live television program.
In 1953, Dr. Norikazu Sawazaki developed a prototype
helical scan video tape recorder.
BCE demonstrated a color system in February 1955 using a
longitudinal recording on half-inch (1.27 cm) tape.
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
, RCA's competitor, was about to order BCE machines when
Ampex introduced the superior
Quadruplex system. BCE was acquired by
3M Company in 1956.
In 1959,
Toshiba released the first commercial helical scan video tape recorder.
Broadcast video
Quad
The first commercial professional
broadcast quality Broadcast quality is a term stemming from quad videotape to denote the quality achieved by professional video cameras and time base correctors (TBC) used for broadcast television, usually in standard definition. As the standards for commercial tele ...
videotape machines capable of replacing
kinescopes were the two-inch
quadruplex videotape
2-inch quadruplex videotape (also called 2″ quad video tape or quadraplex) was the first practical and commercially successful analog recording video tape format. It was developed and released for the broadcast television industry in 1956 by ...
(Quad) machines introduced by
Ampex on April 14, 1956, at the
National Association of Broadcasters convention in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
. Quad employed a transverse (scanning the tape across its width) four-head system on a two-inch (5.08 cm) tape and stationary heads for the soundtrack.
CBS Television first used the Ampex VRX-1000
Mark IV at its Television City studios in Hollywood on November 30, 1956, to play a delayed broadcast of ''
Douglas Edwards and the News'' from
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
to the
Pacific Time Zone.
On January 22, 1957, the
NBC Television game show ''
Truth or Consequences
''Truth or Consequences'' is an American game show originally hosted on NBC radio by Ralph Edwards (1940–1957) and later on television by Edwards (1950–1954), Jack Bailey (1954–1956), Bob Barker (1956–1975), Steve Dunne (1957–1958), ...
'', produced in Hollywood, became the first program to be broadcast in all time zones from a prerecorded videotape.
Ampex introduced a color videotape recorder in 1958 in a cross-licensing agreement with RCA, whose engineers had developed it from an Ampex black-and-white recorder. NBC's special, ''
An Evening With Fred Astaire'' (1958), is the oldest surviving
television network color videotape, and has been restored by the
UCLA Film and Television Archive.
On December 7, 1963,
instant replay
Instant replay or action replay is a video reproduction of something that recently occurred which was both shot and broadcast live.
The video, having already been shown live, is replayed in order for viewers to see again and analyze what had j ...
, originally a videotape-based system, was used for the first time during the live transmission of the
Army–Navy Game by its inventor, director
Tony Verna
Anthony F. Verna (November 26, 1933 – January 18, 2015) was a producer of television sports and entertainment blockbusters.
Biography
Verna was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He died in Palm Desert, California at the age of 81.
Early ...
.
Although Quad became the industry standard for approximately thirty years, it has drawbacks such as an inability to freeze pictures, and no picture search. Also, in early machines, a tape could reliably be played back using only the same set of hand-made tape heads, which wore out very quickly. Despite these problems, Quad is capable of producing excellent images. Subsequent videotape systems have used helical scan, where the video heads record diagonal tracks (of complete fields) onto the tape.
Many early videotape recordings were not preserved. While much less expensive (if repeatedly recycled) and more convenient than kinescope, the high cost of
3M Scotch 179
[Charles P. Ginsburg]
. ''Memorial Tributes: National Academy of Engineering'', Vol. 7. 1994: The National Academies Press, Washington DC. and other early videotapes ($300 per one-hour reel)
[Elen, Richard G.]
. BFI Screenonline. meant that most broadcasters
erased and reused them, and (in the United States) regarded videotape as simply a better and more cost-effective means of time-delaying broadcasts than kinescopes. It was the four time zones of the continental United States which had made the system very desirable in the first place.
Some early broadcast videotapes have survived, including ''
The Edsel Show'', broadcast live in 1957, and 1958's ''
An Evening With Fred Astaire'', the oldest color videotape of an entertainment program known to exist (and the second-oldest color videotape known to survive, the oldest being the May 1958 dedication of the
WRC-TV
WRC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Washington, D.C., airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Class A Telemundo outlet WZDC-CD (channel 44 ...
studios in
Washington, D.C.). In 1976,
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
's 50th-anniversary special included an excerpt from a 1957 color special starring
Donald O'Connor
Donald David Dixon Ronald O'Connor (August 28, 1925 – September 27, 2003) was an American dancer, singer and actor. He came to fame in a series of films in which he co-starred with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan, and Francis the Talking Mule.
His b ...
; despite some obvious technical problems, the color tape was remarkably good. Some classic television programs recorded on studio videotape have been made available on DVD – among them NBC's ''
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie. A free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythi ...
'' (first telecast in 1960) with
Mary Martin as Peter, several episodes of
The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (late 1950s/early 60s), the final
Howdy Doody Show (1960), the television version of
Hal Holbrook's one-man show ''
Mark Twain Tonight
Mark may refer to:
Currency
* Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
* East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic
* Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927
* F ...
'' (first telecast in 1967), and
Mikhail Baryshnikov's classic production of the ballet ''
The Nutcracker
''The Nutcracker'' ( rus, Щелкунчик, Shchelkunchik, links=no ) is an 1892 two-act ballet (""; russian: балет-феерия, link=no, ), originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchai ...
'' (first telecast in 1977).
Types C and B
The next format to gain widespread usage was the
1" (2.54 cm) Type C format, introduced in 1976 (although some sources say 1978). This format introduced features such as shuttling, various-speed playback (including slow-motion), and still framing, but the sound and picture reproduction attainable on the format were of slightly lower quality than Quad (although 1" Type C's quality was still quite high). However, compared to Quad, 1" Type C machines required much less maintenance, took up less space, and consumed much less electrical power.
In Europe a similar tape format was developed, called
Type B. Type B machines (also known as BCN) use the same 1" tape as Type C but they lacked C's shuttle and slow-motion options. The picture quality is slightly better, though. Type B was the broadcast norm in continental Europe for most of the 1980s.
Professional cassette formats
A videocassette is a cartridge containing videotape. In 1969,
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...
introduced a prototype for the first widespread video cassette, the ¾ʺ (1.905 cm)
composite U-matic system, which Sony introduced commercially in September 1971 after working out industry standards with other manufacturers. Sony later refined it to ''Broadcast Video U-matic'' or BVU. Sony continued its hold on the professional market with its ever-expanding ½ʺ (1.27 cm)
component video
Component video is an analog video signal that has been split into two or more component channels. In popular use, it refers to a type of component analog video (CAV) information that is transmitted or stored as three separate signals. Compo ...
Betacam
Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, "Betacam" singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself.
Al ...
family (introduced in 1982), which, in its digital variants, is still among the professional market leaders.
Panasonic
formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...
had some limited success with its
MII
A Mii ( ) is a customizable avatar used on several Nintendo video game consoles and mobile apps. Miis were first introduced on the Wii console in 2006 and later appeared on the 3DS, Wii U, the Switch, and various apps for smart devices. Miis c ...
system, but never could compare to Betacam in terms of market share.
The next step was the
digital revolution. Among the first digital video formats was Sony's
D-1 D1, D01, D.I, D.1 or D-1 can refer to:
Science and technology Biochemistry and medicine
* ATC code D01 ''Antifungals for dermatological use'', a subgroup of the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System
* Dopamine receptor D1, Dopamine ...
, which featured uncompressed digital component recording. Because D-1 was extremely expensive, the composite
D-2 and
D-3 (by Sony and Panasonic, respectively) were introduced soon after. Ampex introduced the first compressed component recording with its
DCT series in 1992. Panasonic trumped D-1 with its
D-5 format, which is uncompressed as well, but much more affordable.
The
DV standard, which debuted in 1995, has become widely used both in its native form and in more robust forms such as Sony's
DVCAM and Panasonic's
DVCPRO as an acquisition and editing format.
For camcorders, Sony adapted the Betacam system with its
Digital Betacam format, later following it up with the cheaper
Betacam SX
Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, "Betacam" singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself.
All ...
and
MPEG IMX
Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, "Betacam" singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself.
All ...
formats, and the semiprofessional
DV-based
DVCAM system. Panasonic used its
DV variant
DVCPRO for all professional cameras, with the higher-end format
DVCPRO50
DV refers to a family of codecs and videotape, tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of camcorder, video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DV was strongly ...
being a direct descendant.
JVC developed the competing
D9/Digital-S format, which compresses video data in a way similar to DVCPRO but uses a cassette similar to
S-VHS
, the common initialism for Super VHS, is an improved version of the VHS standard for consumer-level video recording. Victor Company of Japan introduced S-VHS in Japan in April 1987, with their JVC-branded HR-S7000 VCR, and in certain overse ...
media.
High definition
The introduction of
HDTV
High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...
video production
Video production is the process of producing video content for video. It is the equivalent of filmmaking, but with video recorded either as analog signals on videotape, digitally in video tape or as computer files stored on optical discs, hard dri ...
necessitated a medium for storing
high-definition video information. In 1997, Sony bumped its Betacam series up to HD with the
HDCAM
HDCAM is a high-definition video digital recording videocassette version of Digital Betacam introduced in 1997 that uses an 8-bit discrete cosine transform (DCT) compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 1080i-compatible down-sampled resolution of 14 ...
standard and its higher-end cousin
HDCAM SR
HDCAM is a high-definition video digital recording videocassette version of Digital Betacam introduced in 1997 that uses an 8-bit discrete cosine transform (DCT) compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 1080i-compatible down-sampled resolution of 14 ...
. Panasonic's competing format for cameras is based on DVCPRO and called
DVCPRO HD
DV refers to a family of codecs and videotape, tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of camcorder, video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DV was strongly ...
. For VTR and archive use, Panasonic expanded the D-5 specification to store compressed HD streams and called it
D-5 HD.
Home video
VCRs
The first consumer
videocassette recorder
A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the reco ...
s (VCR) were launched in 1971 (based around Sony
U-matic technology).
Philips entered the domestic market the following year with the
N1500. Sony's
Betamax (1975) and JVC's
VHS (1976) created a mass-market for VCRs and the two competing systems battled the "
videotape format war", which VHS ultimately won. In Europe Philips had developed the
Video 2000 format, which did not find favour with the TV rental companies in the UK and lost out to VHS.
At first VCRs and videocassettes were very expensive, but by the late 1980s the price had come down enough to make them affordable to a mainstream audience. Videocassettes finally made it possible for consumers to buy or rent a complete film and watch it at home whenever they wished, rather than simply catching it at a movie theater or having to wait until it was telecast. It gave birth to video rental stores,
Blockbuster
Blockbuster or Block Buster may refer to:
*Blockbuster (entertainment) a term coined for an extremely successful movie, from which most other uses are derived.
Corporations
* Blockbuster (retailer), a defunct video and game rental chain
** Bl ...
the largest chain, which lasted from about 1980 to 2005. It also made it possible for a VCR owner to begin
time-shifting the recording of films and other
television programs straight from the transmission. This caused an enormous change in viewing practices, as one no longer had to wait for a repeat of a program that had been missed. The shift to home viewing also changed the movie industry's revenue streams, because home renting created an additional window of time in which a film could make money. In some cases, films that did only modestly in their theater releases went on to have strong performances in the rental market (e.g.,
cult films
A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage i ...
).
VHS became the leading consumer tape format for
home movies after the "
videotape format war", though its follow-ups
S-VHS
, the common initialism for Super VHS, is an improved version of the VHS standard for consumer-level video recording. Victor Company of Japan introduced S-VHS in Japan in April 1987, with their JVC-branded HR-S7000 VCR, and in certain overse ...
,
W-VHS
W-VHS (Wide-VHS) is a HDTV-capable analog recording videocassette format created by JVC. The format was originally introduced in 1994 for use with Japan's Hi-Vision, an early analog high-definition television system.
Naming
JVC gives four ...
and
D-VHS
D-VHS is a digital video recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for "Data", but JVC renamed the format as "Digital VHS". Released in 1998, it uses the same p ...
never caught up in popularity. In the early 2000s in the prerecorded video market, VHS began to be displaced by
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
. The DVD format has several advantages over VHS tape. A DVD is much better able to take repeated viewings than VHS tape, which can crack or break, which makes DVDs a better format from a rental store's perspective. As well, whereas a VHS tape can be erased if it is exposed to a rapidly changing magnetic field of sufficient strength, DVDs and other optical discs are not affected by magnetic fields. Even though DVDs do not have the problems of tapes, such as breakage of the tape or the cassette mechanism, DVDs can still be damaged by scratches. Another factor for movie rental stores is that DVDs are smaller and take less space to store. DVDs offer a number of advantages for the viewer: DVDs can support both standard 4x3 and widescreen 16x9 screen aspect ratios and DVDs can provide twice the video resolution of VHS. As well, a viewer who wants to skip ahead to the end of a movie can do so much faster with a DVD than with a VHS tape (which has to be rewound). DVDs can have interactive menus, multiple language tracks, audio commentaries, Closed Captioning and subtitling (with the option of turning the subtitles on or off, or selecting subtitles in several languages). Moreover, a DVD can be played on a computer.
Due to these advantages, by the mid-2000s, DVDs were the dominant form of prerecorded video movies in both the rental film and new movie markets. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, though, consumers continued to use VCRs to record over-the-air TV shows, because consumers could not make home recordings onto DVDs. This last barrier to DVD domination was broken in the late 2000s, with the advent of inexpensive DVD recorders and other
digital video recorders (DVRs). DVR devices, which record shows onto a hard disk or flash storage, can be purchased from electronics stores or rented from cable or satellite TV providers. Despite the mainstream dominance of DVD, VHS continues to have a role. The conversion to DVD has led to the marketplace being flooded with used VHS films, which are available at pawnshops and second-hand stores, typically for a lower price than the equivalent film on a used DVD. As well, due to the large number of VHS players in schools and libraries, VHS tapes are still produced for the educational market. , at least one Public Library in the Detroit, Michigan area has discontinued lending out VHS prerecorded movies. In July 2016, the last known manufacturer of VCRs,
Funai
is a Japanese consumer electronics company headquartered in Daitō, Osaka. Apart from producing its own branded electronic products, it is also an OEM providing assembled televisions and video players/recorders to major corporations such as S ...
, announced that it was ceasing VCR production.
Consumer and prosumer camcorders
Early consumer
camcorders
A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swap ...
used full-size VHS or Betamax cassettes. Later models switched to more compact formats, designed explicitly for smaller camcorder use, like
VHS-C
VHS-C is the compact VHS videocassette format, introduced by Victor Company of Japan (JVC) in 1982, and used primarily for consumer-grade compact analog recording camcorders. The format is based on the same video tape as is used in VHS, and ...
and
Video8.
VHS-C
VHS-C is the compact VHS videocassette format, introduced by Victor Company of Japan (JVC) in 1982, and used primarily for consumer-grade compact analog recording camcorders. The format is based on the same video tape as is used in VHS, and ...
is a downsized version of VHS, using the same recording method and the same tape, but in a smaller cassette. It is possible to play VHS-C tapes in a regular VHS tape recorder by using an adapter. After Super VHS had appeared, a corresponding compact version, Super VHS-C, was released as well.
Video8 is an indirect descendant of Betamax, using narrower tape and a smaller cassette. Because of its narrower tape and technical differences, it is not possible to develop an adapter from Video8 to Betamax. Video8 was later developed into
Hi8, which provides better resolution similar to Super VHS.
The first consumer-level and lower-end professional (
prosumer) digital video recording format, introduced in 1995, used a smaller Digital Video Cassette (DVC).
The format was later renamed
MiniDV to reflect the
DV encoding scheme, but the tapes still carry "DVC" mark. Some later formats like
DVC Pro from Panasonic reflect the original name. The DVC/MiniDV format provides
broadcast-quality video and sophisticated nonlinear editing capability on consumer and some professional equipment and has been used on many films, like Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (2001, shot on a Canon XL1) and David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006, shot on a Sony PD170)
In 1999 Sony backported the DV recording scheme to 8-mm systems, creating
Digital8. By using the same cassettes as Hi8, many Digital8 camcorders were able to play analog Video8/Hi8 recordings, preserving compatibility with already recorded
analog video
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying
Copying is the duplication of information or an artifact based on an instance of that information or artifact, and not using the process that originally generated it. With analog f ...
tapes. , Digital8 camcorders have been removed from the equipment offered by Sony.
Sony introduced another camcorder cassette format called
MicroMV, but consumer interest was low due to the proprietary nature of the format and limited support for anything but low-end Windows video editors, and Sony shipped the last MicroMV unit in 2005.
In the late 2000s,
MiniDV and its high-definition cousin,
HDV
HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV cassette tape. The format was originally developed by JVC and supported by Sony, Canon, and Sharp. The four companies formed the HDV Consortium in September 2003.
Conceived as an af ...
, were the two most popular consumer/pro-sumer tape-based formats. The formats use different encoding methods, but the same cassette type. Since 2001, when MicroMV was presented, no new tape form factors have been introduced - with HDV (High Definition Video) offering consumers a bridge on HD video on MiniDV tape.
Future of tape
With advances in technology, videotape has moved past its original uses (original recording, editing, and broadcast playback) and is now primarily an archival medium.
The death of tape for video recording was predicted as early as 1995, when the Avid nonlinear editing system was demonstrated storing video clips on hard disks. Yet videotape was still used extensively, especially by consumers, up until about 2004, when DVD-based camcorders became affordable at consumer level and domestic computers had large enough hard drives to store an acceptable amount of video.
Consumer camcorders have switched from being tape-based to
tapeless machines that record video as computer files. Small hard disks and writable optical discs have been used, with solid-state memory such as
SD cards being the current market leader. There are two primary advantages: First, copying a tape recording onto a computer or other video machine occurs in real time (e.g. a ten-minute video would take ten minutes to copy); since tapeless camcorders record video as computer-ready data files, the files can simply be copied onto a computer. Second, tapeless camcorders, and those using solid-state memory in particular, are far simpler mechanically and so are more reliable.
Despite these conveniences, tape is still used extensively with filmmakers and television networks because of its longevity, low cost, and reliability. Master copies of visual content are often stored on tape for these reasons, particularly by users who cannot afford to move to tapeless machines. Professional users such as broadcast television were still using tape heavily in the mid- to late 2000s, but tapeless formats like
DVCPRO P2,
XDCAM and
AVCHD are gaining broader acceptance.
While live recording has migrated to solid state (Panasonic P2, Sony SR MASTER or XDCAM-EX), optical disc (Sony's XDCAM) and hard disks, the high cost of solid state and the limited shelf life of hard-disk drives make them less desirable for archival use, for which tape is still used. , some news and production camera crews still have cameras that use tape formats, even in HD.
Notes
References
External links
*
*
*
Tape Servicing
{{Video storage formats
American inventions
History of television
Tape
Audiovisual introductions in 1950