHS equipment was Funai of Japan, who produced video cassette recorders under the Sanyo brand in China and North America. Funai ceased production of VHS equipment in July 2016, citing falling sales and a shortage of components.

Modern use

Despite the decline in both VHS players and programming on VHS machines, they are still owned in some households worldwide. Those who still use or hold on to VHS do so for a number of reasons, including nostalgic value, ease of use in recording, keeping personal videos or home movies, watching content currently exclusive to VHS, and collecting. Some expatriate communities in the United States also obtain video content from their native countries in VHS format. Although VHS has been discontinued in the United States, VHS recorders and blank tapes were still sold at stores in other developed countries prior to digital television transitions. As an acknowledgement of the continued use of VHS, Panasonic announced the world's first dual deck VHS-Blu-ray player in 2009. The last standalone JVC VHS-only unit was produced October 28, 2008. JVC, and other manufacturers, continued to make combination DVD+VHS units even after the decline of VHS. A market for pre-recorded VHS tapes has continued, and some online retailers such as Amazon still sell new and used pre-recorded VHS cassettes of movies and television programs. None of the major Hollywood studios generally issue releases on VHS. The last major studio film to be released in the format in the United States, other than as part of special marketing promotions, was ''A History of Violence'' in 2006. In October 2008, Distribution Video Audio Inc., the last major American supplier of pre-recorded VHS tapes, shipped its final truckload of tapes to stores in America. However, there have been a few exceptions. For example, ''The House of the Devil'' was released on VHS in 2010 as an Amazon-exclusive deal, in keeping with the film's intent to mimic 1980s horror films. The horror film ''V/H/S/2'' was released as a combo in North America that included a VHS tape in addition to a Blu-ray and a DVD copy on September 24, 2013. In 2019, Paramount Pictures produced limited quantities of the 2018 film ''Bumblebee'' to give away as promotional contest prizes.





The DVD-Video format was introduced first on November 1, 1996, in Japan; to the United States on March 26, 1997 (''test marketed''); and mid-to-late 1998 in Europe and Australia. Despite DVD's better quality (typical horizontal resolution of 480 versus 250 lines per picture height), and the availability of standalone DVD recorders, VHS is still used in home recording of video content. The commercial success of DVD recording and re-writing has been hindered by a number of factors including: *A reputation for being temperamental and unreliable, as well as the risk of scratches and hairline cracks. * Incompatibilities in playing discs recorded on a different manufacturer's machines to that of the original recording machine. * Compression artifacts: MPEG-2 video compression can result in visible artifacts such as macroblocking, mosquito noise and ringing which become accentuated in extended recording modes (more than three hours on a DVD-5 disc). Standard VHS will not suffer from any of these problems, all of which are characteristic of certain digital video compression systems (see Discrete cosine transform) but VHS will result in reduced luminance and chroma resolution, which makes the picture look horizontally blurred (resolution decreases further with LP and EP recording modes). VHS also adds considerable noise to both the luminance and chroma channels.

High-capacity digital recording technologies

High-capacity digital recording systems are also gaining in popularity with home users. These types of systems come in several form factors: * Hard disk–based set-top boxes * Hard disk/optical disc combination set-top boxes * Personal computer–based media center * Portable media players with TV-out capability Hard disk-based systems include TiVo as well as other digital video recorder (DVR) offerings. These types of systems provide users with a no-maintenance solution for capturing video content. Customers of subscriber-based TV generally receive electronic program guides, enabling one-touch setup of a recording schedule. Hard disk–based systems allow for many hours of recording without user-maintenance. For example, a 120 GB system recording at an extended recording rate (XP) of 10 Mbit/s MPEG-2 can record over 25 hours of video content.


Often considered an important medium of film history, the influence of VHS on art and cinema was highlighted in a retrospective staged at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2013. In 2015, the Yale University Library collected nearly 3,000 horror and exploitation movies on VHS tapes, distributed from 1978 to 1985, calling them "the cultural id of an era." The documentary film ''Rewind This!'' (2013), directed by Josh Johnson, tracks the impact of VHS on film industry through various filmmakers and collectors.

See also

* Analog video * Cassette tape * DVD * Tape head cleaner * Videocassette recorder


External links

HowStuffWorks: How VCRs work

The 'Total Rewind' VCR museum
covering the history of VHS and other vintage formats
VHSCollector.com: Analog Video Cassette Archive
A growing archive of commercially released video cassettes from their dawn to the present, and a guide to collecting. {{DEFAULTSORT:Vhs Category:Audiovisual introductions in 1976 Category:Products introduced in 1976 Category:Japanese inventions Category:Composite video formats Category:Panasonic Category:Videotape Category:Discontinued media formats Category:Digital media