Term of the Moment
lenticular printing
Definition: VHS
(Video Home System) The most popular consumer videocassete recorder (VCR) when analog magnetic tape was commonplace. Using half-inch cartridges, JVC launched the VHS format in 1976 to compete with Sony's Betamax, introduced a year earlier. The cartridge's two-hour capacity held an entire movie and helped VHS supersede Betamax as the video rental market took off. By 1980, VHS had 70% of the market and became the standard for entertainment and training. S-VHS (Super VHS) increased resolution from 240 to 400 lines but was not widely used.
VHS Machines Were Made for 40 Years
In 2002, DVD player sales surpassed VHS, and prerecorded VHS content began its decline into oblivion. However, VHS recorders were made until 2016, when Japan-based Funai Electric, the last manufacturer, finally ceased production. See Betamax, Cartrivision, helical scan, tape recorder, D-VHS, VCR and VTR.
Billions of VHS Tapes
VHS Hi-Fi
Gathering Dust
VHS Machines Were Made for 40 Years
In 2002, DVD player sales surpassed VHS, and prerecorded VHS content began its decline into oblivion. However, VHS recorders were made until 2016, when Japan-based Funai Electric, the last manufacturer, finally ceased production. See Betamax, Cartrivision, helical scan, tape recorder, D-VHS, VCR and VTR.
VHS videocassettes were the most popular tape medium with billions used worldwide. After the turn of the century, VHS eventually gave up the ghost in favor of the optical DVD, which in time, lost ground to the Internet (see streaming).
To compete with Sony's Beta Hi-Fi in the mid-1980s, JVC embedded high-fidelity audio channels into the VHS signal. One of the first VHS Hi-Fi units, this JVC model weighed 20 pounds and cost nearly a thousand dollars.
VHS collections just sit on shelves because cable and streaming movies are so easy to watch and have superior visual quality.