Forty years of home video | Sunday Observer

Forty years of home video

23 July, 2017

This month, the world will mark an important milestone – 40 years of home video or more precisely, the VHS (Video Home System) video cassette. This was a revolution in more ways than one. VHS (and its failed rival Sony’s Betamax) forever changed our television viewing habits and also the way we watch movies.

It was in July-August 1977 that JVC of Japan introduced VHS video cassette recorders to the North American market. VHS would go on to become the dominant home video format for at least the next 20 years.

Though the final VHS VCRs were manufactured in Japan by Funai last year, VHS is far from extinct.

It will not certainly see a revival like Vinyl records did due to its inherent limitations and the march of technology, but there still are millions of VHS recorders in active use around the world and one can still buy brand new blank VHS video tapes.

Entertainment

It is still possible to buy new and used VHS machines in the likes of eBay. I have owned a couple of decks (hand me downs from my brothers) which brought me endless hours of entertainment.

VHS achieved a revolution in three ways. First, you could watch one TV program while watching another. This was not rocket science – the VHS Video Cassette Recorder (VCR) had a separate tuner which could record another program while you watch something else on another channel.

VCRs also enabled people to time-shift TV programs. You just recorded the program of your choice for viewing later. This way, if your favourite cricket game began at 4 a.m. local time, you could always record it and watch it at 10 p.m. after you return home from work.

But, the third one was the most spectacular. It enabled movie studios to release movies for watching at home. Ironically, the movie industry initially viewed the VCR with trepidation and suspicion.

After all, people were now able to record movies shown on television, which they thought would sound the death knell for movie theatres. The movie industry in fact sued Sony precisely on these grounds. Fortunately for both sides, Sony won.

The first movie commercially released on home video tape was the South Korean drama, The Young Teacher, in 1977. The first Hollywood movie released on Betamax and VHS was The Sound of Music. (By 1986, VHS had emerged as the clear winner in the format war and Sony itself began manufacturing VHS machines in 1988).

Hollywood

The last major VHS release was the hit movie, A History of Violence, in 2006. In between, VHS had changed the face of Hollywood and the movie industry, worldwide. Just think of it – one could just walk into a store, pick up a favourite movie and watch it at home.

A visitor? Tea break ? Bathroom visit ? No problem – just stop or pause, attend to your chores and hit play again.

There was another development that endeared VHS to the masses – JVC, Sony and others marketed Camcorders, which essentially combined a video camera with a VCR, so you could easily shoot home videos such as, your son’s birthday party without having any professional videography knowledge.

Why did the videotape die? VHS had gone through many developments, such as, HQ Picture Quality, Hi Fi and Surround Sound, a compact format (VHS-C) for videography, Super VHS (superior picture quality) and Index Search. But, the format was linear – if you wanted to catch a particular scene, the only option was rewinding or fast forwarding.

It was also far inferior. Laserdisc, a superior 12-inch movie disc format that existed alongside VHS, offered random access, digital sound, a crystal clear picture and additional features, such as, audio commentaries.

However, Laserdisc was a fairly expensive niche format that found buyers mostly in Japan and North America and could not replace VHS.

Then came the Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) in 1996-97. DVD could do everything that VHS could not - random access, 5.1 speaker surround sound, multiple languages and subtitles, commentary and isolated score tracks, multiple aspect ratios of the same movie, extra features, multi-angle viewing capability, and best of all, no wear and tear as the information was read by a laser.

Players became very cheap in just a few years and DVD became the fastest growing home entertainment format ever - today, practically everyone on the planet has a DVD player.

The first movie to be released on DVD was the disaster flick Twister. Today, DVD itself has been superseded by High Definition Blu Ray (2006) and the Ultra High Definition (4K) Blu Ray (2015). Blu Ray itself had to fend off a rival format called HD-DVD developed by Toshiba, which was short lived.

There was another factor that contributed to the death of home videotape. For a while, it looked as if recordable DVD would replace VHS.

Oblivion

But, even recordable DVD went into oblivion due to the rise of inexpensive computer hard disk storage and the satellite/cable/terrestrial TV Set Top Box (STB). The STB is a simple gadget with a hard disk drive that can record TV programs.

Today’s STBs are so advanced that they can actually record around six TV programs at once and even play back the beginning of a program while it is still being recorded.

Suddenly, there was no need for physical storage of programs. Today, many people prefer to store their entire video library on the cloud, without any physical copies.

One does not even need an expensive camcorder to shoot video since any cheap smartphone can record Full HD Video. (However, commercial physical media are still thriving, though many people now prefer movie streaming services, such as, Netflix and Amazon Video). Physical media per se will never really die, because there are many who want to hold something tangible in their hands.

Today’s television landscape has changed drastically. One does not even need a TV set per se to watch TV, since most TV channels are available online and hence, on your laptop, tablet or smartphone.

There is even a word for this - cord cutting. Most TV shows are also available on DVD and Blu Ray box sets. If you missed the Game of Thrones or Twin Peaks on the telly, go, buy the box set and watch all the episodes at a stretch.

Our viewing habits too have changed accordingly. Television will remain central to our lives, but in different ways. The seed for this lifestyle change was sown by VHS over 40 years ago, and it deserves all the credit for a life well spent entertaining us and keeping our memories alive. 

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