Videotape is

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...

used for storing

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

and usually

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...

in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or

digital signal A digital signal is a signal that represents data as a sequence of discrete values; at any given time it can only take on, at most, one of a finite number of values. This contrasts with an analog signal, which represents continuous values; ...

. Videotape is used in both

video tape recorder A video tape recorder (VTR) is a tape recorder designed to record and playback video and audio signal, audio material from magnetic tape. The early VTRs were open-reel devices that record on individual reels of 2-inch-wide (5.08 cm) tape. ...

s (VTRs) and, more commonly,

videocassette recorder A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other AV sources and can play back the recording after rewinding. The use of a VCR to reco ...

s (VCRs) and

camcorder A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-sw ...

s. Videotapes have also been used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram. Because video signals have a very high

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

, and stationary heads would require extremely high tape speeds, in most cases, a helical-scan video head rotates against the moving tape to record the data in two dimensions. Tape is a

linear In mathematics, the term ''linear'' is used in two distinct senses for two different properties: * linearity of a '' function'' (or '' mapping''); * linearity of a '' polynomial''. An example of a linear function is the function defined by f(x) ...

method of storing information and thus imposes delays to access a portion of the tape that is not already against the heads. The early 2000s saw the introduction and rise to prominence of high-quality random-access video recording media such as

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

s and

flash memory Flash memory is an Integrated circuit, electronic Non-volatile memory, non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for t ...

. Since then, videotape has been increasingly relegated to archival and similar uses.

Early formats

The electronics division of entertainer

Bing Crosby Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, comedian, entertainer and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwi ...

's production company, Bing Crosby Enterprises (BCE), gave the world's first demonstration of a videotape recording in Los Angeles on November 11, 1951. In development by

John T. Mullin John Thomas Mullin (October 5, 1913 – June 24, 1999) was an American pioneer in the field of magnetic tape sound recording and made significant contributions to many other related fields. From his days at Santa Clara University to his death ...

and Wayne R. Johnson since 1950, the device gave what were described as "blurred and indistinct" images using a modified

Ampex Ampex Data Systems Corporation is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name ''AMPEX'' is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excell ...

200 tape recorder and standard quarter-inch (0.635 cm)

audiotape Audiotape is magnetic tape used for storing audio. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Audiotape can be used in various tape recorders including machines for reel-to-reel audio tape recording on open reels ...

moving at per second. A year later, an improved version using one-inch (2.54 cm) magnetic tape was shown to the press, who reportedly expressed amazement at the quality of the images although they had a "persistent grainy quality that looked like a worn motion picture." Overall the picture quality was still considered inferior to the best

kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940s ...

recordings on film. Bing Crosby Enterprises hoped to have a commercial version available in 1954 but none came forth. The

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

experimented from 1952 to 1958 with a high-speed linear videotape system called

Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus (VERA) was an early analog recording videotape format developed from 1952 by the BBC under project manager Dr Peter Axon. History In order to record high frequencies, a tape must move rapidly with respect ...

(VERA), but this was ultimately dropped in favor of

quadruplex videotape 2-inch quadruplex videotape (also called 2" quad video tape or quadraplex) was the first practical and commercially successful analog recording video tape format. The format uses magnetic tape and was developed and released for the broadcast t ...

. VERA used half-inch metallized (1.27 cm) tape on 20-inch reels traveling at .

RCA RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...

demonstrated the magnetic tape recording of both black-and-white and

color television Color television (American English) or colour television (British English) is a television transmission technology that also includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improv ...

programs at its Princeton laboratories on December 1, 1953. The high-speed longitudinal tape system, called Simplex, in development since 1951, could record and play back only a few minutes of a

television program A television show, TV program (), or simply a TV show, is the general reference to any content produced for viewing on a television set that is broadcast via Terrestrial television, over-the-air, Satellite television, satellite, and cable te ...

. The color system used half-inch (1.27 cm) tape on 10½ inch reels to record five tracks, one each for red, blue, green, synchronization, and audio. The black-and-white system used quarter-inch (0.635 cm) tape also on 10½ inch reels with two tracks, one for video and one for audio. Both systems ran at with per reel yielding an 83-second capacity. RCA-owned

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

first used it on ''The Jonathan Winters Show'' on October 23, 1956, when a prerecorded song sequence by

Dorothy Collins Dorothy Collins (born Marjorie Chandler;
''

live television Live television is a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. In a secondary meaning, it may refer to streaming television where all viewers watch the same stream simultaneously, rather than watching vide ...

program. In 1953, Norikazu Sawazaki developed a prototype

helical scan Helical scan is a method of recording high-frequency signals on magnetic tape, used in open-reel video tape recorders, video cassette recorders, digital audio tape recorders, and some computer tape drives. With this technique, magnetic tape he ...

video tape recorder. BCE demonstrated a color system in February 1955 using a longitudinal recording on half-inch (1.27 cm) tape. CBS, RCA's competitor, was about to order BCE machines when

introduced the superior Quadruplex system. BCE was acquired by 3M Company in 1956. In 1959,

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

released the first commercial helical scan video tape recorder.

Broadcast video

Quad

The first commercial professional

broadcast quality Broadcast quality is a term to denote the quality achieved by professional video cameras and time base correctors (TBC) used for broadcast television, usually in standard definition. As the standards for commercial television broadcasts have chang ...

videotape machines capable of replacing

s were the two-inch

(Quad) machines introduced by

on April 14, 1956, at the

National Association of Broadcasters The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is a Industry trade group, trade association and lobbying, lobby group representing the interests of commercial and non-commercial over-the-air radio and television broadcasting, broadcasters in th ...

convention in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. Quad employed a transverse (scanning the tape across its width) four-head system on a two-inch (5.08 cm) tape and stationary heads for the soundtrack.

CBS Television CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

first used the Ampex VRX-1000 Mark IV at its Television City studios in Hollywood on November 30, 1956, to play a delayed broadcast of ''

Douglas Edwards and the News The ''CBS Evening News'' is the flagship evening television news program of CBS News, the news division of the CBS television network in the United States. The ''CBS Evening News'' is a daily evening broadcast featuring news reports, feature s ...

'' from

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

to the

Pacific Time Zone The Pacific Time Zone (PT) is a time zone encompassing parts of western Canada, the western United States, and western Mexico. Places in this zone observe standard time by subtracting eight hours from Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC−08:00 ...

. On January 22, 1957, the NBC Television game show ''

Truth or Consequences ''Truth or Consequences'' is an American game show originally hosted on NBC radio by Ralph Edwards (1940–57) and later on television by Edwards (1950–54), Jack Bailey (1954–56), Bob Barker (1956–75), Steve Dunne (1957–58), Bob Hi ...

'', produced in Hollywood, became the first program to be broadcast in all time zones from a prerecorded videotape. Ampex introduced a color videotape recorder in 1958 in a cross-licensing agreement with RCA, whose engineers had developed it from an Ampex black-and-white recorder. NBC's special, '' An Evening With Fred Astaire'' (1958), is the oldest surviving

television network A television broadcaster or television network is a telecommunications network for the distribution of television show, television content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations, pay television providers or ...

color videotape, and has been restored by the

UCLA Film and Television Archive The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a visual arts organization focused on the film preservation, preservation, film studies, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As a nonpro ...

. On December 7, 1963,

instant replay Instant replay or action replay is a video reproduction of something that recently occurred, both shot and broadcast live TV, live. After being shown live, the video is replayed so viewers can see it again and analyze what just happened. Spo ...

, originally a videotape-based system, was used for the first time during the live transmission of the

Army–Navy Game The Army–Navy Game is an American college football college rivalry, rivalry game between the Army Black Knights football, Army Black Knights of the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York, and the Navy Midshipmen football ...

by its inventor, director

Tony Verna Anthony F. Verna (November 26, 1933January 18, 2015) was a producer of television sports and entertainment blockbusters. Biography Verna was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He died in Palm Desert, California at the age of 81. Broadcast hal ...

. Although Quad became the industry standard for approximately thirty years, it has drawbacks such as an inability to freeze pictures, and no picture search. Also, in early machines, a tape could reliably be played back using only the same set of hand-made tape heads, which wore out very quickly. Despite these problems, Quad is capable of producing excellent images. Subsequent videotape systems have used helical scan, where the video heads record diagonal tracks (of complete fields) onto the tape. Many early videotape recordings were not preserved. While much less expensive (if repeatedly recycled) and more convenient than kinescope, the high cost of 3M Scotch 179Charles P. Ginsburg
. ''Memorial Tributes: National Academy of Engineering'', Vol. 7. 1994: The National Academies Press, Washington DC. and other early videotapes ($300 per one-hour reel)Elen, Richard G.

. BFI Screenonline. meant that most broadcasters erased and reused them, and (in the United States) regarded videotape as simply a better and more cost-effective means of time-delaying broadcasts than kinescopes. It was the four time zones of the continental United States which had made the system very desirable in the first place. Some early broadcast videotapes have survived, including '' The Edsel Show'', broadcast live on October 13, 1957 and '' An Evening With Fred Astaire'' which aired on October 18, 1958 and was the oldest color videotape of an entertainment program known to exist until the discovery of the October 8, 1958 episode of the ''

Kraft Music Hall ''The Kraft Music Hall'' was a popular old-time radio variety show, variety program, featuring top show business entertainers, which aired first on NBC radio from 1933 to 1949. Radio ''The Kraft Program'' debuted June 26, 1933, as a musical- ...

'' hosted by

Milton Berle Milton Berle (born Mendel Berlinger; ; July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an American actor and comedian. His career as an entertainer spanned over eight decades, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and ...

. The oldest color videotape known to survive is the May 1958 dedication of the

WRC-TV WRC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Washington, D.C., serving as the market's NBC outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Class A television service, Class A Telemundo outlet W ...

studios in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

). In 1976,

's 50th-anniversary special included an excerpt from a 1957 color special starring

Donald O'Connor Donald David Dixon Ronald O'Connor (August 28, 1925 – September 27, 2003) was an American dancer, singer and actor. He came to fame in a series of films in which he co-starred, in succession, with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talki ...

; despite some obvious technical problems, the color tape was remarkably good. Some classic television programs recorded on studio videotape have been made available on DVD – among them NBC's ''

Peter Pan Peter Pan is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie. A free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythical ...

'' (first telecast in 1960) with

Mary Martin Mary Virginia Martin (December 1, 1913 – November 3, 1990) was an American actress and singer. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles on stage over her career, including Nellie Forbush in ''South Pacific (musica ...

as Peter, several episodes of The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (late 1950s/early 60s), the final Howdy Doody Show (1960), the television version of

Hal Holbrook Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. (February 17, 1925 – January 23, 2021) was an American actor. He first received critical acclaim in 1954 for a one-man stage show that he developed called ''Mark Twain Tonight!'' while studying at Denison University. H ...

's one-man show '' Mark Twain Tonight'' (first telecast in 1967), and

Mikhail Baryshnikov Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov ( rus, Михаил Николаевич Барышников, p=mʲɪxɐˈil bɐ'rɨʂnʲɪkəf; ; born January 27, 1948) is a Latvian and American dancer, choreographer, and actor. He was the preeminent male ...

's classic production of the ballet ''

The Nutcracker ''The Nutcracker'' (, ), Opus number, Op. 71, is an 1892 two-act classical ballet (conceived as a '; ) by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, set on Christmas Eve at the foot of a Christmas tree in a child's imagination featuring a Nutcracker doll. Th ...

'' (first telecast in 1977).

Types C and B

The next format to gain widespread usage was 1 inch (2.54 cm)

Type C videotape 1-inch Type C Helical Scan or SMPTE C is a professional reel-to-reel analog recording helical scan videotape format co-developed by Ampex and Sony in 1976. The format uses tape and became the replacement in the professional video and broadcast t ...

introduced in 1976. This format introduced features such as shuttling, various-speed playback (including slow-motion), and still framing. Although 1" Type C's quality was still quite high, the sound and picture reproduction attainable on the format were of slightly lower quality than Quad. However, compared to Quad, 1" Type C machines required much less maintenance, took up less space, and consumed much less electrical power. In Europe, a similar tape format was developed, called 1 inch Type B videotape. Type B machines use the same 1" tape as Type C but they lacked C's shuttle and slow-motion options. The picture quality is slightly better, though. Type B was the broadcast norm in continental Europe for most of the 1980s.

Professional cassette formats

A videocassette is a case containing videotape. In 1969,

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

introduced a prototype for the first widespread video cassette, the ¾ʺ (1.905 cm) composite

U-matic U-matic, also known as -inch Type E Helical Scan or SMPTE E, is an analog recording videocassette format developed by Sony. First shown as a prototype in October 1969 and introduced commercially in September 1971, it was among the earliest vi ...

system, which Sony introduced commercially in September 1971 after working out industry standards with other manufacturers. Sony later refined it to ''Broadcast Video U-matic'' (BVU). Sony continued its hold on the professional market with its ever-expanding ½ʺ (1.27 cm)

component video Component video is an analog video signal that has been split into two or more component channels. In popular use, it refers to a type of component analog video (CAV) information that is transmitted or stored as three separate signals. Compo ...

Betacam Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, ''Betacam'' singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself. ...

family introduced in 1982. This tape form factor would go on to be used for leading professional digital video formats.

Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...

had some limited success with its MII system, but never could compare to Betacam in terms of market share. The next step was the

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

revolution. Sony's D-1 was introduced in 1986 and featured uncompressed digital component recording. Because D-1 was extremely expensive, the composite D-2 (Sony, 1988) and D-3 (Panasonic, 1991) were introduced soon after. Ampex introduced the first compressed component recording with its DCT series in 1992. Panasonic's D-5 format was introduced in 1994. Like D-1, it is uncompressed, but much more affordable. The DV standard, which debuted in 1995, and was widely used both in its native form as

MiniDV DV (from ''Digital Video'') is a family of codecs and Videotape, tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of camcorder, video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. It includes the recording or casse ...

and in more robust professional variants. In digital camcorders, Sony adapted the Betacam system with its

Digital Betacam Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, ''Betacam'' singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself. ...

format in 1993, and in 1996 following it up with the cheaper

Betacam SX Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, ''Betacam'' singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself. ...

and the 2000 MPEG IMX format, The semiprofessional DV-based DVCAM system was introduced in 1996. Panasonic used its DV variant DVCPRO for all professional cameras, with the higher-end format DVCPRO50 being a direct descendant. JVC developed the competing D9/Digital-S format, which compresses video data in a way similar to DVCPRO but uses a cassette similar to

S-VHS S-VHS, the common initialism for Super VHS, is an analog video cassette format introduced by JVC in 1987 as an improved version of the VHS (Video Home System) format. S-VHS improved image quality by increasing the bandwidth of the luminance ...

media. Many helical scan cassette formats such as VHS and Betacam use a head drum with heads that use azimuth recording, in which the heads in the head drum have a gap that is tilted at an angle, and opposing heads have their gaps tilted so as to oppose each other.

High definition

The introduction of

HDTV High-definition television (HDTV) describes a television or video system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since at least 1933; in more recent times, it ref ...

video production Video production is the process of producing video content. It is the equivalent of filmmaking, but with video recorded either as analog signals on videotape, digitally in video tape or as computer files stored on optical discs, hard drives, SSDs, ...

necessitated a medium for storing

high-definition video High-definition video (HD video) is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for ''high-definition'', generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines ( ...

. In 1997, Sony supplemented its Betacam family with the HD-capable

HDCAM HDCAM is a high-definition video digital recording videocassette version of Digital Betacam introduced in 1997 that uses an 8-bit discrete cosine transform (DCT) compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 1080i-compatible down-sampled resolution of 144 ...

standard and its higher-end cousin HDCAM SR in 2003. Panasonic's competing HD format for its camcorders was based on DVCPRO and called

DVCPRO HD DV (from ''Digital Video'') is a family of codecs and tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. It includes the recording or cassette formats DV, Mini ...

. For VTR and archive use, Panasonic expanded the D-5 specification to store compressed HD streams and called it D-5 HD.

Home video

Videocassette recorders

The first consumer

s (VCRs) used Sony

technology and were launched in 1971.

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

entered the domestic market the following year with the N1500. Sony's

Betamax Betamax (also known as Beta, and stylized as the Greek letter Beta, β in its logo) is a discontinued consumer analog Videotape, video cassette recording format developed by Sony. It was one of the main competitors in the videotape format war ag ...

(1975) and JVC's

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

(1976) created a mass-market for VCRs and the two competing systems battled the

videotape format war The videotape format war was a period of competition or " format war" of incompatible models of consumer-level analog video videocassette and video cassette recorders (VCR) in the late 1970s and the 1980s, mainly involving the Betamax and VHS ...

, which VHS ultimately won. In Europe, Philips had developed the

Video 2000 Video 2000 (also known as V2000, with the tape standard Video Compact Cassette, or VCC) is a consumer videocassette system and analogue recording standard developed by Philips and Grundig to compete with JVC's VHS and Sony's Betamax video t ...

format, which did not find favor with the TV rental companies in the UK and lost out to VHS. At first VCRs and videocassettes were very expensive, but by the late 1980s the price had come down enough to make them affordable to a mainstream audience. Videocassettes finally made it possible for consumers to buy or rent a complete film and watch it at home whenever they wished, rather than going to a movie theater or having to wait until it was telecast. It gave birth to video rental stores, Blockbuster the largest chain, which lasted from 1985 to 2005. It also made it possible for a VCR owner to begin

time shifting In broadcasting, time shifting is the recording of programming to a storage medium to be viewed or listened to after the live broadcasting. Typically, this refers to TV programming but it can also refer to radio shows via podcasts. In recent yea ...

their viewing of films and other

s. This caused an enormous change in viewing practices, as one no longer had to wait for a repeat of a program that had been missed. The shift to home viewing also changed the movie industry's revenue streams, because home renting created an additional window of time in which a film could make money. In some cases, films that did only modestly in their theater releases went on to have strong performances in the rental market (e.g., cult films). VHS became the leading consumer tape format for

home movies A home movie is a short amateur film or video typically made just to preserve a visual record of family activities, a vacation, or a special event, and intended for viewing at home by family and friends. Originally, home movies were made on ph ...

after the

, though its follow-ups

, W-VHS and

D-VHS D-VHS (short for Digital VHS) is a digital video recording format developed by JVC in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. Introduced in December 1997, it was designed to record digital video, including high-definition content ...

never caught up in popularity. In the early 2000s in the prerecorded video market, VHS began to be displaced by

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

. The DVD format has several advantages over VHS tape. A DVD is much better able to take repeated viewings than VHS tape. Whereas a VHS tape can be erased though

degaussing Degaussing, or deperming, is the process of decreasing or eliminating a remnant magnetic field. It is named after the gauss, a unit of magnetism, which in turn was named after Carl Friedrich Gauss. Due to magnetic hysteresis, it is generally not ...

, DVDs and other optical discs are not affected by magnetic fields. DVDs can still be damaged by scratches. DVDs are smaller and take less space to store. DVDs can support both standard 4x3 and widescreen 16x9 screen aspect ratios and DVDs can provide twice the video resolution of VHS. DVD supports

random access Random access (also called direct access) is the ability to access an arbitrary element of a sequence in equal time or any datum from a population of addressable elements roughly as easily and efficiently as any other, no matter how many elemen ...

while a VHS tape is restricted to sequential access and must be rewound. DVDs can have interactive menus, multiple language tracks, audio commentaries,

closed captioning Closed captioning (CC) is the process of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information, where the viewer is given the choice of whether the text is displayed. Closed cap ...

and subtitling (with the option of turning the subtitles on or off, or selecting subtitles in several languages). Moreover, a DVD can be played on a computer. Due to these advantages, by the mid-2000s, DVDs were the dominant form of prerecorded video movies. Through the late 1990s and early 2000s consumers continued to use VCRs to record over-the-air TV shows, because consumers could not make home recordings onto DVDs. This last barrier to DVD domination was broken in the late 2000s with the advent of inexpensive

DVD recorder A DVD recorder is an optical disc recorder that uses optical disc recording technologies to digital recording, digitally record analog signal, analog or Digital signal (signal processing), digital signals onto blank writable DVD recordable, D ...

s and

digital video recorder A digital video recorder (DVR), also referred to as a personal video recorder (PVR) particularly in Canadian and British English, is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SS ...

s (DVRs). In July 2016, the last known manufacturer of VCRs,

Funai is a Japanese consumer electronics company headquartered in Daitō, Osaka. Currently, it is in liquidation. Apart from producing its own branded electronic products, it was also an OEM providing assembled televisions and video players/recor ...

, announced that it was ceasing VCR production.

Consumer and prosumer camcorders

Early consumer

camcorders A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-sw ...

used full-size VHS or Betamax cassettes. Later models switched to more compact formats, designed explicitly for smaller camcorder use, like

VHS-C VHS-C is a compact version of the VHS videocassette format, introduced by Victor Company of Japan ( JVC) in 1982, and used primarily in consumer-grade analog recording camcorders. VHS-C uses the same magnetic tape as full-size VHS cassettes a ...

and

Video8 The 8mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats. These are the original Video8 format (analog video and analog audio but with provision for digital audio), its improved variant Hi8, as well as a more recent digita ...

. VHS-C is a downsized version of VHS, using the same recording method and the same tape, but in a smaller cassette. It is possible to play VHS-C tapes in a regular VHS tape recorder by using an adapter. After the introduction of

, a corresponding compact version, S-VHS-C, was released as well. Video8 is an indirect descendant of Betamax, using narrower tape and a smaller cassette. Because of its narrower tape and other technical differences, it is not possible to develop an adapter from Video8 to Betamax. Video8 was later developed into

Hi8 The 8mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats. These are the original Video8 format (analog video and analog audio but with provision for digital audio), its improved variant Hi8, as well as a more recent digit ...

, which provides better resolution similar to S-VHS. The first consumer-level and lower-end professional (

prosumer A prosumer is an individual who both consumes and produces. The term is a portmanteau of the words '' producer'' and ''consumer''. Research has identified six types of prosumers: DIY prosumers, self-service prosumers, customizing prosumers, co ...

) digital video recording format, introduced in 1995, used a smaller Digital Video Cassette (DVC). The format was later renamed

to reflect the DV encoding scheme, but the tapes are still marked ''DVC''. Some later formats like DVC Pro from Panasonic reflect the original name. The DVC or MiniDV format provides

broadcast-quality Broadcast quality is a term to denote the quality achieved by professional video cameras and time base correctors (TBC) used for broadcast television, usually in standard definition. As the standards for commercial television broadcasts have changed ...

video and sophisticated nonlinear editing capability on consumer and some professional equipment and has been used on feature films, including Danny Boyle's

28 Days Later ''28 Days Later'' (sometimes stylised with ellipsis as ''28 Days Later...'') is a 2002 post-apocalyptic horror film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. It stars Cillian Murphy as a bicycle courier who awakens from a coma to d ...

(2002, shot on a Canon XL1) and David Lynch's

Inland Empire The Inland Empire (commonly abbreviated as the IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County and Or ...

(2006, shot on a Sony DSR-PD150). In 1999 Sony backported the DV recording scheme to 8-mm systems, creating

Digital8 Digital8 (or D8) is a consumer digital recording videocassette for camcorders developed by Sony, and introduced in 1999. The Digital8 format is a combination of the earlier analog Hi8 tape transport with the digital DV codec. Digital8 equipm ...

. By using the same cassettes as Hi8, many Digital8 camcorders were able to play analog Video8 or Hi8 recordings, preserving compatibility with already recorded

analog video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

tapes. Sony introduced another camcorder cassette format called MicroMV in 2001. Sony was the only electronics manufacturer to sell MicroMV cameras. In 2006, Sony stopped offering new MicroMV camcorder models. In November 2015, Sony announced that shipment of MicroMV cassettes would be discontinued in March 2016. In the late 2000s,

and its high-definition cousin,

HDV HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV (video format), DV videocassette Videotape, tape. Conceived as an affordable high definition format for digital camcorders, HDV quickly caught on with many amateur and professional vi ...

, were the two most popular consumer or prosumer tape-based formats. The formats use different encoding methods, but the same cassette type.

Future of tape

With advances in technology, videotape has moved past its original uses (original recording, editing, and broadcast playback) and is now primarily an archival medium. The death of tape for video recording was predicted as early as 1995 when the Avid nonlinear editing system was demonstrated storing video clips on hard disks. Yet videotape was still used extensively, especially by consumers, up until about 2004, when DVD-based camcorders became affordable and domestic computers had large enough hard drives to store an acceptable amount of video. Consumer camcorders have switched from being tape-based to tapeless machines that record video as computer files. Small hard disks and writable optical discs have been used, with solid-state memory such as SD cards being the current market leader. There are two primary advantages: First, copying a tape recording onto a computer or other video machine occurs in real time (e.g. a ten-minute video would take ten minutes to copy); since tapeless camcorders record video as computer-ready data files, the files can copied onto a computer significantly faster than real time. Second, tapeless camcorders, and those using solid-state memory in particular, are far simpler mechanically and so are more reliable. Despite these conveniences, tape is still used extensively with filmmakers and television networks because of its longevity, low cost, and reliability. Master copies of visual content are often stored on tape for these reasons, particularly by users who cannot afford to move to tapeless machines. During the mid- to late 2000s, professional users such as broadcast television were still using tape heavily but tapeless formats like P2, XDCAM and

AVCHD AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition) is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around cam ...

were gaining broader acceptance. While live recording has migrated to solid state, optical disc (Sony's XDCAM) and hard disks, the high cost of solid state and the limited shelf life of hard-disk drives make them less desirable for archival use, for which tape is still used.

Notes

References

External links

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Tape Servicing
{{Video storage formats American inventions History of television Home video Audiovisual introductions in 1950