Who invented the VHS tape?

Answer 1

This Question popped into my head while pondering the difference between Blu-ray and HD DVD. I remember when video first came out there was a war between the Sony Betamax, VHS and Phillips 2000 formats. Sony seemed to make the biggest losses as VHS was the clear winner and Phillips fell at the first hurdle.

My family were never rich enough to buy such a new fangled device but I can clearly recall a number of friends who bought Phillips and Betamax machines, only to find them rendered obsolete within a year.

JVC are wideley believe to have invented the VHS format, but - amazingly - it was SONY! They came up with this but rejected it in favour of the higher quality Betamax and then virtually gave the VHS format to JVC. Something like this would be unheard of today and oh how they must have regretted it!

(Specifically, Sony invented a key part of the VHS system: the M thread pattern. Sony could not get this pattern to work well enough to be feasible; the problem was stress on the tape as the M thread pattern pulls the tape at two points to wrap it halfway around the head drum and the angle the guideposts had to place the tape in. So, Sony sold this technology to JVC and used the U thread pattern, which was used with the U-Matic 3/4" video cassette tape system, for the Betamax system. JVC bought the technology, worked out the major problems with it, and used it as the basis of their VHS system.)

The VHS machines were cheaper to produce and therefore cheaper to buy and this is most likely why they caught on instead of the (almost universally accepted) higher quality Betamax. Sony did not want to license Betamax technology to other companies; they wanted to keep it proprietary. Sanyo were one of the very few that licensed Betamax for their own production.

(Actually, Sony was willing to license other companies to make Betamax equipment and cassettes. However, Sony's terms were strict. In addition to Sanyo, Toshiba and NEC also made Betamax equipment. Zenith, Sears, Radio Shack, Marantz, Aiwa, and Pioneer were also among the handful of companies that distributed at least one model of Beta VCR.)

JVC, however, licensed the technology to anyone who wanted to use it, flooding the market with VHS machines. Hence, Sony lost that war.

(JVC, or specifically JVC's parent at the time, Matsushita Electric, was willing to embrace a more liberal licensing policy for their equipment. At times even, Matsushita did things with VHS that JVC did not approve of. For instance, when RCA adopted VHS after talks of adopting Beta fell through, RCA wanted a slower tape speed than what JVC made available at the time (2 hour play on T-120, SP speed) for longer recording time. RCA and Panasonic collaborated and developed the 4 hour long play speed for North America, much to the chagrin of JVC. Shortly after, JVC would develop the 6 hour speed, which is called Long Play, or LP, in regions like Japan, but was called Extended Play/Super Long Play, or EP/SLP in North America to eliminate confusion between the JVC 6 hour speed and the RCA/Panasonic 4 hour speed. JVC refers to the 4 hour speed as "the bastard" as it was developed outside of JVC, which is also why JVC VCRs do not support recording in the 4 hour speed.)

Answer 2

The VHS is a recording and playing standard developed by JVC (Victor Company of Japan, Limited) and launched in September 1976.