Format war (video recorder)
The competition between competing video cassette systems of the late 1970s and early 1980s is referred to as format war or "video war" . At a time when home video cassette recorders had just developed into an industrial mass product, there were several mutually incompatible systems ( VHS , Betamax , Video 2000 ), of which the VHS format became established around the world around 1984 .
causes
In 1971 Grundig and Philips started the "video age" in the home with their VCR . The cassette used for this had a playing time of around an hour, two-channel sound and a so-called color-under-color recording . With the appearance of a Japanese three-hour system in 1976, the VCR cassette was technically overtaken, because it still ran for just over an hour, while the Japanese competing product VHS was able to record full-length films without interruption. The emerging competitive situation forced Philips and Grundig to further develop their VCR system at short notice. Several incompatible versions were created that ran for up to five hours with a very acceptable image quality, and in 1979 the successor system Video 2000 with a playing time of initially two four hours.
After only a short time, the following video formats competed: the European VCR system from Philips and Grundig in three mutually incompatible variants, the Japanese format VHS ('Video Home System') and another system called Betamax , introduced in 1975 by the Japanese company Sony . From 1979 Grundig and Philips switched completely to their new development Video 2000 and gave up VCR in the home sector. All corporations pursued different marketing concepts.
Marketing from JVC
All companies around the world who wanted to sell JVC- compatible video cassette recorders under their own name and who had neither patents nor production capacities for video recorders, merely stipulated their company layout and any special features with the supplier JVC. Then, for the time being, all devices, regardless of the licensee, were produced by JVC in Japan. JVC's system was called VHS and started in Europe in late 1976.
Marketing from Sony
The Sony company insisted that its partners set up their own production facilities in the respective sales country, which naturally created long production lead times. Then they were licensed to copy the Sony video system. This Betamax system was introduced in Europe in 1978.
Marketing from Grundig and Philips, the situation in Western Europe
Philips and Grundig were the real pioneers of home video systems. Their first VCR cassette system, introduced in 1971, initially offered a maximum running time of 65 minutes as an answer to the Japanese video format U-matic , which had made a similar running time per cassette available in 1968, but was intended exclusively for semi-professional applications such as school or industrial television.
In the home video sector, a long runtime plays a more important role than in the school or TV sector. They wanted to be able to save feature films or long entertainment programs in one go. It was not until 1977, shortly after the appearance of a three-hour recorder from Japan, the first VHS device from the Victor Company of Japan (JVC), that VCR reduced the tape speed (along with a few other design changes) and thus achieved a running time of a little more than two Hours per cassette.
Since the Japanese competitor JVC announced a video cassette with a running time of four hours in the same year, Grundig further developed the system on its own and without Philips and in 1978 created a third video system that was incompatible with the previous one and two hour VCR processes ( Super video recording, in short: SVR ). It ran for up to five hours. At the same time, mass production began. Grundig built a video recorder plant for this new super long-play VCR device in the Langwasser district of Nuremberg for more than 50 million DM.
Philips simultaneously reached the three-hour mark using a thinner strip material with the older two-hour system variant from 1977. The Grundig tapes could no longer be played on Philips devices. Buyers of the Grundig sets with the medium-long running time from 1977 were able to play their cassettes on the latest Philips sets, but no longer on the current Grundig SVR recorders with the very long running time.
The technical background: Grundig had developed a fully electronically controlled, new type of video drive in 1975 and was already using it successfully for both the one-hour and two-hour VCR versions. It was extremely expensive to manufacture and also suitable for the five-hour SVR system . The Philips drive was still - like all VHS devices of the time - completely mechanical. Only the drum rotation and the tape feed were electronically controlled. The low level of precision that can be achieved with it was not sufficient to enable an SVR device to be implemented at Philips.
The customers of the new medium reacted unsettled. Many turned away from Grundig and Philips and instead bought the aforementioned Japanese products from JVC and Sony. Many Grundig and Philips dealers who no longer understood the marketing concept of VCR Longplay and SVR advised this .
Instead of agreeing on one of the three variants with Grundig, from 1979 onwards, Philips and Grundig surprisingly offered a fourth format that was again incompatible with the previous three system variants, a conceptually different, new system. It was called Video 2000. Customers remained uncertain, especially in the important period of the emerging mass market for video devices.
Video 2000 acceptance problems
The rushed market launch of both the super long-play version of the VCR and shortly afterwards of the Video 2000 led Grundig to immature, unreliable devices. At Philips, the situation was only marginally better. The playing time of the new system was up to eight hours - after four hours the cassette was turned over and another four hours could be recorded.
In 1981 the VCR system was withdrawn from the market (apart from some professional equipment for special applications) and there was mainly competition between VHS, Video 2000 and Betamax.
An important point at this time was the availability of rental and purchase cassettes. Video stores geared their offer to the most common system. At that time it was already the VHS format. And as usual with new media, the sex and porn film industries were primarily represented here. Philips, according to some oral sources, did not allow distribution of pornography in the VCR or Video 2000 format.
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With a purchase price of at least DM 2200, - in view of the variety of systems, consumers were very uncertain in 1979 at the latest. In 1982 only VHS, Betamax and Video 2000 competed in the end consumer market. Contrary to other announcements, Grundig had taken the SVR system off the market in 1981 and released its first VHS recorder around the middle of 1984. The VHS market share grew steadily.
From the beginning, VHS had been consistently developed with the private user in mind and, in addition to comparatively inexpensive devices, offered reliable, simply designed devices. Many observers see this as the crucial point with which VHS was able to gain large market shares. Another underestimated aspect of Sony's VHS competitor Betamax was the power of the porn industry . While Sony (and thus Betamax) turned its back on the porn industry, the pornographic film appeared on VHS. Shortly afterwards, the first video stores opened that exclusively offered pornographic material on VHS cassettes.
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In 1986 VHS prevailed with a market share of 93%. Video 2000 still came to 4%, Betamax had dropped to 3%.
The situation in 1989: Video 2000 devices were no longer in production, the production stop was already three years ago. Sony still offered Betamax devices, but there was no longer any real group of buyers. The brand new devices were probably intended more for the large archives or for non-European countries, in which Betamax could acquire greater importance. Grundig and Philips only sold VHS video recorders.
The situation in 2012: VHS was still the world's leading analog video system. There were also new video cassettes and equipment to buy. Panasonic ceased recorder production this year. In contrast to the VCR and Video 2000 systems, Betamax cartridges were also available at least on special orders. When procuring video cassettes for the VCR and Video 2000 systems, one had to rely on remaining stock or second-hand goods. Mostly, however, even the old stocks that were still packaged showed major storage damage and could hardly be used.
The situation in 2015: Sony announced that it would stop selling Betamax video cassettes after 40 years in March 2016. The production of VHS cassettes has also already been discontinued; in the end, sales are limited to remaining stocks and clearings.
The last manufacturer of VHS recorders ( Funai ) stopped production in mid-2016 .
Market situation in 1980
Market shares
| system | Market share | providers |
|---|---|---|
| VHS recorder | 53% | JVC (system developer), Akai , Blaupunkt , Graetz , Hitachi , Mitsubishi , Panasonic , Nordmende , SABA (to Thomson ), Sharp and Telefunken . |
| Beta recorder | 23% | Sony (system developer), Fisher, NEC , Sanyo , Toshiba and Wega . |
| Video 2000 devices | 16% | Grundig and Philips (system developer), Bang & Olufsen , ITT , Ingelen , Körting , Loewe Opta , Metz and Siemens . |
| VCR recorder, SVR recorder | 8th % | Grundig and Philips (system developer), ITT and Siemens |
Prices
In 1980 an E240 VHS cassette, adjusted for inflation and converted, cost around 27 to 35 euros, an L195 Betamax cassette around 24 to 27 euros, and a VCR-VC60 cassette (65 min / 120 min / 240 min, depending on the system variant) around 30 to 38 euros and a Video 2000 cassette 31 to 40 euros.
Apart from that, cassettes with the stated playing times were not the usual sizes: E180 (180 min) was easily available for VHS, L500 (120 min) for Betamax, and the VC30 for VCR, which was also called SVC-2 (30 / 60/120 min) and the VCC 360 for the Video 2000 system with two 180 min.
In the case of video recorders, almost all sellers up until 1980 stuck to the retail prices recommended by the manufacturers. These were seldom less than 1,500 euros, usually far above.
Example from the Quelle winter catalog 1978/79
- Philips VCR video cassette recorder N 1700 Long Play with a VC 30: DM 2.898, -
- Single cassettes: VC 30 (30 or 65 minutes): 55 DM - VC 60 (60 or 130 minutes): 75 DM - VC 70 (70 or 150 minutes): 85 DM
- Akai VHS video cassette recorder VS-9300 : DM 2.989, -
- Single cassettes: E-60: 39 DM - E-120: 55 DM - E-180: 65 DM
Home video since 2000 - after another format war
The introduction of DVD in 1995 as a playback medium and, since 2000, increasingly also as a recording medium for private users, gradually began to largely displace analog tape-based video devices. However, many users wanted to continue using their analog recordings, which is why they kept their recorders and created a certain demand for new devices. Most recently, combination devices were developed that combined a VHS drive and a DVD recorder, with which simple, mostly automated copying (transferring) from video cassettes to DVD was possible. In 2002, DVD accounted for 55.4 percent of 64 million image carriers sold (according to the Federal Audiovisual Media Association ). In 2003 the Blu-ray Disc came onto the market. In 2006, “A History of Violence” was the last major Hollywood film ever to be released on VHS cassette.
In July 2016, the last manufacturer of VHS recorders finally stopped production due to a lack of supplied parts, after 750,000 units had been manufactured annually and mostly sold to North America.
The battle for market share between the formats , which VHS ultimately won, was repeated in a similar form from around 2005 as a competition between HD DVD , VMD and Blu-ray Disc, all of which were developed as the successor to DVD. This "war" was decided by Blu-ray through the withdrawal of the film rights owners (film studios) from the competitive formats or the abandonment of the competitors, the other two formats disappeared completely from the market.
Web links
- Kay Hoffmann: At the end of the video - at the end of the video? Aspects of the electronization of feature film production (PDF; 2.3 MB). On: mediaculture-online.de, Berlin 1990
- Friedrich Sambs: The VHS story . On: Magnetbandmuseum.info, 2012
- Friedrich Sambs: The VCR Story . On: Magnetbandmuseum.info, 2009.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Guardian, January 25, 2003, Why VHS was better than Betamax , accessed May 21, 2020.
- ↑ a b bild.de/digital from July 29, 2016, production stopped - last VHS recorder ... , accessed on May 13, 2020.
- ↑ n-tv.de/wirtschaft July 22, 2016, Nobody builds more video recorders, accessed on May 13, 2020.
- ↑ Rest in Peace, Betamax videotape. November 10, 2015, accessed November 10, 2015 .
- ↑ The last of their kind: VHS cassettes are no longer produced. July 3, 2015, accessed November 10, 2015 .
- ↑ vinett-video Mediaservice GbR: Overview and history of video formats. Retrieved February 22, 2018 .
- ↑ spiegel.de of July 22, 2016, last manufacturer of video recorders discontinues production , accessed on May 13, 2020.
- ↑ spiegel.de from September 15, 2015, What happened to the DVD? , accessed on May 19, 2020.
- ↑ The last video recorder: "We would have liked to continue producing". In: Spiegel Online . July 25, 2016. Retrieved June 9, 2018 .