On June 4, 1977, the VHS was presented at the great Chicago electronics fair. The acronym stood for Video Home System and if you are over 40, surely you still have several at home, stacked in the bookcase like books, which have been gathering dust for years. I have a few hundred but I don’t know how to see them again, the VCR I put them on I don’t know where it is anymore. If, on the other hand, you are younger and you think that the world started with Netflix and streaming, know that this is the story of how cinema first entered our homes through objects that we could review as many times as we wanted. VHS was not the first attempt to put a film on a medium with which everyone could watch it at home. First came Sony with a remarkable quality standard called Betamax. The competition was all Japanese: the JCV (Japan Victor Company), which produced televisions and sound systems, launched an alternative standard that had worse picture quality. So why did VHS win? For several reasons, which have been analyzed and which are taught in courses on how innovation works. The first reason is the duration: in a VHS there were two hours of video, little more than the average duration of a film, in Betamax much less. VHS was more comfortable. The second reason is the price: JCV kept a lower price to quickly conquer the market. The third and most important is that Sony jealously guarded the Betamax standard while JVC gave it to everyone to use. The victory was immediate.
For about 20 years, VHS was the way in which people watched movies when they wanted to and not following the TV schedules. The demand for VHS was so high that there were shops that did just that: sell or rent VHS (Blockbuster the most famous chain).
Sony did not give up easily and continued to invest in Betamax until 2015 but for years it had already launched the Blu Ray standard for the new support for digital video, DVD. The last film produced on VHS according to some versions dates back to 2006. The digital has swept them away. Videotapes haven’t had a comeback like vinyl for music. But on eBay they are sold at amateur prices for collectors.
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