History of VCR (Videocassette recorder)

The videocassette recorder, VCR, or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the recording.

Use of a VCR to record a television program to play back at a more convenient time is commonly referred to as timeshifting. VCRs can also play back prerecorded tapes. In the 1980s and 1990s, prerecorded videotapes were widely available for purchase and rental, and blank tapes were sold to make recordings.

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The history of the videocassette recorder follows the history of videotape recording in general. Ampex introduced the Quadruplex videotape professional broadcast standard format with its Ampex VRX-1000 in 1956. It became the world’s first commercially successful videotape recorder using two-inch (5.1 cm) wide tape. Due to its high price of US$50,000, the Ampex VRX-1000 could be afforded only by the television networks and the largest individual stations.

In 1959 Toshiba announced a new method of recording known as helical scan, first implemented in reel-to-reel videotape recorders (VTRs), and later used with cassette tapes.

In 1963 Philips introduced their EL3400 1″ helical scan recorder, aimed at the business and domestic user, and Sony marketed the 2″ PV-100, their first reel-to-reel VTR, intended for business, medical, airline, and educational use.

VCR started gaining mass market traction in 1975. Six major firms were involved in the development of the VCR: RCA, JVC, AMPEX, Matsushita Electric / Panasonic, Sony, and Toshiba. Of these, the big winners in the growth of this industry were Japanese companies Matsushita Electric / Panasonic, JVC, and Sony, which developed more technically advanced machines with more accurate electronic timers and greater tape duration. The VCR started to become a mass market consumer product; by 1979 there were three competing technical standards using mutually incompatible tape cassettes.

The industry boomed in the 1980s as more and more customers bought VCRs. By 1982, 10% of households in the United Kingdom owned a VCR. The figure reached 30% in 1985 and by the end of the decade well over half of British homes owned a VCR.

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