History Platform / VCR

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 UsefulNotes/FlashMemory and [[Platform/MagneticDisk hard disk]] formats. As for VHS, its high-end formats (Super VHS, W-VHS and D-VHS (an HD VHS format)) 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. TV studios and post-production houses still have old machines that can play these formats for archival footage.

Many VHS tapes have survived from the 1980's to modern times relatively unscathed and with fairly decent picture quality, as uploads of old television programming to Website/YouTube prove. Another thing to consider is that on pre-2000's square-shaped CRT televisions, VHS picture quality was much more passable than on a modern HD flatscreen TV; this was also the case for old video game systems. When first introduced, VHS tapes were given a conservative lifespan of 10-25 years, but depending on how a video cassette is stored and taken care of, it may exceed that estimate by a long shot. VHS tapes still haven't been around long enough to give a definitive life expectancy to. Interestingly, cassettes made in the 1980's were made from sturdier materials, and may ultimately exceed the lifespan of the cheaply-made ones that flooded the market in the late 1990's.

Short for ''Videocassette Recorder'', a now-defunct technology used to play and record video for personal use, allowing people to watch television programs they have recorded, and pre-recorded movies from UsefulNotes/HomeVideoDistributors, most prominently in the VHS (Video Home System) format. The VCR peaked as a format in the late 1980s and into the 1990s[[note]][=DVDs=] rose in popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s, surpassing VHS sales in the summer of 2003.[[/note]], when VHS machines became inexpensive and when VHS movie rental store were a ubiquitous part of EverytownAmerica. VHS tapes also allowed viewers to record their favorite shows with a timer to watch them later, boosting the convenience for viewers. VHS came out as the winner of a format war with Beta, despite Beta supposedly being of higher quality (more on this later). Despite VHS tapes' shortcomings in video and audio quality, the medium's affordability and accessibility made a lasting impact on media history, as it made people able to enjoy films, shows and other pre-recorded content in their own home.

People usually fast-forwarded through the [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil FBI Warning Screen]], and the ComingAttractions, which is why often on [=DVDs=] [[UsefulNotes/UserOperationProhibitFlag you cannot skip, fast forward, or use the menu button during them]]. When BonusMaterial was included (rare, but did happen), they usually followed after the main feature on the cassette. Because the magnetic recording and the physical tape wore with use (and rental videos had a lot of wear and tear), sometimes movies which had a sex scene or {{fanservice}} would get a little flaky there from [[PoorMansPorn people repeatedly rewinding the scene or having it paused there for a long time]].

While the poor quality of [=VCRs=] and VHS tapes and their propensity to jam have now become a punchline, the machines and the other impacts they enabled had a major impact on society. If you go back to the 1960s and 1970s, only a MillionairePlayboy could afford to show movies at home on a projector or reel-to-reel video play. Fast-forward to 1990, and a low-income family in an [[IndustrialGhetto poor working-class neighborhood]] could afford a $99 VCR and rent films for a few bucks at the local video rental store. The video rental stores not only made home viewing of movies possible to a wider range of people; it also enabled a wider range of movies to be made. In the 1980s, relatively affordable video cameras and video editing enabled a generation of new filmmakers to make independent videos. In addition to getting mainstream, big-budget films at the rental store, patrons could get low-budget horror and action films.

Rumor has it that [[TheRuleOfFirstAdopters Sony's refusal to allow porn films on their format]] is the main factor for Beta's failure in the 80s ([[HistoryRepeats as would be the case two decades later]] for [[UsefulNotes/OpticalDisc Blu-ray's victory over HD DVD]], though by that point the internet had more or less eradicated the sales of porn on physical media).[[note]]This wouldn't have actually been possible. While Sony did control licensing of the format to manufacturers, they were not the sole provider of tapes, meaning that any company could and did offer pre-recorded adult movies on Betamax pretty much as soon as the decks went on sale.[[/note]] That being said, Beta's inability to fit a [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball football game]] on one tape and lagging timer technology[[note]]The flagship Sony model at launch in the US, the SL-7200, ''didn't include a timer''; you could buy one as an option, but it was a clunky, mechanical afterthought that could only "schedule" one program at a time. Just a few years later, Panasonic and RCA were including microprocessor-based, multi-program timers on their machines, the 4-program timer on the RCA VCT-400 being a good example.[[/note]] were also major factors.

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 UsefulNotes/FlashMemory and [[UsefulNotes/MagneticDisk hard disk]] formats. As for VHS, its high-end formats (Super VHS, W-VHS and D-VHS (an HD VHS format)) 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. TV studios and post-production houses still have old machines that can play these formats for archival footage.

For pre-recorded material such as films from Hollywood, it has all but been supplanted by the UsefulNotes/{{DVD}} player, but for people recording their own programs such as for time shifting (recording a show and viewing it later), the VCR was king from the mid-1980's to the early-2000's. It was slowly supplanted by [=DVRs=] (such as [=TiVo=] and [=ReplayTV=]) and UsefulNotes/{{DVD}} recorders, many of which use special services which spoon out Magazine/TVGuide-type schedule listings for the machines to automatically record programs with. It is still useful as a means for recording and ''keeping'' television programs however, whereas DVR and the like are far less permanent. Blank VHS tapes are an increasingly rare find these days but certain retail stores still carry them, more than likely produced by Maxell. The last remaining stronghold of the VCR was the camcorder, in which hard disks and optical discs have proven too sensitive to rough handling and solid state storage cost far too much at videotape's 25GB+ capacities for some years until ever-dropping [=SDCard=] prices and dual-mode still picture/motion video digital cameras finally made camcorders obsolete just in time for smartphones to put the last nail in the coffin.

Because of the large data storage capacity of videotape, 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 UsefulNotes/CompactDisc, which used a specially-modified U-matic recorder for master tapes [[TechnologyMarchesOn because no one made a hard drive big enough at the time]].

* D-VHS was a high-definition format introduced in 1998 supported by four major movie studios ([[Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios Fox]], Artisan, Creator/{{Universal}}, and Creator/{{DreamWorks|SKG}}) and it had far superior picture quality to [=DVDs=] at the time (the picture quality of some [=DVDs=] was barely better than VHS in the early years of the format). Most films on D-VHS had a D-Theater label on the box, which meant those tapes could only be played on a VHS player with a D-Theater logo; some of those tapes also had DTS enhanced audio (though some D-VHS films with DTS bizarrely did not have the identifying DTS logo on the box). The format lasted until 2004, two years before a suitable replacement (UsefulNotes/BluRay Disc) came out.

The first cassette-based systems came out in the early 1970s, but these remained expensive. Sony's UsefulNotes/UMatic in 1971, Avco's Cartrivision and Philips' VCR[[note]]Which means ''Video Cassette Recording'' for this one[[/note]] in 1972. 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 two hour recording time (twice that of the first Betamax, courtesy of the considerably larger tapes) and lower price. Sony would retaliate with x2 (later named βII) and x3 (βIII), but Panasonic and RCA had created a 4-hour speed on their machine, and JVC introduced a 6-hour speed (EP/SLP), stopping 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 theoretically higher audio/video quality (250 lines vs. 240 lines) which may not have been noticeable on televisions of the era 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[[note]]Sony however didn't seem to learn their lesson from the Betamax debacle, as they continued to develop storage formats that were little used outside their own products and services, including [=MiniDisc=], the [[Platform/PlayStationPortable UMD]] and the various incarnations of the [=MemoryStick=]; Sony has admitted defeat on the last one and makes [[UsefulNotes/SDCard SD Cards]] now.[[/note]].

VHS became much more popular due to the two hour recording time (twice that of the first Betamax, courtesy of the considerably larger tapes) and lower price. Sony would retaliate with x2 (later named βII) and x3 (βIII), but Panasonic and RCA had created a 4-hour speed on their machine, and JVC introduced a 6-hour speed (EP/SLP), stopping 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 theoretically higher audio/video quality (250 lines vs. 240 lines) which may not have been noticeable on televisions of the era 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[[note]]Sony however didn't seem to learn their lesson from the Betamax debacle, as they continued to develop storage formats that were little used outside their own products and services, including [=MiniDisc=], the [[UsefulNotes/PlayStationPortable UMD]] and the various incarnations of the [=MemoryStick=]; Sony has admitted defeat on the last one and makes [[UsefulNotes/SDCard SD Cards]] now.[[/note]].

* Especially towards the end, [=VCRs=] often had the ability to pass through various inputs and even change channels. It thus became common to control what the TV displayed solely through the VCR and its remote. During the seventh generation of video console wars, "VCR replacement" was a talking point referring to which one was the best all around media center. [[note]]The UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 was often considered the best at this because it could play Blu-ray while the UsefulNotes/{{Wii}} the worst because it lacked HD.[[/note]]

The VHS format is more remembered for its shortcomings rather than its merits, often portrayed as having terrible picture quality and easily becoming warped or being eaten up by the VCR. Early advertisements for DVD probably helped spread this perception (continued by ads for VHS-to-DVD transfer services who would have you believe your VHS tapes are rapidly withering away on the shelves), but it is in most cases unfair, as picture quality often depended on how clean the VCR was and on how well the cassette itself was stored and cared for. After VCR production ceased in 2016, the DeliberateVHSQuality trope started gained more traction, partly thanks to this signifying the format's obsolescence; a popular method for dating FoundFootage movies to the VCR era, is to run the footage through a VHS filter or even transfer the original video to VHS tape and feed that back into a capture device. Thus VCR and VHS has lived on in movie land as a way to credibly establish the time period of a story.

The VHS format is more remembered for its shortcomings rather than its merits, often portrayed as having terrible picture quality and easily becoming warped or being eaten up by the VCR. Early advertisements for DVD probably helped spread this perception (continued by ads for VHS-to-DVD transfer services who would have you believe your VHS tapes are rapidly withering away on the shelves), but it is in most cases unfair, as picture quality often depended on how clean the VCR was and on how well the cassette itself was stored and cared for. After VCR production ceased in 2016, the DeliberateVHSQuality trope started gained more traction, partly thanks to this signifying the format's obsolescence; a popular method for dating a video to the VCR era in genres such as FoundFootage, is to run the footage through a VHS filter or even transfer the original video to VHS tape and feed that back into a capture device. Thus VCR and VHS has lived on in movie land.

The VHS format is more remembered for its shortcomings rather than its merits, often portrayed as having terrible picture quality and easily becoming warped or being eaten up by the VCR. Early advertisements for DVD probably helped spread this perception (continued by ads for VHS-to-DVD transfer services who would have you believe your VHS tapes are rapidly withering away on the shelves), but it is in most cases unfair, as picture quality often depended on how clean the VCR was and on how well the cassette itself was stored and cared for.

Because [=VCRs=] were the first really popular video format, the first big video rental stores carried them. It was a minor RiteOfPassage for teens and young adults in the 1980's and 1990's to spend a certain amount of time standing around the the video store with your friends trying to decide which movie you would rent and whose house it would be watched at. Movie rental stores became a place for film nerds to hang out. A common sticker on the tapes was "Be kind, rewind" in hopes that users would rewind the tapes so the next user could watch them straight from the beginning without having to rewind the tape first.

VHS became much more popular due to the two hour recording time (twice that of the first Betamax, courtesy of the considerably larger tapes) and lower price. Sony would retaliate with x2 (later named βII) and x3 (βIII), but Panasonic and RCA had created a 4-hour speed on their machine, and JVC introduced a 6-hour speed (EP/SLP), stopping 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 theoretically higher audio/video quality (250 lines vs. 240 lines) which may not have been noticeable on TVs of the era 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[[note]]Sony however didn't seem to learn their lesson from the Betamax debacle, as they continued to develop storage formats that were little used outside their own products and services, including [=MiniDisc=], the [[UsefulNotes/PlayStationPortable UMD]] and the various incarnations of the [=MemoryStick=]; Sony has admitted defeat on the last one and makes [[UsefulNotes/SDCard SD Cards]] now.[[/note]].

Short for ''Videocassette Recorder'', a now-defunct technology used to play and record video for personal use, allowing people to watch television programs they have recorded, and pre-recorded movies from UsefulNotes/HomeVideoDistributors, most prominently in the VHS (Video Home System) format. The VCR peaked as a format in the late 1980s and into the 1990s[[note]][=DVDs=] rose in popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s, surpassing VHS sales in the summer of 2003.[[/note]], when VHS machines became inexpensive and when VHS movie rental store were a ubiquitous part of EverytownAmerica. VHS tapes also allowed viewers to record their favorite shows with a timer to watch them later, boosting the convenience for viewers. VHS came out as the winner of a format war with Beta, despite Beta being of higher quality (more on this later). Despite VHS tapes' shortcomings in video and audio quality, the medium's affordability and accessibility made a lasting impact on media history, as it made people able to enjoy films, shows and other pre-recorded content in their own home.

VHS became much more popular due to the two hour recording time (twice that of the first Betamax, courtesy of the considerably larger tapes) and lower price. Sony would retaliate with x2 (later named βII) and x3 (βIII), but Panasonic and RCA had created a 4-hour speed on their machine, and JVC introduced a 6-hour speed (EP/SLP), stopping 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 (250 lines vs. 240 lines) 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[[note]]Sony however didn't seem to learn their lesson from the Betamax debacle, as they continued to develop storage formats that were little used outside their own products and services, including [=MiniDisc=], the [[UsefulNotes/PlayStationPortable UMD]] and the various incarnations of the [=MemoryStick=]; Sony has admitted defeat on the last one and makes [[UsefulNotes/SDCard SD Cards]] now.[[/note]].

* D-VHS was a high-definition format introduced in 1998 supported by four major movie studios (Creator/{{Fox}}, Creator/{{Artisan}}, Creator/{{Universal}}, and Creator/DreamWorksSKG) and it had far superior picture quality to [=DVDs=] at the time (the picture quality of some [=DVDs=] was barely better than VHS in the early years of the format). Most films on D-VHS had a D-Theater label on the box, which meant those tapes could only be played on a VHS player with a D-Theater logo; some of those tapes also had DTS enhanced audio (though some D-VHS films with DTS bizarrely did not have the identifying DTS logo on the box). The format lasted until 2004, two years before a suitable replacement (UsefulNotes/BluRay Disc) came out.

* Especially towards the end, [=VCRs=] often had the ability to pass through various inputs and even change channels. It thus became common to control what the TV displayed solely through the VCR and its remote. During the seventh generation of video console wars, "VCR replacement" was a talking point referring to which one was the best all around media center. [[note]]The UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 was often considered the best at this because it could play Blue Ray while the UsefulNotes/{{Wii}} the worst because it lacked HD.[[/note]]

Short for ''Videocassette Recorder'', a now-defunct technology used to play and record video for personal use, allowing people to watch television programs they have recorded, and pre-recorded movies from UsefulNotes/HomeVideoDistributors, most prominently in the VHS (Video Home System) format. The VCR peaked as a format in the late 1980s and into the 1990s[[note]][=DVDs=] rose in popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s, surpassing VHS sales in the summerof 2003.[[/note]], when VHS machines became inexpensive and when VHS movie rental store were a ubiquitous part of EverytownAmerica. VHS tapes also allowed viewers to record their favorite shows with a timer to watch them later, boosting the convenience for viewers. VHS came out as the winner of a format war with Beta, despite Beta being of higher quality (more on this later). Despite VHS tapes' shortcomings in video and audio quality, the medium's affordability and accessibility made a lasting impact on media history, as it made people able to enjoy films, shows and other pre-recorded content in their own home.

The first cassette-based systems came out in the early 1970s, but these remained expensive. Sony's UsefulNotes/UMatic in 1971, Avco's Cartrivision and Philips' VCR in 1972. 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.

Short for ''Videocassette Recorder'', a now-defunct technology used to play and record video for personal use, allowing people to watch television programs they have recorded, and pre-recorded movies from UsefulNotes/HomeVideoDistributors, most prominently in the VHS (Video Home System) format. The VCR peaked as a format in the late 1980s and into the 1990s[[note]]DVDs rise in popularityin thevlate 1990s and early 2000s, surpassing VHS sales in the summerof 2003.[[/note]], when VHS machines became inexpensive and when VHS movie rental store were a ubiquitous part of EverytownAmerica. VHS tapes also allowed viewers to record their favorite shows with a timer to watch them later, boosting the convenience for viewers. VHS came out as the winner of a format war with Beta, despite Beta being of higher quality (more on this later). Despite VHS tapes' shortcomings in video and audio quality, the medium's affordability and accessibility made a lasting impact on media history, as it made people able to enjoy films, shows and other pre-recorded content in their own home.

The VHS format is more remembered for its shortcomings rather than its merits, often portrayed as having terrible picture quality and easily becoming warped or being eaten up by the VCR. Early advertisements for DVD probably helped spread this perception (continued by ads for VHS-to-DVD transfer services who would have you believe your VHS tapes are rapidly withering away on the shelves), but it is in most cases unfair, as picture quality often depended on how clean the VCR was and on how well the cassette itself was stored and cared for. Many VHS tapes have survived from the 1980's to modern times relatively unscathed and with fairly decent picture quality, as uploads of old television programming to Website/YouTube prove. Another thing to consider is that on pre-2000's square-shaped CRT televisions, VHS picture quality was much more passable than on a modern HD flatscreen TV; this was also the case for old video game systems. When first introduced, VHS tapes were given a conservative lifespan of 10-25 years, but depending on how a video cassette is stored and taken care of, it may exceed that estimate by a long shot. VHS tapes still haven't been around long enough to give a definitive life expectancy to. Interestingly, cassettes made in the 1980's were made from sturdier materials, and may ultimately exceed the lifespan of the cheaply-made ones that flooded the market in the late 1990's.