May 10, 1975 saw Sony release what, which later lost in the first modern format war against its rival from JVC?
Videotape format war 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
Videotape format war 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