Video Home System Compact
| Video Home System Compact | |
|---|---|
|
|
|
|
| Bandwidth: | 12.7 mm (½ ") |
| Colour: | Subcarrier |
| Volume: | Longitudinal track,
HiFi on a helical track |
| Running time: | SP: 30-60 minutes (PAL)
30-45 minutes (NTSC). Double barrel length in LP mode |
| Introduction: | 1983 |
Video Home System Compact ( VHS-C ) is a smaller cassette format for the VHS . It was developed by JVC in order to be able to build smaller camcorders because the conventional cassette format was too bulky for it. The new video tape format was introduced in 1983 along with the first JVC camcorder. The magnetic tape is like a conventional VHS tape 12.7 mm wide, with a mechanical adapters fit the VHS-C tapes in normal VHS VCR. Analogous to the S-VHS , there is also S-VHS-C in the same design, but with the higher quality magnetic tape suitable for S-VHS recordings.
Cassette size
A VHS-C cassette is narrower than a conventional audio cassette , about the same height and twice as thick. In terms of volume, the VHS-C cassette takes up about a quarter (28 percent) of a VHS cassette.
Procedure
The procedure and the technical data correspond to those of VHS and S-VHS.
application
The VHS-C was mainly used in simpler, inexpensive camcorders for home use and quickly became very popular. For many years, VHS-C and the competitive Video 8 format were the only affordable camcorder formats for home use.
With the introduction of Hi8 and digital camcorder systems such as DV , VHS-C has gradually been pushed out of the market and is now only a shadowy existence. VHS-C cassettes are currently still available, but VHS-C camcorders have hardly been offered for a number of years.