I worked with a former Procurement Director for National Semi who had previously worked for Ampex. He was a white-haired, classy gentleman who was always the epitome of grace and class. Right up until the subject of the Ampex CEO Roberts came up. Then he would explode with profane anger, cursing management consultants and CEOs who were beholden to Wall Street rather than believing in their own companies. It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was absolutely certain the Ampex was destroyed by Roberts, and he hated him with the power of a thousand suns.
You've left out the first real home recording system. The Phillips VCR system from 1972. It used 1/2" tape in a cassette about 15x15cm (6"x6") with the spools on top of each other and could play 70 minutes of video and audio with the same quality as early VHS. The recorders and the tapes were expensive so the system didn't catch on with ordinary consumers but it was used a lot in European schools during the 1970s.
@@Game_Hero I havent got around to seeing if the machine works, and I am not sure if the tapes have anything on them or are the correct format for my machine because different models had different standards from what I have heard.
Wikipedia describes Philips VCR as "the first truly practical home video cassette system". They had it had the college I went to in 1978. It was certainly more practical than the reel to reel VCR they had at secondary school which was only touched by the Librarian. He had a monitor in his office so he could run up to the lecture theatre and blast aerosol cleaner into strategic places when the picture invariably started to break up 30 minutes into a programme.
The fact that you were able to condense a subject that has undoubtably had volumes written about it in 31min is truly astounding. Great content as always.
Every subject has granularity, i.e. how detailed and specific the information contained within the subject. Volumes tend to get into very fine granularity, getting into lots of the very fine details. These videos are able to maximise a consistent output of high quality information by aiming for the right level of granularity - he doesn't get bogged down in details beyond as necessary to paint the overall picture.
@@hieronymusbutts7349well said that was impressive...I'm guessing you're smart AF being able to articulate your thoughts so well. Genuine comment, no trolling.
Bing Crosby later made an additional fortune by taking a percentage of the Minute Maid corporation in exchange for celebrity endorsements. Minute Maid was then sold to Coca Cola. Bing-o was a sharp cookie.
my dad used to run a shop where he did video conversions of VHS tapes, especially from PAL to NTSC for people returning from overseas travel.. I never had any idea that the history behind this technology was so rich.. as always, I am flabbergasted at your research capabilities
You forgot to tell us who invented the flashing clock from Hell that caused so much frustration among adults who had to get their kids to make it stop.
Years later, we kids realized that the flashing clock happened because of a power surge or power outage. Slowly damaging sensitive electronics and eventually, rendering that expensive VCR useless. 💁🏻♂️📼🔥
... or ... early on.... you bought a Sony VCR... (.... that had a capacitor backup... when the power failed... the cap would release power to the clock... in my experience... good for up to 3 hours of power loss... )
@@j.6756that only helped if people knew how to set the clock to begin with. And if they could do that then they could reset it every time the power went out. In my experience most people's VCR had been blinking 12:00 ever since they first bought it
The 40-pin IC used for the programmable clock timer was developed by Matsushita. It didn't use a quartz, and based it's time measurement on the 50/60 Hz mains frequency. The display was made to blink if there had been a power cut and therefore time was wrong. Some video recorders had a 50/60 Hz multivibrator and a battery, which kept the time for short power interruption. In the 1980, a quartz was $10 or more, and mains frequency was the cheaper option for timekeeping...
Canadians measure distance in travel time instead of units of distance. Note: half hour (~50km) = “very close” an hour or two (100-150km) = “not too far” a 6 hour round trip (~500km) = “a short day trip”
@@rok1475 We do the same in many parts of the US. I think its because humans by nature remember passage of time better than distance. Easier to remember how long that drive somewhere took than the number on the trip odometer.
In Europe, Philips was way ahead of the Japanese. The N1500 was a colour video cassette recorder introduced in 1972. It was designed for the PAL colour system and for technical reasons was not suitable for NTSC transmissions. However, it was a pioneer and years ahead of Betamax and VHS as a home consumer product.
He missed the Philips 1500 and 1700 VCR cassette machines that were available before BetaMax. They were widely available in Europe , but the prices were too high for mass adoption. I suspect they didnt sell enough to be a success, but they worked well.
there are half a dozend other video cassette formats before umatic, vhs, v2000 and betamax, which didn't catch on and stayed in their niche markets like education, were companies like Grundig and Philips sold "complete toolchains" (cameras, duplicators to playback machines and TVsets) on large governmental contracts in the 1970ies in Europe.
@@rarbiart Yes, but the Philips 1500 was the first VCR to go to market specifically targeting the consumer market in a somewhat realistic manner. Compact cassettes; a compact machine; a built in TV tuner: it connected to consumer TVs through the aerial connector, as that was the only interface TVs with a non-isolated chassis had at that time. It was just a little too expensive.
@@rarbiart The VCR format came years before VHS, Video2000 and Betamax. Actually Video2000 is from the same manufacturer as VCR, as a successor. U-Matic came before VCR, but it being semi-pro, the VCR format was the first video home format on cassette (there were reel ones earlier though).
My brother used to work for an electronics repair store and he was able to buy an old Ampex reel-to-reel audio tape recorder. That thing was righteous. It was the best tape recorder we ever had. We used to audio tape TV shows back in those days - before VCRs were a thing. Lots of fond memories of those days.
@vaquero3579 - We tape recorded an episode of Mission Impossible and found out that there was almost no dialogue in the whole show. It was just that same tune played over and over. Fun to watch but boring to listen to. 😆
I think the effect on the movie industry can't be understated. Matt Damon talked about how DVD sales would a lot of times make a film profitable in the long run and worth making as a long-term investment, even if it wasn't a hit in movie theaters. I'm sure that begin with VHS. It kind of lines up with 1999 being the best year for movies. With VHS and DVD sales bringing in a lot of money and the studios didn't need to worry about making back all their money at the box. Office, studios were capable of green lighting more niche or experimental films with some level of appeal.
" Matt Damon talked about how DVD sales would a lot of times make a film profitable in the long run and worth making as a long-term investment, even if it wasn't a hit in movie theater" - solve for the equilibrium...this means more c rappy movies were made due to VCR. A lower threshold for profitability since it's not as interesting. And with Netflix streaming, the bar for quality has been lowered even more.
@@raylopez99 Sure, it also meant that filmmakers outside the Hollywood inner circle could make and distribute their films more easily and actually make some money for their work. Like everything, there's a positive and negative impact.
Prior to the home video revolution, according to director Steven Spielberg, movie studios didn't consider the archives of movies they produced to be worth much, and because of that, invested little with the preservation of the movies they made for posterity. According to what Spielberg said in a televised interview [in conjunction to the difficulties he had with putting together a pristine print of "Jaws"], movie studios felt that once a movie had its money making run at theaters, toss that film on the shelf and move on to the next money making movie production. Many theatrical films deteriorated from poor storage practices. However, later on the movie studios were motivated with restoring the old movies once they figured there was money to be made in the home video market.
Informative video but misses out that in Europe Philips launched the N1500 domestic video recorder with built in tuner and timer in 1971. This one hour cassette based format was increased to 2 hours with the N1700 video recorder in 1977 using the same tape run at a slower speed but lacked backwards capability. V2000 was a third format for Philips. Keep up the great work.
When Philips introduced his home video machine, it als had a better quality than VHS and Betamax, but Philips lost the competition because people couldn’t rent porn video tapes. Sony improved his system and was used in professional situations long after they made VHS machines for the home video market. In fact the JVC system was not so good as Betamax and Philips, but won the competition because one could rent the most video films on that VHS system. Another thing was that the technical quality of the Japanese brands was much better than from Philips.
@@harrybeugelink6401 The porn is a bit of an urban myth, and while Sony and Philips would not give permission JVC had no such qualms but the reason why VHS won out was the length of recording time with Sony and Philips struggling to catch up. Betamax with the C7 and C9 had the better picture quality at comparable speeds to VHS but the original N1500 was probably the best at the time. Reliability of the Philips and Grundig machines was a bit of an issue as you say but in the Uk the take up by the popular rental companies of vhs was the killer blow for other formats and went hand in hand with the availability of pre recorded Hollywood films - each driving the respective market. Betacam and eventual development of digital variants kept the format alive with the pro market particularly at a time when every band had to have a pop video!
Great documentation! This 30-minute presentation has abundant amount of historical and technical information. I have always wonder what the helical scan is, since my college classmate who worked for a VCR manufacturer in the 1990’s made it sound like rocket science, and this video makes it so easy to understand. I cannot imagine how much research you have done to produce such a great video. Great job!
This video only glossed over the mechanical aspect regarding the rotating heads. To get the signal on and off the tape and syncronize all the other motors is rocket science.
@@DoggieA This video did a good job of covering the basic concepts. The technical details would bore most people to death, but it is quite a feat of engineering. I used to repair VCRs and never needed to know any of the engineering to do it. Same with Colour TV. The PAL colour system is a technical feat, and I learned all about it, only to never use that knowledge again.
Another side note you did not mention was how Sony tried to save Betamax by introducing Hi-Fi sound, something they thought VHS could not match. Until JVC proved them wrong and introduced it to VHS by recording audio using the video head drum in a layer under the video.
You have to do a video on the Walkman / personal stereo. They were massive in the 80's and 90's. I bought about 4 or 5 different ones. I had the very first Sony Stowaway in 1980, they later changed the name to the Walkman Great video by the way
There was an awareness of the Japanese technical and manufacturing prowess by the mid-1960s, as illustrated in a comedy [US] TV show in 1964 of a American fictional company concerned about a Japanese company infringing on patents. The American company had gathered its executives in a meeting room, looking over two identical 35 mm cameras. One American, the other Japanese. One camera was superbly built of high quality; the other camera was shabbily assembled. It was the Japanese made camera of high quality. lol And mind you, that was in 1964. The above from my personal recollection of the US TV show, "The Tycoon," starring Walter Brennan.
@@bloqk16 I think the american companies in those days got lazy in improving their stuff since they had the money to continue screwing up while the japanese ones couldn't afford screw ups
Side note on the Gandalf reference, there was a Computer Network manufacturer in the '80s and '90s called Gandalf Technologies. It was founded by a couple of Canadian Tolkein fans. Their offices even had round doors 😄
Gandalf was headquartered in Ottawa Canada and built a lot of computer modems in very characteristic blue boxes. I never worked for them but knew several people who did.
There was something truly magical about the VHS era. Being a kid exploring rental stores was a blast and I never did warm up to the CD/DVD era that followed. Felt it sterilized the experience. RIP Melmac Video. It was the last bastion of VHS rentals in town. Still remember buying several used copies before they went out of business and I still own them today. That being The Rock, Down Periscope and Fatal Fury III: The Motion Picture. But hey, at least the VHS aesthetic lives on in our hearts, and in our games. Alien: Isolation nailed it perfectly.
@@ChristopherSobieniak 42 but close enough. =P The 80s and 90s really were the best. Tech back then was just something else. Less sterile. More character. I still remember how freakin' cool my VHS remote was with its revolutionary glow in the dark buttons!
Owning a Japanese VCR was the pinnacle of luxury in post-communist Bulgaria in the early 90s. You couldn't just buy one - you either had to have connections in the Corecom or buy one second hand from somebody who got it abroad. My father did both, lol. We had an AKAI dual head VCR that could record off the TV mated to a Panasonic TV and it was our most prized possession. I watched a lot of bootleg tapes on that VCR. Later he got me a small single head VCR for my room and I watched a lot more. We were the only family in the entire neighbourhood with two VCRs.
This is fantastically great. I just checked and I do still have the JVC combo VHS/DVD device in my basement "electronic junk" area where it has probably been for 10 years now. From 30 million a year to zero -- what a story!
It really is zero. People complain that new audio cassette players are poor quality but with VHS there are literally no new machines being manufactured.
As someone who was involved with this technology at the beginning of mass VCR adoption and responsible for technical troubleshooting and repair of the first generation of Matsushita VCR's, I commend you on the production of this video..
I got a Ampex 1 inch BW video machine free from a high school. I used it for a year to record shows that were after my bedtime.I still have 2 of the reals, but the machine is long gone.
My father was born in 1948, he witnessed so many changes in his lifetime and of course I was always pestering him about obscure little things in history. One thing I remember him telling me is when his family got their first TV but his mother thought it was a waste of money, she said people wanted to go out for their entertainment and there wouldn't be many companies putting any content out on the radio waves lol.
We got our first TV in 1953. I don't remember my mother ever complaining about having one. She was too busy in the kitchen what with having kids and all.
There was a period in the 90s when Toshiba (edit: may have been Hitachi; my memory is flaky) was tops for VHS, unless you had money to get a Mitsubishi. Panasonic was only a middling brand. Sony wasn't in VHS until late. By the late 80s, Goldstar (today's LG) flooded the market with a VHS platform that could be customized for different brands to resell. This Goldstar platform ended up everywhere under dozens of brands, maybe hundreds. It was cheap and had all the top features if whoever selling it wanted to have them. It's funny now because these Goldstar platform machines were terribly unreliable and rarely even show up in thrift stores because they mostly broke a long time ago. DVD managed to hit the market at the same time Goldstar's cheap machines were dying and not getting replaced. They managed to take a huge chunk of the market and killed it.
Sony killed Betamax in 1992 with the introduction of the Sony VHS (not the high end thing shown in this video). It is a shame, because VHS could have benefited of some of the features of Betamax, for example metallic vs plastic at the ends of the tape (electric vs optical). The only thing that Sony VHS brought was the U (one point) loading as opposed to the more commonly used M (two points) used to pull the tape around the head drum. A disadvantage of this method is that it made the units deeper, and that it needed more tape to travel outside the cartridge.
Goldstar, Samsung and Daewoo were all terrible machines in the late 80s, and even worse the Japanese reduced quality to stay competitive on price. Ironically the first Goldstar mech was a copy of Matsushita's best video mech, but was a piece of junk. Most of those machines were on the dump by the mid 90s they were so bad.
@@freeculture I recall that the first Sony VHS machines were actually rebadged Hitachis. In the U.K. comedian Lenny Henry killed Betamax with one joke. "If your house gets burgled they always nick the VCR. Except nobody will ever want to nick my VCR. I was smart. I bought a Betamax"
@@stephenw2992 I remember seeing Samsung and LG Brands in Australia in actual electronic/appliance stores (say, JB Hi-Fi, Bing Lee, ro Harvey Norman) around the mid-to-late 2000s in Australia. Was that the time they got actually good?
@@HenryMidfields They were better by then, but LG Televisions were pretty bad, from widescreen CRT to DLP rearpro to Plasma. A Samsung smart phone is the only thing I have ever purchased from any of them and that is only because I hate Apple as a corporation.
An interesting thing about the U-Matic is that while it was never really that popular for its intended purpose, it was present in almost all recording studios for a while for digital audio capture. The ubiquitous 16 bit/44.1kHz sample rate that ended up being used for CDs several years later was based on the maximum reliable bandwidth of a U-Matic cassette.
I think I’ve heard that one reason VHS won out was that while the image quality wasn’t as good as Beta, it was less expensive and “good enough” for most people who just wanted to record a football game and weren’t obsessed with image quality. It’s interesting how often “good enough” has won throughout tech history. Great video!
I was an avid videophile during that period. Paid $1,000 for a new Betamax in 79 and amassed an extensive library of TV shows and movies. Eventually had multiple machines, cameras, tripods and gear. I knew lot of the history but this video filled in the gaps. Great job👍👍
Actually the BBC in England did it first with the VERA project. It just wasnt viable as a mass market format. Ampex used the semi helical quad system that was a good product but they didnt invent it or do it first.
2005 was the peak of VCR penetration ? OMG, I went DVD in 1998. The fact that Sony basically gave away BluRay in the Playstation 3 shows that they learned their lessons from both Betamax and MiniDisc. While I don't miss VHS or Betamax, I do and will always have love for the Minidisc - the only guaranteed way to copy music before recordable CD was ironed out and affordable.
I was born in 1971, my dad already had a U-matic machine, had a Betamax machine before my 7th birthday, and was onto VHS like white on rice before I turned 10. Possibly inspired by Kenny Everett, we had a room called the video vault with hundreds (maybe 1000's) of cassettes, mostly VHS. A huge part of my childhood revolved around archiving TV broadcasts and laughing at my dad's inaccurate labeling ("crap on Saturday night", "Omega Factor Eight", and "Indiana Ark"). $0.02
ABSOBLOODLUTELY AMAZING VIDEO AS USUAL ! Your research is incredible but, more than that, your power to structurizen and convey all the information you researched is equally jaw dropping ! Keep up the excellent work and my God bless you always !
For an item that created and entire branch of the consumer market, it lasted only a short time ! Roughly 1975 to 2005. ~30 years. An example of a market so successful, that it makes itself obsolete, by spawning replacement technologies. It also roughly follows the rise of the microcontroller. Small ICs, that incorporate the microprocessor, RAM & ROM (including EPROM to Flash), and IO, all on one chip. These chips made their way into controlling ALL consumer electronics, but are a big factor in the cost management of VCRs. And mostly 8-bit versions, when personal computers had long moved past 16-bit, to 32-bit.
I remembered when I was a kid, I peered into the empty cassette slot and saw that skewed metal cylinder in there. It made me wonder if the VCR was broken because it looked so weird, with all the components around it arranged at right angles.
I remember the first VCR we had. It was a Hitachi videorecorder that was very good. This was back in 1986. It was so convenient to tape the programs that you wanted.
There are some reactions about VCR, here some info about that line of products: The first home video system was the Philips N1500 in 1972 (shown at the Firato exhibition that year) using AC synchronous motors and a magnetic breaking system to regulate the speed (no proper DC motors and motor control available in 1972) and an analog clock timer. The drum was huge compared to VHS and Betamax about 10cm in diameter. Between the helical tracks was a guard band but that also meant only 60 minutes of playing time. The N1501 was a small upgrade (mainly color change from silver to black and improved electronics modules) but the N1502 used much more powerful DC motors and a digital clock timer. The N1502 was the last in line of this first generation. They started using the same trick as VHS and Betamax, to have the heads at an azimuth so the tracks could be written side by side with sufficient cross talk supression (a picture of exactly this was actually in the video). This version was the Philips N1700 which was basically an N1502 with a thinner capstan and another head drum. It used the same cassette which could now record 180 minutes and was called "long play". This format was just called "VCR" and "VCR-longplay". Grundig made SVCR (Super VCR) using the same tapes but an incompatible recording method. The picture of the N1700 was actually better than VHS; it did not have the colour smearing because it did not have the color comb filters. This sounds technically inferior and was worse in measurements but did in practice produce a better picture. The problem with all these VCR models were the tape. The two spindels were stacked and the tape ran diagonally from one spool to the other. This was prone to errors during tape loading and unloading. Also 180 minutes recoding time was not enough. That's when Philips abandoned VCR and started to develop Video 2000 to overcome all known problems with VCR, VHS and Betamax. Like no need for manual tracking, 2 sided recording, stereo sound, perfect still picture etc. But they were too late to the party. I guess "VCR" never made it into the US and therefore is not recognized as an important stepping stone in time. 1972 was pretty early for a real home video system, too early in hindsight. I doubt they ever made NTSC versions, I only ever saw PAL versions. I had an N1501 back in the day when it was dumped on flee markets in 1984. The nice thing about this machine is that it is all discrete electronics and a perfect machine to lean exactly how the VCR works, especially the speed control logic is fascinating. For example a magnet is glued to the flywheel and a magnetic head is picking up the pulses which then goes the control circuit which is just a couple of transistors. And the 50Hz clock is just derived from the mains (which is 50Hz in Europe). I think the only ICs in it is are opamps (the metal round ones with 8 legs).
My family didn’t get a VCR until 1997. It was only 4 years until I got a DVD player in 2001. Although I paid for that myself with my allowance and mom kept watching VHS until around 2008 or so when she got a DVD player. She didn’t get a blu way player until 2020. In time for physical media to be all but dead.
This was a marvelous presentation on the overview of magnetic tape media as it transcended from audio to video. I was late in the acquisition of a VCR in 1987, but am most appreciative of the technology, as I captured countless hours of US TV shows that have otherwise disappeared, never to be found again.
My grandfather did the same, but he acquired his first VCR in 1982 IIRC. Unfortunately, since his passing, his collection of hundreds of VHS tapes has been trashed. Countless hours of extremely rare Canadian broadcasts gone forever.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. When I was in military avionics school in 1966 one of my friends has a Sony real-to-real video recorder. Pretty impressive piece of kit back then. I just finished transferring our family's VHS tapes to digital as a gift to our kids.
In the retail world from '82-85, I saw the tide turn in favour of VHS. It was largely driven by rental stores whispering that Beta would become obsolete. In the industry we felt that these rumours originated at Matsushita. Whenever a consumer asked (and they all did), my colleagues and I always told them Beta was and always would be technically superior. It ran faster and the transport was more robust - the image quality was visibly better, and more stable, which could be demonstrated with the pause and slo-mo functions. Sony were building real prosumer grade units while at least 95% of the VHS machines were cheap and clunky.
Its fascinating how often the japanse MITI shows up with succesful industrial policy. Feels like a lot of the japanese successful market leaders throughout time where being coerced into their situation by MITI policy.
Do HDDVD next! It is amazing how HDDVD vs Bluray repeated so many of these mistakes. In the end the format with more capacity won. People will always want more.
cannot neglect PlayStation 3 in this equation either. PS3 not only used BDROM as its method to deliver games but also had the ability to play movies. and the PS3 was a pretty big seller meaning Sony put a Blu-Ray player into a lot of homes by nature of selling video game consoles. Interesting enough the PS2 kind of did a similar thing for DVD in Japan, While stand alone DVD units already were taking off in the USA, Laserdisc was in fact not a flop in Japan and was hard to dislodge... until the PS2 slapped a DVD player in every living room.
I know this video focusses on the Asian (well, Japanese) influence on the VCR, but you've left out a very important player: Philips. Philips launched their VCR system (it was actually called that) in 1972, and it became the first successful cassette based home video system. Runtime was limited to 60 minutes at first, but doubled to two hours in later models and to four hours by the time of the systems' demise. Eventually, Betamax and VHS outperformed the system (both on a technical level and commercially). Philips launched a successor (Video2000, also known as VCC) in the early 80s, which boasted the longest record/playtime per cassette (8 hours on standard play, 16 hours on longplay), but it wasn't launched outside of Europe, South Africa and Australia and only ever sold well in the Netherlands (Philips' home turf). It was discontinued in the mid-80s, when Philips bought a stake in Matsushita and started using their VHS patents to produce affordable VHS machines. Only a few die hard fans in the United States know of these formats, as they were designed for the PAL broadcasting system and not compatible with NTSC (and thus not sold in the US or Canada). But they were important systems seen on the global scale.
@@ryanortega1511 the problem is the broadcast system. (Most of) the Americas and Asia use NTSC - Philips designed their video systems (both of them) in such a way that they were heavily optimised for the PAL system used in Europe, South Africa and Australia. Redesigning the systems for NTSC was considered at various points in time, but was problematic. A few NTSC prototypes do exist, but Philips eventually didn't release those versions.
Great video as usual, I think Philips deserves more recognition for their cartridge VCR and later VCR-LP systems from the early 70s which predated both Betamax and VHS, were cheaper than U-Matic, but weren't sold in the US or Japanese markets and pretty much completely flopped.
The Philips video recorders of the early 1970s had a reputation in the UK for needing expensive maintenance and not being very reliable. The Betamax and VHS recorders soon gained a much better reputation. A few months ago I repaired a VHS recorder for an elderly couple who have a large collection of recordings that they can watch only by using this recorder. They said that professional repairers will no longer repair VHS recorders because spare parts are not available. Fortunately the problem with the recorder was easily fixed: a few bits of material that had fallen off the tapes and got stuck on the spinning head where it was snagging the tape. The tape on these machines is not supposed to make contact with the head, it rides on an extremely thin layer of air entrained by the fast-spinning head. This means that in theory there should be no wear on the tape or the head, but anything larger than the thickness of the air film stuck to the head will cause entanglement of the tape.
The "minor players" Telefunken etc. belonged to Thomson-Brandt, they owned Dual, Greatz, Nordmende, SABA also - all JVC OEMs, later the VHSs came from a joint venture with Toshiba from Singapore (for the European market). At the peak the Thomson Brand brands had a market share of 25% (in Europe). Another "minor player" they owned was RCA... Nevertheless a great video, thank you for that.
Great Video! No mention of the Phlips VCR system from 1972, they where the first in consumer video system. Model N1500 + a clock to recored at a specific time. Video 2000 came after the VCR system.
Betamax had the clock (i still have it) but it was separate, since it was simple mechanical power timer switch. But did the job of recording if you left the "piano" keys pressed down while the unit is without power, so the timer would close the circuit at the set time for about 8hrs.
The VCR in the late 70s and early 80s was the internet of its day. I'd have friends who'd lend each other tapes on different topics or movies. It was liberating.
I would be very interested in a video about the history of the Japanese hi-fi/stereo industry of the 60s 70s 80s, similar to what you've done regarding the auto, liquor, computer industries. There's also a sizeable vintage hi-fi community on social media that would eat that up. Just a suggestion ... You do really good work!
Poor Philips. The Video 2000 format never had a chance. Shout ou to danish pioneer Valdemar Poulsen for his magnetic wire sound recorder, the telegraphone, from 1898.
Nice documentary. When I was in high school we had a well-funded Film and TV Arts program, not only did we get all the Super-8 film we could use, but we had access to a simple TV studio with professional cameras and editing equipment and a Sony portable VCR with separate camera and shoulder luggable recorder. B&W only. I think it was a later version of the Sony DV-2400 Portapak or similar (playback through the viewfinder?). Anyway, a cool toy that cost about half the price of a new car in those days and I got to take it home and on location a number of times.
My parents JVC from the early 80s has only recently started to stick when playing tapes. Sadly the lovely remote control with LCD screen didn't survive my sister's phase of biting things to pieces.
Sitting here watching this through my Roku as the audio meters still dance their fluorescent dance on my 86 Yamaha VCR still kickin’. I feel sometimes I should record these vids onto tape where they will likely last longer then this platform. If only in a hundred years we had the kind of competent engineers and repair people to keep our machines running. Wouldn’t that just be something? ❤
As a child, I remember when we got our first VCR. My dad bought a top of the line Sony Betamax player and a massive Sony Trinitron TV. I remember the smell of the machinery and the high pitched noise it made when turned on. There must have been at least 20 people stuffed in our living room every Saturday night to watch at least 2 movies back to back. My neighbours' kids would bring their own cushions and bean bags and lounge in front of the grown ups on the sofa.
There was a great book I read called "Fast Forward" and it talked about the VHS vs. Beta cam war and how the US developed analog videotape recording. The part was that i found most interesting was the founding of Sony in post-war Japan and their involvement in inventing helical scan, which revolutionized the videotape industry and made everything work!
Leave it to a Japanese company to improve on a technology that germinated in the US. I recall as a kid watching the Walter Brennan [starring] TV series [US-1964], "The Tycoon," where Brennan played the part of Walter Andrews, chairman of "The Thunder" corporation. In one episode the Thunder corporation was concerned about a Japanese company infringing on patents, where, in the conference room filled with executives, Andrews was presented with two identical looking 35 mm cameras; one made by Thunder, the other by the Japanese company. Andrews was impressed with the quality build, fit and finish of one camera; then noted the shabby quality of the other camera. Turns out the shabby quality camera was made by Thunder. lol Those TV writers were very astute about the Japanese turning out quality products in the 1960s.
Quick technical correction: while the early reel to reel tape was 1 inch, the UMatics format was 3/4 inch. Sony later came out with a component format for news gathering called Betacam with the same sized tape. They also eventually came up with a cartridge for 1 inch for early digital (D1 and D2 for component and composite).
After the 2"VTR's there weer two 1" broadcast open real systems, B and C format, that were used a lot in the industry. Brands like Sony made some lugable C format versions, But Ampex and Nagra made one (The VPR-5) that was as portable as an open reel 1" VTR was ever going to get. A very cool machine.
Sorry to butt in: D-1 and D-2 were both formats using _19 mm_ wide videotape...using that measurement (3/4") to describe it as opposed to 3/4" (U-Matic). Old broadcast guy...
I did this report in Fifth grade for my Elementary school. We used bare wire to record coded messages sent to the Eurotheatre. I lost them somewhere around, the eq bias needing more power for Chrome and Metal formulation magnetic tape. I have questions about Sony PCM digital audio recorded on video tape and which one of those geniuses invented the floppy disk? the CD? DVD? Blu-ray? Subscribed to newsletter.
The second VCR that our family own (still around, in storage) from the early 1990s have stereo audio support, auto-tracking feature to sync the tape to the head, and a spring back dial for easier fast forward or reversing the tape. I remember after watching many rental tapes, we’d have to open the VCR and clean the head using lighter fluid.
2:15 - the bit on the United States not knowing about the Magnetophon until 1945, and the subsequent Crosby-Mullin affair always puzzled me. The Magnetophon was no secret, it was exported from Germany even after the WW2 started. Granted, AEG made many improvements in later war years, but all the key elements were known internationally by 1940. And of course the patent staff at RCA, Western Electric etc. knew it all even before the commercial Magnetophons were produced. But, apparently, the war erased all memories and they somehow forgot it. One side issue is that prior to the "discovery" of the Magnetophon both the US and the UK also possessed technology of similar broadcast quality. The mechanically recorded and optically reproduced Philips-Miller system of 1936 was not exactly high fidelity by modern standard, but nevertheless it was just as good with audio as the war-time Magnetophon. And, reversely, the German broadcasts from magnetic tape were not any better or worse than the regular BBC broadcasts off Philips-Miller optical track.
"Notably X-rated tapes also helped with that penetration". Priceless. 😂 love listening to you and on Startup Island podcast. Keep it up
I worked with a former Procurement Director for National Semi who had previously worked for Ampex. He was a white-haired, classy gentleman who was always the epitome of grace and class. Right up until the subject of the Ampex CEO Roberts came up. Then he would explode with profane anger, cursing management consultants and CEOs who were beholden to Wall Street rather than believing in their own companies. It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was absolutely certain the Ampex was destroyed by Roberts, and he hated him with the power of a thousand suns.
10:03 a doggo representing Shiba Electronics. Touché, sir.
Shibaden not Shibainu lol...
Toshiba is going bankrupt. Very sad.
You've left out the first real home recording system. The Phillips VCR system from 1972. It used 1/2" tape in a cassette about 15x15cm (6"x6") with the spools on top of each other and could play 70 minutes of video and audio with the same quality as early VHS. The recorders and the tapes were expensive so the system didn't catch on with ordinary consumers but it was used a lot in European schools during the 1970s.
Known as the N1600 or N1700 format. Also used in Australian schools. I have one of the machines and a few tapes.
@@stephenw2992 are these tapes content available online? Or do they contain lost media?
@@Game_Hero I havent got around to seeing if the machine works, and I am not sure if the tapes have anything on them or are the correct format for my machine because different models had different standards from what I have heard.
Wikipedia describes Philips VCR as "the first truly practical home video cassette system". They had it had the college I went to in 1978. It was certainly more practical than the reel to reel VCR they had at secondary school which was only touched by the Librarian. He had a monitor in his office so he could run up to the lecture theatre and blast aerosol cleaner into strategic places when the picture invariably started to break up 30 minutes into a programme.
N1500 was the first ,which was one hour recording. N1700 was 2 hours.@@stephenw2992
The fact that you were able to condense a subject that has undoubtably had volumes written about it in 31min is truly astounding. Great content as always.
Every subject has granularity, i.e. how detailed and specific the information contained within the subject. Volumes tend to get into very fine granularity, getting into lots of the very fine details. These videos are able to maximise a consistent output of high quality information by aiming for the right level of granularity - he doesn't get bogged down in details beyond as necessary to paint the overall picture.
@butts -- well put, it's like the coastline paradox.
lo
"Notably X-rated tapes helped with that penetration." 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣Got me
@@hieronymusbutts7349well said that was impressive...I'm guessing you're smart AF being able to articulate your thoughts so well. Genuine comment, no trolling.
Bing Crosby later made an additional fortune by taking a percentage of the Minute Maid corporation in exchange for celebrity endorsements. Minute Maid was then sold to Coca Cola. Bing-o was a sharp cookie.
Sizes in centimeters, weights in pounds and baby hippos. A true marvel of confusion!
my dad used to run a shop where he did video conversions of VHS tapes, especially from PAL to NTSC for people returning from overseas travel.. I never had any idea that the history behind this technology was so rich.. as always, I am flabbergasted at your research capabilities
I did really sketchy Shia On Umatic in the mid 90s that spud me a million today
I still own JVC's flagship DVHS player. It's pretty fun to get 1080 and Dolby Digital from a VHS tape.
I believe the home cable market emerging at the same time as VCR was a perfect match for consumer demand. 28:34 - nice pun!
You forgot to tell us who invented the flashing clock from Hell that caused so much frustration among adults who had to get their kids to make it stop.
Years later, we kids realized that the flashing clock happened because of a power surge or power outage. Slowly damaging sensitive electronics and eventually, rendering that expensive VCR useless. 💁🏻♂️📼🔥
... or ... early on.... you bought a Sony VCR... (.... that had a capacitor backup... when the power failed... the cap would release power to the clock... in my experience... good for up to 3 hours of power loss... )
@@j.6756that only helped if people knew how to set the clock to begin with. And if they could do that then they could reset it every time the power went out. In my experience most people's VCR had been blinking 12:00 ever since they first bought it
The 40-pin IC used for the programmable clock timer was developed by Matsushita.
It didn't use a quartz, and based it's time measurement on the 50/60 Hz mains frequency.
The display was made to blink if there had been a power cut and therefore time was wrong.
Some video recorders had a 50/60 Hz multivibrator and a battery, which kept the time for short power interruption.
In the 1980, a quartz was $10 or more, and mains frequency was the cheaper option for timekeeping...
down with time keeping in general i say
YOU are truly the best documentor and narrator... Keep up the good work!
I completely agree!
Fully grasping the American measuring concept of hippos, dolphins and fridges! As a European I approve!
Don't forget football fields and Mack trucks
@@maxscott3349Liquids are measured in Olympic Swimming Pools. The UK measure of volume is the Double Decker Bus.
Canadians measure distance in travel time instead of units of distance.
Note:
half hour (~50km) = “very close”
an hour or two (100-150km) = “not too far”
a 6 hour round trip (~500km) = “a short day trip”
@@rok1475 We do the same in many parts of the US. I think its because humans by nature remember passage of time better than distance. Easier to remember how long that drive somewhere took than the number on the trip odometer.
In Europe, Philips was way ahead of the Japanese. The N1500 was a colour video cassette recorder introduced in 1972. It was designed for the PAL colour system and for technical reasons was not suitable for NTSC transmissions. However, it was a pioneer and years ahead of Betamax and VHS as a home consumer product.
As a professional audio engineer I love the coverage of key audio events and tech
He missed the Philips 1500 and 1700 VCR cassette machines that were available before BetaMax. They were widely available in Europe , but the prices were too high for mass adoption. I suspect they didnt sell enough to be a success, but they worked well.
there are half a dozend other video cassette formats before umatic, vhs, v2000 and betamax, which didn't catch on and stayed in their niche markets like education, were companies like Grundig and Philips sold "complete toolchains" (cameras, duplicators to playback machines and TVsets) on large governmental contracts in the 1970ies in Europe.
@@rarbiart Yes, but the Philips 1500 was the first VCR to go to market specifically targeting the consumer market in a somewhat realistic manner. Compact cassettes; a compact machine; a built in TV tuner: it connected to consumer TVs through the aerial connector, as that was the only interface TVs with a non-isolated chassis had at that time. It was just a little too expensive.
@@rarbiart The VCR format came years before VHS, Video2000 and Betamax. Actually Video2000 is from the same manufacturer as VCR, as a successor. U-Matic came before VCR, but it being semi-pro, the VCR format was the first video home format on cassette (there were reel ones earlier though).
My brother used to work for an electronics repair store and he was able to buy an old Ampex reel-to-reel audio tape recorder. That thing was righteous. It was the best tape recorder we ever had. We used to audio tape TV shows back in those days - before VCRs were a thing. Lots of fond memories of those days.
@vaquero3579 - We tape recorded an episode of Mission Impossible and found out that there was almost no dialogue in the whole show. It was just that same tune played over and over. Fun to watch but boring to listen to. 😆
I think the effect on the movie industry can't be understated. Matt Damon talked about how DVD sales would a lot of times make a film profitable in the long run and worth making as a long-term investment, even if it wasn't a hit in movie theaters. I'm sure that begin with VHS. It kind of lines up with 1999 being the best year for movies. With VHS and DVD sales bringing in a lot of money and the studios didn't need to worry about making back all their money at the box. Office, studios were capable of green lighting more niche or experimental films with some level of appeal.
" Matt Damon talked about how DVD sales would a lot of times make a film profitable in the long run and worth making as a long-term investment, even if it wasn't a hit in movie theater" - solve for the equilibrium...this means more c rappy movies were made due to VCR. A lower threshold for profitability since it's not as interesting. And with Netflix streaming, the bar for quality has been lowered even more.
@@raylopez99 Sure, it also meant that filmmakers outside the Hollywood inner circle could make and distribute their films more easily and actually make some money for their work. Like everything, there's a positive and negative impact.
Prior to the home video revolution, according to director Steven Spielberg, movie studios didn't consider the archives of movies they produced to be worth much, and because of that, invested little with the preservation of the movies they made for posterity.
According to what Spielberg said in a televised interview [in conjunction to the difficulties he had with putting together a pristine print of "Jaws"], movie studios felt that once a movie had its money making run at theaters, toss that film on the shelf and move on to the next money making movie production.
Many theatrical films deteriorated from poor storage practices. However, later on the movie studios were motivated with restoring the old movies once they figured there was money to be made in the home video market.
@@bloqk16 the BBC also used to recycle tape because it was so expensive. So old tv shows have been lost because they were re-recorded over.
"Straight to VHS" or "Straight to DVD" releases are expression for very bad movies in the industry.
Informative video but misses out that in Europe Philips launched the N1500 domestic video recorder with built in tuner and timer in 1971. This one hour cassette based format was increased to 2 hours with the N1700 video recorder in 1977 using the same tape run at a slower speed but lacked backwards capability. V2000 was a third format for Philips. Keep up the great work.
When Philips introduced his home video machine, it als had a better quality than VHS and Betamax, but Philips lost the competition because people couldn’t rent porn video tapes. Sony improved his system and was used in professional situations long after they made VHS machines for the home video market. In fact the JVC system was not so good as Betamax and Philips, but won the competition because one could rent the most video films on that VHS system. Another thing was that the technical quality of the Japanese brands was much better than from Philips.
@@harrybeugelink6401 The porn is a bit of an urban myth, and while Sony and Philips would not give permission JVC had no such qualms but the reason why VHS won out was the length of recording time with Sony and Philips struggling to catch up. Betamax with the C7 and C9 had the better picture quality at comparable speeds to VHS but the original N1500 was probably the best at the time. Reliability of the Philips and Grundig machines was a bit of an issue as you say but in the Uk the take up by the popular rental companies of vhs was the killer blow for other formats and went hand in hand with the availability of pre recorded Hollywood films - each driving the respective market. Betacam and eventual development of digital variants kept the format alive with the pro market particularly at a time when every band had to have a pop video!
And the ultimate grundig svr with 4 hour tapes
Great documentation! This 30-minute presentation has abundant amount of historical and technical information. I have always wonder what the helical scan is, since my college classmate who worked for a VCR manufacturer in the 1990’s made it sound like rocket science, and this video makes it so easy to understand. I cannot imagine how much research you have done to produce such a great video. Great job!
This video only glossed over the mechanical aspect regarding the rotating heads. To get the signal on and off the tape and syncronize all the other motors is rocket science.
@@stephenw2992 Processing was also interesting. Plus this video didn't even mention S-VHS.
@@stephenw2992 Hahaha, maybe so, my college classmate is a very talented engineer, I just couldn't help saying this to him because he was so arrogant.
@@DoggieA This video did a good job of covering the basic concepts. The technical details would bore most people to death, but it is quite a feat of engineering. I used to repair VCRs and never needed to know any of the engineering to do it. Same with Colour TV. The PAL colour system is a technical feat, and I learned all about it, only to never use that knowledge again.
Another side note you did not mention was how Sony tried to save Betamax by introducing Hi-Fi sound, something they thought VHS could not match. Until JVC proved them wrong and introduced it to VHS by recording audio using the video head drum in a layer under the video.
You have to do a video on the Walkman / personal stereo. They were massive in the 80's and 90's. I bought about 4 or 5 different ones. I had the very first Sony Stowaway in 1980, they later changed the name to the Walkman
Great video by the way
Donate to the channel.
I would like to see one on stereos in general. Especially those from 90’s and 00’s
@TechMoan has videos on the subject that are well worth watching.
@@jayschafer1760 ta, I will take a look
@@jayschafer1760 thanks for the heads up.
USA: invents some electronic thing, but cant make it cheaper and durable.
Japan: i can make it affordable, cheaper and durable.
There was an awareness of the Japanese technical and manufacturing prowess by the mid-1960s, as illustrated in a comedy [US] TV show in 1964 of a American fictional company concerned about a Japanese company infringing on patents.
The American company had gathered its executives in a meeting room, looking over two identical 35 mm cameras. One American, the other Japanese. One camera was superbly built of high quality; the other camera was shabbily assembled. It was the Japanese made camera of high quality. lol
And mind you, that was in 1964.
The above from my personal recollection of the US TV show, "The Tycoon," starring Walter Brennan.
@@bloqk16 I think the american companies in those days got lazy in improving their stuff since they had the money to continue screwing up while the japanese ones couldn't afford screw ups
The 80ies also happen to match the decade of CRT (TVs) domination by Japan, until Korea came to challenge, and later China.
Side note on the Gandalf reference, there was a Computer Network manufacturer in the '80s and '90s called Gandalf Technologies. It was founded by a couple of Canadian Tolkein fans. Their offices even had round doors 😄
Gandalf was headquartered in Ottawa Canada and built a lot of computer modems in very characteristic blue boxes. I never worked for them but knew several people who did.
There was something truly magical about the VHS era. Being a kid exploring rental stores was a blast and I never did warm up to the CD/DVD era that followed. Felt it sterilized the experience.
RIP Melmac Video. It was the last bastion of VHS rentals in town. Still remember buying several used copies before they went out of business and I still own them today. That being The Rock, Down Periscope and Fatal Fury III: The Motion Picture. But hey, at least the VHS aesthetic lives on in our hearts, and in our games. Alien: Isolation nailed it perfectly.
You sound like your as old as me (mid 40's), and yes, this was a magical time.
@@ChristopherSobieniak 42 but close enough. =P
The 80s and 90s really were the best. Tech back then was just something else. Less sterile. More character. I still remember how freakin' cool my VHS remote was with its revolutionary glow in the dark buttons!
@@Aikurisu 46 for me, but I get it. It was like that
For more info on VCR tech and history, Technology connections has a video on it, along with the format wars that came with it.
Technology Connections is an outstanding channel!
Owning a Japanese VCR was the pinnacle of luxury in post-communist Bulgaria in the early 90s. You couldn't just buy one - you either had to have connections in the Corecom or buy one second hand from somebody who got it abroad. My father did both, lol. We had an AKAI dual head VCR that could record off the TV mated to a Panasonic TV and it was our most prized possession. I watched a lot of bootleg tapes on that VCR. Later he got me a small single head VCR for my room and I watched a lot more. We were the only family in the entire neighbourhood with two VCRs.
Matsushita and Sony meeting in a dark subway station during the dead of night really needs a manga adaptation.
Agreed
This is fantastically great. I just checked and I do still have the JVC combo VHS/DVD device in my basement "electronic junk" area where it has probably been for 10 years now. From 30 million a year to zero -- what a story!
It really is zero. People complain that new audio cassette players are poor quality but with VHS there are literally no new machines being manufactured.
Excellent video. I’m a former SMPTE Section Chair, and this video does a nice job tracking the roadmap of my life.
As someone who was involved with this technology at the beginning of mass VCR adoption and responsible for technical troubleshooting and repair of the first generation of Matsushita VCR's, I commend you on the production of this video..
I got a Ampex 1 inch BW video machine free from a high school. I used it for a year to record shows that were after my bedtime.I still have 2 of the reals, but the machine is long gone.
Too bad it's gone, nice piece of engineering history, also a collectible item nowadays.
My father was born in 1948, he witnessed so many changes in his lifetime and of course I was always pestering him about obscure little things in history. One thing I remember him telling me is when his family got their first TV but his mother thought it was a waste of money, she said people wanted to go out for their entertainment and there wouldn't be many companies putting any content out on the radio waves lol.
We got our first TV in 1953. I don't remember my mother ever complaining about having one. She was too busy in the kitchen what with having kids and all.
Farms literally got electrified to get radio reception!
There was a period in the 90s when Toshiba (edit: may have been Hitachi; my memory is flaky) was tops for VHS, unless you had money to get a Mitsubishi. Panasonic was only a middling brand. Sony wasn't in VHS until late. By the late 80s, Goldstar (today's LG) flooded the market with a VHS platform that could be customized for different brands to resell. This Goldstar platform ended up everywhere under dozens of brands, maybe hundreds. It was cheap and had all the top features if whoever selling it wanted to have them. It's funny now because these Goldstar platform machines were terribly unreliable and rarely even show up in thrift stores because they mostly broke a long time ago. DVD managed to hit the market at the same time Goldstar's cheap machines were dying and not getting replaced. They managed to take a huge chunk of the market and killed it.
Sony killed Betamax in 1992 with the introduction of the Sony VHS (not the high end thing shown in this video). It is a shame, because VHS could have benefited of some of the features of Betamax, for example metallic vs plastic at the ends of the tape (electric vs optical). The only thing that Sony VHS brought was the U (one point) loading as opposed to the more commonly used M (two points) used to pull the tape around the head drum. A disadvantage of this method is that it made the units deeper, and that it needed more tape to travel outside the cartridge.
Goldstar, Samsung and Daewoo were all terrible machines in the late 80s, and even worse the Japanese reduced quality to stay competitive on price. Ironically the first Goldstar mech was a copy of Matsushita's best video mech, but was a piece of junk. Most of those machines were on the dump by the mid 90s they were so bad.
@@freeculture I recall that the first Sony VHS machines were actually rebadged Hitachis.
In the U.K. comedian Lenny Henry killed Betamax with one joke.
"If your house gets burgled they always nick the VCR. Except nobody will ever want to nick my VCR. I was smart. I bought a Betamax"
@@stephenw2992 I remember seeing Samsung and LG Brands in Australia in actual electronic/appliance stores (say, JB Hi-Fi, Bing Lee, ro Harvey Norman) around the mid-to-late 2000s in Australia. Was that the time they got actually good?
@@HenryMidfields They were better by then, but LG Televisions were pretty bad, from widescreen CRT to DLP rearpro to Plasma. A Samsung smart phone is the only thing I have ever purchased from any of them and that is only because I hate Apple as a corporation.
An interesting thing about the U-Matic is that while it was never really that popular for its intended purpose, it was present in almost all recording studios for a while for digital audio capture. The ubiquitous 16 bit/44.1kHz sample rate that ended up being used for CDs several years later was based on the maximum reliable bandwidth of a U-Matic cassette.
I think I’ve heard that one reason VHS won out was that while the image quality wasn’t as good as Beta, it was less expensive and “good enough” for most people who just wanted to record a football game and weren’t obsessed with image quality. It’s interesting how often “good enough” has won throughout tech history. Great video!
I was an avid videophile during that period. Paid $1,000 for a new Betamax in 79 and amassed an extensive library of TV shows and movies. Eventually had multiple machines, cameras, tripods and gear. I knew lot of the history but this video filled in the gaps. Great job👍👍
Actually the BBC in England did it first with the VERA project. It just wasnt viable as a mass market format. Ampex used the semi helical quad system that was a good product but they didnt invent it or do it first.
2005 was the peak of VCR penetration ? OMG, I went DVD in 1998. The fact that Sony basically gave away BluRay in the Playstation 3 shows that they learned their lessons from both Betamax and MiniDisc. While I don't miss VHS or Betamax, I do and will always have love for the Minidisc - the only guaranteed way to copy music before recordable CD was ironed out and affordable.
Man, the intersection of technology, business and history in your videos is so damn cool. Your channel is so good. Keep it up!
Takagi in Die Hard: "Pearl Harbor didn't work out so we got you with tape decks"
I was born in 1971, my dad already had a U-matic machine, had a Betamax machine before my 7th birthday, and was onto VHS like white on rice before I turned 10. Possibly inspired by Kenny Everett, we had a room called the video vault with hundreds (maybe 1000's) of cassettes, mostly VHS. A huge part of my childhood revolved around archiving TV broadcasts and laughing at my dad's inaccurate labeling ("crap on Saturday night", "Omega Factor Eight", and "Indiana Ark"). $0.02
Awesome, thanks for sharing.
Your dad was a pioneer. My mom was almost one too, getting her first VCR in '82.
@@ChristopherSobieniak I think that's also the year when my grandfather got his first VCR.
@@videotape2959 It was a good time to get one. I stil wish we had one in the late 70's.
ABSOBLOODLUTELY AMAZING VIDEO AS USUAL !
Your research is incredible but, more than that, your power to structurizen and convey all the information you researched is equally jaw dropping !
Keep up the excellent work and my God bless you always !
You did a fantastic job at putting together this documentary. Thank you!
Excellent video! Very well researched, especially the early history.
Has bringing a management consultant in as CEO ever worked out?
So true.
This is the best video on the history of video tape recording I've seen. Kudos!
For an item that created and entire branch of the consumer market, it lasted only a short time ! Roughly 1975 to 2005. ~30 years. An example of a market so successful, that it makes itself obsolete, by spawning replacement technologies.
It also roughly follows the rise of the microcontroller. Small ICs, that incorporate the microprocessor, RAM & ROM (including EPROM to Flash), and IO, all on one chip. These chips made their way into controlling ALL consumer electronics, but are a big factor in the cost management of VCRs. And mostly 8-bit versions, when personal computers had long moved past 16-bit, to 32-bit.
Analog shrinkage into ICs helped a lot.
I remembered when I was a kid, I peered into the empty cassette slot and saw that skewed metal cylinder in there. It made me wonder if the VCR was broken because it looked so weird, with all the components around it arranged at right angles.
I remember the first VCR we had. It was a Hitachi videorecorder that was very good. This was back in 1986. It was so convenient to tape the programs that you wanted.
@28:33 "Notably X-Rated tapes also helped with that PENETRATION!" lol 😂
There are some reactions about VCR, here some info about that line of products:
The first home video system was the Philips N1500 in 1972 (shown at the Firato exhibition that year) using AC synchronous motors and a magnetic breaking system to regulate the speed (no proper DC motors and motor control available in 1972) and an analog clock timer. The drum was huge compared to VHS and Betamax about 10cm in diameter. Between the helical tracks was a guard band but that also meant only 60 minutes of playing time.
The N1501 was a small upgrade (mainly color change from silver to black and improved electronics modules) but the N1502 used much more powerful DC motors and a digital clock timer.
The N1502 was the last in line of this first generation. They started using the same trick as VHS and Betamax, to have the heads at an azimuth so the tracks could be written side by side with sufficient cross talk supression (a picture of exactly this was actually in the video). This version was the Philips N1700 which was basically an N1502 with a thinner capstan and another head drum. It used the same cassette which could now record 180 minutes and was called "long play".
This format was just called "VCR" and "VCR-longplay". Grundig made SVCR (Super VCR) using the same tapes but an incompatible recording method. The picture of the N1700 was actually better than VHS; it did not have the colour smearing because it did not have the color comb filters. This sounds technically inferior and was worse in measurements but did in practice produce a better picture.
The problem with all these VCR models were the tape. The two spindels were stacked and the tape ran diagonally from one spool to the other. This was prone to errors during tape loading and unloading. Also 180 minutes recoding time was not enough. That's when Philips abandoned VCR and started to develop Video 2000 to overcome all known problems with VCR, VHS and Betamax. Like no need for manual tracking, 2 sided recording, stereo sound, perfect still picture etc. But they were too late to the party.
I guess "VCR" never made it into the US and therefore is not recognized as an important stepping stone in time. 1972 was pretty early for a real home video system, too early in hindsight. I doubt they ever made NTSC versions, I only ever saw PAL versions.
I had an N1501 back in the day when it was dumped on flee markets in 1984. The nice thing about this machine is that it is all discrete electronics and a perfect machine to lean exactly how the VCR works, especially the speed control logic is fascinating. For example a magnet is glued to the flywheel and a magnetic head is picking up the pulses which then goes the control circuit which is just a couple of transistors. And the 50Hz clock is just derived from the mains (which is 50Hz in Europe). I think the only ICs in it is are opamps (the metal round ones with 8 legs).
My family didn’t get a VCR until 1997. It was only 4 years until I got a DVD player in 2001. Although I paid for that myself with my allowance and mom kept watching VHS until around 2008 or so when she got a DVD player. She didn’t get a blu way player until 2020. In time for physical media to be all but dead.
Improving broadband infrastructure and always on connections helped the streaming market.
That was fantastic. Thank you for this video. History and consumer tech, my favorite topics
What a great story, nice to see my photo of the Ampex VTR! , cheers
The amount of research that you do, is nothing short of incredible
This was a marvelous presentation on the overview of magnetic tape media as it transcended from audio to video.
I was late in the acquisition of a VCR in 1987, but am most appreciative of the technology, as I captured countless hours of US TV shows that have otherwise disappeared, never to be found again.
My grandfather did the same, but he acquired his first VCR in 1982 IIRC. Unfortunately, since his passing, his collection of hundreds of VHS tapes has been trashed. Countless hours of extremely rare Canadian broadcasts gone forever.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. When I was in military avionics school in 1966 one of my friends has a Sony real-to-real video recorder. Pretty impressive piece of kit back then. I just finished transferring our family's VHS tapes to digital as a gift to our kids.
Great job, love your channel. Keep up the good work!
Another fantastic show. How the heck do you get these things out so quickly? Unreal. Great job.
In the retail world from '82-85, I saw the tide turn in favour of VHS. It was largely driven by rental stores whispering that Beta would become obsolete. In the industry we felt that these rumours originated at Matsushita. Whenever a consumer asked (and they all did), my colleagues and I always told them Beta was and always would be technically superior. It ran faster and the transport was more robust - the image quality was visibly better, and more stable, which could be demonstrated with the pause and slo-mo functions. Sony were building real prosumer grade units while at least 95% of the VHS machines were cheap and clunky.
Back in the day i had Panasonic TV's and VCR's they lasted for years.
I don't know how you do it, I thought I cared little about VCRs but I was glued to that. 👍
"Strange German music", and this coming from a country that has country&western :)
Its fascinating how often the japanse MITI shows up with succesful industrial policy. Feels like a lot of the japanese successful market leaders throughout time where being coerced into their situation by MITI policy.
MITI didn't help them with the home computer market though.
A comprehensive review, yet again!
Thank you for your insight.
Do HDDVD next! It is amazing how HDDVD vs Bluray repeated so many of these mistakes. In the end the format with more capacity won. People will always want more.
Video in a bag.
cannot neglect PlayStation 3 in this equation either. PS3 not only used BDROM as its method to deliver games but also had the ability to play movies. and the PS3 was a pretty big seller meaning Sony put a Blu-Ray player into a lot of homes by nature of selling video game consoles. Interesting enough the PS2 kind of did a similar thing for DVD in Japan, While stand alone DVD units already were taking off in the USA, Laserdisc was in fact not a flop in Japan and was hard to dislodge... until the PS2 slapped a DVD player in every living room.
...i still have a JVC VCR in the basement...
Amazing how widespread the Japanese tech spread after WWII
7:54
Now those trousers are properly pulled up.
I know this video focusses on the Asian (well, Japanese) influence on the VCR, but you've left out a very important player: Philips.
Philips launched their VCR system (it was actually called that) in 1972, and it became the first successful cassette based home video system. Runtime was limited to 60 minutes at first, but doubled to two hours in later models and to four hours by the time of the systems' demise.
Eventually, Betamax and VHS outperformed the system (both on a technical level and commercially). Philips launched a successor (Video2000, also known as VCC) in the early 80s, which boasted the longest record/playtime per cassette (8 hours on standard play, 16 hours on longplay), but it wasn't launched outside of Europe, South Africa and Australia and only ever sold well in the Netherlands (Philips' home turf). It was discontinued in the mid-80s, when Philips bought a stake in Matsushita and started using their VHS patents to produce affordable VHS machines.
Only a few die hard fans in the United States know of these formats, as they were designed for the PAL broadcasting system and not compatible with NTSC (and thus not sold in the US or Canada). But they were important systems seen on the global scale.
What if they did try to market to the Americas and Asia?
@@ryanortega1511 the problem is the broadcast system. (Most of) the Americas and Asia use NTSC - Philips designed their video systems (both of them) in such a way that they were heavily optimised for the PAL system used in Europe, South Africa and Australia. Redesigning the systems for NTSC was considered at various points in time, but was problematic. A few NTSC prototypes do exist, but Philips eventually didn't release those versions.
Great presentation Jon!
😃
Congrats on making such an interesting video.
Great video as usual, I think Philips deserves more recognition for their cartridge VCR and later VCR-LP systems from the early 70s which predated both Betamax and VHS, were cheaper than U-Matic, but weren't sold in the US or Japanese markets and pretty much completely flopped.
The Philips video recorders of the early 1970s had a reputation in the UK for needing expensive maintenance and not being very reliable. The Betamax and VHS recorders soon gained a much better reputation.
A few months ago I repaired a VHS recorder for an elderly couple who have a large collection of recordings that they can watch only by using this recorder. They said that professional repairers will no longer repair VHS recorders because spare parts are not available. Fortunately the problem with the recorder was easily fixed: a few bits of material that had fallen off the tapes and got stuck on the spinning head where it was snagging the tape. The tape on these machines is not supposed to make contact with the head, it rides on an extremely thin layer of air entrained by the fast-spinning head. This means that in theory there should be no wear on the tape or the head, but anything larger than the thickness of the air film stuck to the head will cause entanglement of the tape.
Philips was the template of what befell the entire European consumer electronics industry.
@@zoperxplex True, but there would be no TMSC or AMSL without Philips. Not household names but the latest phones rely on one or both.
Wonderful as always, thank you :)
The "minor players" Telefunken etc. belonged to Thomson-Brandt, they owned Dual, Greatz, Nordmende, SABA also - all JVC OEMs, later the VHSs came from a joint venture with Toshiba from Singapore (for the European market). At the peak the Thomson Brand brands had a market share of 25% (in Europe). Another "minor player" they owned was RCA... Nevertheless a great video, thank you for that.
Graetz.
Great Video!
No mention of the Phlips VCR system from 1972, they where the first in consumer video system.
Model N1500 + a clock to recored at a specific time.
Video 2000 came after the VCR system.
Betamax had the clock (i still have it) but it was separate, since it was simple mechanical power timer switch. But did the job of recording if you left the "piano" keys pressed down while the unit is without power, so the timer would close the circuit at the set time for about 8hrs.
Excellent video as usual
Wow, amazing content. I love the history of consumer electronics. Thanks so much for your efforts. ❤
The VCR in the late 70s and early 80s was the internet of its day. I'd have friends who'd lend each other tapes on different topics or movies. It was liberating.
I would be very interested in a video about the history of the Japanese hi-fi/stereo industry of the 60s 70s 80s, similar to what you've done regarding the auto, liquor, computer industries. There's also a sizeable vintage hi-fi community on social media that would eat that up. Just a suggestion ... You do really good work!
Poor Philips. The Video 2000 format never had a chance.
Shout ou to danish pioneer Valdemar Poulsen for his magnetic wire sound recorder, the telegraphone, from 1898.
Nice documentary. When I was in high school we had a well-funded Film and TV Arts program, not only did we get all the Super-8 film we could use, but we had access to a simple TV studio with professional cameras and editing equipment and a Sony portable VCR with separate camera and shoulder luggable recorder. B&W only. I think it was a later version of the Sony DV-2400 Portapak or similar (playback through the viewfinder?). Anyway, a cool toy that cost about half the price of a new car in those days and I got to take it home and on location a number of times.
My parents JVC from the early 80s has only recently started to stick when playing tapes.
Sadly the lovely remote control with LCD screen didn't survive my sister's phase of biting things to pieces.
Sitting here watching this through my Roku as the audio meters still dance their fluorescent dance on my 86 Yamaha VCR still kickin’. I feel sometimes I should record these vids onto tape where they will likely last longer then this platform. If only in a hundred years we had the kind of competent engineers and repair people to keep our machines running. Wouldn’t that just be something? ❤
As a child, I remember when we got our first VCR. My dad bought a top of the line Sony Betamax player and a massive Sony Trinitron TV. I remember the smell of the machinery and the high pitched noise it made when turned on. There must have been at least 20 people stuffed in our living room every Saturday night to watch at least 2 movies back to back. My neighbours' kids would bring their own cushions and bean bags and lounge in front of the grown ups on the sofa.
Great video! Thanks.
I've met a few engineers from Ampex, thanks for talking about their work.
I still have a Sharp VCR, bought in 2000.
brilliant work...thanks
Acceptable pronunciation of German names. Acceptable use of the expression "weird German music". Very good, you improved. Continue!
The references made me laugh out loud more than i should have😂😂😂 excellent video
There was a great book I read called "Fast Forward" and it talked about the VHS vs. Beta cam war and how the US developed analog videotape recording. The part was that i found most interesting was the founding of Sony in post-war Japan and their involvement in inventing helical scan, which revolutionized the videotape industry and made everything work!
Wouldn't that be the "VHS vs BetaMAX" war? BetaCAM is an entirely different format
Leave it to a Japanese company to improve on a technology that germinated in the US.
I recall as a kid watching the Walter Brennan [starring] TV series [US-1964], "The Tycoon," where Brennan played the part of Walter Andrews, chairman of "The Thunder" corporation.
In one episode the Thunder corporation was concerned about a Japanese company infringing on patents, where, in the conference room filled with executives, Andrews was presented with two identical looking 35 mm cameras; one made by Thunder, the other by the Japanese company. Andrews was impressed with the quality build, fit and finish of one camera; then noted the shabby quality of the other camera. Turns out the shabby quality camera was made by Thunder. lol
Those TV writers were very astute about the Japanese turning out quality products in the 1960s.
FYI: Matsushita is pronounced with only 3 syllables. The "I" is basically silent. Mat-Sue-Shtuh.
Quick technical correction: while the early reel to reel tape was 1 inch, the UMatics format was 3/4 inch. Sony later came out with a component format for news gathering called Betacam with the same sized tape. They also eventually came up with a cartridge for 1 inch for early digital (D1 and D2 for component and composite).
I recall him mentioning U-matic was 3/4”
@@rnb250 16:23. I remember coming across U-Matic tapes and machines at the University's library.
After the 2"VTR's there weer two 1" broadcast open real systems, B and C format, that were used a lot in the industry.
Brands like Sony made some lugable C format versions, But Ampex and Nagra made one (The VPR-5) that was as portable as an open reel 1" VTR was ever going to get. A very cool machine.
Sorry to butt in: D-1 and D-2 were both formats using _19 mm_ wide videotape...using that measurement (3/4") to describe it as opposed to 3/4" (U-Matic). Old broadcast guy...
I did this report in Fifth grade for my Elementary school. We used bare wire to record coded messages sent to the Eurotheatre. I lost them somewhere around, the eq bias needing more power for Chrome and Metal formulation magnetic tape. I have questions about Sony PCM digital audio recorded on video tape and which one of those geniuses invented the floppy disk? the CD? DVD? Blu-ray? Subscribed to newsletter.
The second VCR that our family own (still around, in storage) from the early 1990s have stereo audio support, auto-tracking feature to sync the tape to the head, and a spring back dial for easier fast forward or reversing the tape. I remember after watching many rental tapes, we’d have to open the VCR and clean the head using lighter fluid.
2:15 - the bit on the United States not knowing about the Magnetophon until 1945, and the subsequent Crosby-Mullin affair always puzzled me. The Magnetophon was no secret, it was exported from Germany even after the WW2 started. Granted, AEG made many improvements in later war years, but all the key elements were known internationally by 1940. And of course the patent staff at RCA, Western Electric etc. knew it all even before the commercial Magnetophons were produced. But, apparently, the war erased all memories and they somehow forgot it.
One side issue is that prior to the "discovery" of the Magnetophon both the US and the UK also possessed technology of similar broadcast quality. The mechanically recorded and optically reproduced Philips-Miller system of 1936 was not exactly high fidelity by modern standard, but nevertheless it was just as good with audio as the war-time Magnetophon. And, reversely, the German broadcasts from magnetic tape were not any better or worse than the regular BBC broadcasts off Philips-Miller optical track.
High frequency bias was the discovery that made audio tape truly viable. IRC, the Germans were the first to use it, during the war.
This is an excellent video.
Very good video. Thank you.