June 4, 1977: VHS Comes to America

[The Straight Story]

June 4, 1977: VHS Comes to America


1977: The VHS videocassette format is introduced in North America at a press conference before the Consumer Electronics Show starts in Chicago.

Long before the battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, there was another home-video standards war that pitted Sony against another Japanese company, JVC. It was VHS vs. Betamax.

VHS, or Video Home System, was based on an open standard developed by JVC in 1976. The format allowed longer playtime and faster rewinding and fast-forwarding. JVC showed a two-hour tape that was so compact, Popular Science called it “smaller, in fact, than some audio cassette decks.”

The system was called Vidstar. The VCR would cost $1,280. That’s about $4,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Blank tapes were priced at $20 ($72 these days).

VHS was late to the game. Sony had launched the Betamax video recording system in 1975. The idea of a home-use VCR captured consumers’ imagination and was set to become one of the hottest home electronics products.

Read More http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/06/0604vhs-ces/#ixzz0puk0ql88

[Kolesar]

1. I have some tapes I would like to give away

any taker? I recorded Silverstreak and Three Amigos and about fifty other tapes of documentaries and Wings on the Discovery channel.

[JCMach1]

2. Betamax is still better!!!

[Buns_of_Fire]

3. I remember it well...

It was roughly six months after I bought my wife a brand-spanking-new Beta machine for Xmas.

I made up for it, though. For her next birthday, I bought her one of those newfangled RCA videodisk players -- no, not a DVD player, this sucker actually used an LP-record-type disk and it played with an honest-to-goodness stylus.

So much for trying to be cutting-edge.:shrug:

[RockaFowler]

4. The Laser Discs had a great picture

They were beautiful. The only problem - you had to turn it over to watch the rest of the movie. Horrible design flaw.

We had all of the different formats at my house. The Beta was the best, though. The VHS always seemed to have problems. We had both a VHS Camcorder and a Beta Camcorder. The picture quality was far superior on the Beta.

[Buns_of_Fire]

5. That they did. But I think this even predated the laser disk.

No lasers in this little sucker, no sirree. Like I said, it had a stylus in there playing the disk. Just like your old 45s, 78s, and 33 1/3s. One good bump and you'd go straight from Rocky tossing Thunderlips out of the ring to getting the crap beaten out of him by Clubber Lang.

It was basically a Poor Man's Laser Disk. I don't think it was around long enough to even attract much of a following.

[Lance_Boyle]

6. I don't think laserdisc is what the previous poster was talking about.

Laserdisc came about in the 90s IIRC, and was an optical technology. No "stylus."

[XemaSab]

7. Laserdisc was around in the 80s

and grew in popularity until DVDs appeared.

[Lance_Boyle]

8. I'll be damned - 1978(!) per wiki.

I never saw one until the 90s, and then BOOM! DVDs were on the scene.