Videotape
Encyclopedia
Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
as opposed to film stock
Film stock
Film stock is photographic film on which filmmaking of motion pictures are shot and reproduced. The equivalent in television production is video tape.-1889–1899:...
or random access
Random access
In computer science, random access is the ability to access an element at an arbitrary position in a sequence in equal time, independent of sequence size. The position is arbitrary in the sense that it is unpredictable, thus the use of the term "random" in "random access"...
digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram. In most cases, a helical scan
Helical scan
Helical scan is a method of recording high bandwidth signals onto magnetic tape. It is used in reel-to-reel video tape recorders, video cassette recorders, digital audio tape recorders, and some computer tape drives....
video head rotates against the moving tape to record the data in two dimensions, because video signals have a very high bandwidth, and static heads would require extremely high tape speeds. Videotape is used in both video tape recorder
Video tape recorder
A video tape recorder is a tape recorder that can record video material, usually on a magnetic tape. VTRs originated as individual tape reels, serving as a replacement for motion picture film stock and making recording for television applications cheaper and quicker. An improved form included the...
s (VTRs) or, more commonly and more recently, videocassette recorder
Videocassette recorder
The videocassette recorder , is a type of electro-mechanical device that uses removable videocassettes that contain magnetic tape for recording analog audio and analog video from broadcast television so that the images and sound can be played back at a more convenient time...
(VCR) and camcorder
Camcorder
A camcorder is an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit. Equipment manufacturers do not seem to have strict guidelines for the term usage...
s. Tape is a linear method of storing information and, since nearly all video recordings made nowadays are digital direct to disk recording
Direct to Disk Recording
Direct-to-disk recording refers to methods by which analog signals and digital signals such as digital audio and digital video are digitally recorded to optical disc recording technologies such as DVDs, and CD optical discs...
, it is expected to gradually lose importance as non-linear/random-access methods of storing digital video data become more common.
Information stored can be in the form of either an analog signal
Analog signal
An analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...
or digital signal
Digital signal
A digital signal is a physical signal that is a representation of a sequence of discrete values , for example of an arbitrary bit stream, or of a digitized analog signal...
.
Early formats
The electronics division of entertainer Bing CrosbyBing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
's production company, Bing Crosby Enterprises (BCE), gave the world's first demonstration of a videotape recording in Los Angeles on November 11, 1951. Developed by John T. Mullin
Jack Mullin
John T. "Jack" Mullin was an American pioneer in the field of magnetic tape sound recording and made significant contributions to many other related fields. From his days at Santa Clara University to his death, he displayed a deep appreciation for classical music and an aptitude for electronics...
and Wayne R. Johnson since 1950, the device gave what were described as "blurred and indistinct" images, using a modified Ampex
Ampex
Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence...
200 tape recorder and standard quarter-inch (0.6 cm) audio tape moving at 360 inches (9.1 m) per second. A year later, an improved version, using one-inch (2.6 cm) magnetic tape, was shown to the press, who reportedly expressed amazement at the quality of the images, although they had a "persistent grainy quality that looked like a worn motion picture". Overall, the picture quality was still considered inferior to the best kinescope
Kinescope
Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor...
recordings on film. Bing Crosby Enterprises hoped to have a commercial version available in 1954, but none came forth. BCE demonstrated a color model in February 1955, using a longitudinal recording
Longitudinal Video Recording
Longitudinal Video Recording or LVR was a consumer VCR system and videotape standard.-Comparison with other VCR technologies:LVR differed from other VCR technologies in that instead of running a tape slowly past a pair of rapidly moving recording heads and laying the tracks obliquely across the...
on half-inch (1.3 cm) tape, essentially similar to what RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
had demonstrated in 1953 (see below). CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, RCA's competitor, was about to order BCE machines when Ampex introduced the superior Quadruplex system (see below).
RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
demonstrated the magnetic tape recording of both black-and-white and color television
Color television
Color television is part of the history of television, the technology of television and practices associated with television's transmission of moving images in color video....
programs at its Princeton
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
laboratories on December 1, 1953. The high-speed longitudinal tape system, called Simplex, in development since 1951, could record and play back only a few minutes of a television program
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
. The color system used half-inch (1.3 cm) tape to record five tracks — one each for red, blue, green, synchronization, and audio. The black-and-white system used quarter-inch (0.6 cm) tape with two tracks, one for analog video
Analog video
Analog video is a video signal transferred by an analog signal. An analog color video signal contains luminance, brightness and chrominance of an analog television image...
and one for sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
. Both systems ran at 360 inches (9.1 m) per second. RCA-owned NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
first used it on The Jonathan Winters Show on October 23, 1956, when a pre-recorded song sequence by Dorothy Collins
Dorothy Collins
Dorothy Collins was a Canadian/American singer, actress, and recording artist. She was born Marjorie Chandler in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and adopted her stage name in her mid-teens.-Radio and TV:...
in color was included in the otherwise live television
Live television
Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...
program. The BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
experimented from 1952 to 1958 with a high-speed linear videotape system called VERA
VERA videotape format
Vision electronic recording apparatus was an early analog recording videotape format developed from 1952 by the BBC under project manager Dr Peter Axon....
, but this was ultimately unfeasible. It used half-inch (1.27 cm) tape traveling at 200 inches (5.08 m) per second.
Quad
Broadcast quality
Broadcast Quality is an term stemming from quad videotape to denote the quality achieved by professional video cameras and time base correctors used for broadcast television, usually in standard definition...
videotape machines capable of replacing kinescopes were the two-inch quadruplex videotape machines introduced by Ampex
Ampex
Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence...
on April 14, 1956 at the National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Broadcasters
The National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association, workers union, and lobby group representing the interests of for-profit, over-the-air radio and television broadcasters in the United States...
convention in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. Quad employed a transverse (scanning the tape across its width) four-head system on a two-inch (5.08 cm) tape, and linear heads for the sound track.
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 City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to the Pacific Time Zone
Pacific Time Zone
The Pacific Time Zone observes standard time by subtracting eight hours from Coordinated Universal Time . The clock time in this zone is based on the mean solar time of the 120th meridian west of the Greenwich Observatory. During daylight saving time, its time offset is UTC-7.In the United States...
. On January 22, 1957, the NBC Television game show Truth or Consequences
Truth or Consequences
Truth or Consequences is an American quiz show originally hosted on NBC radio by Ralph Edwards and later on television by Edwards , Jack Bailey , Bob Barker , Bob Hilton and Larry Anderson . The television show ran on CBS, NBC and also in syndication...
, 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
An Evening With Fred Astaire
An Evening with Fred Astaire is a one-hour live television special starring Fred Astaire, broadcast on NBC on October 17, 1958. It was highly successful, winning nine Emmy awards and spawning three further specials, and technically innovative, as it was one of the first major television shows to be...
(1958), is the oldest surviving television network
Television network
A television network is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, whereby a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay TV providers. Until the mid-1980s, television programming in most countries of the world was dominated by a small...
color videotape, and has been restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive
UCLA Film and Television Archive
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is an internationally renowned visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. It holds more than 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of...
.
Although Quad became the industry standard for over 20 years, it had 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. Later machines had longer life and used delay lines to compensate for the differences in the four heads. Despite these problems, Quad could produce excellent images. Subsequent videotape systems have used helical scan, where the video heads record diagonal tracks (of complete fields) on to the tape.
Very few early videotapes still exist. While much less expensive and more convenient than kinescope, the high cost of 3M
3M
3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....
Scotch 179 and other early videotapes ($300 per one-hour reel) meant that most broadcasters erased and reused
Wiping
Wiping or junking is a colloquial term for action taken by radio and television production and broadcasting companies, in which old audiotapes, videotapes, and telerecordings , are erased, reused, or destroyed after several uses...
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.
Type C and Type B
The next format to gain widespread usage was the 1" (2.54 cm) Type C1 inch type C videotape
1 inch Type C is a professional reel-to-reel analog recording helical scan videotape format co-developed and introduced by Ampex and Sony in 1976...
format from 1976 onward. It introduced features such as shuttling and still framing, but the sound and picture reproduction attainable on the format were of just slightly lower quality than Quad (although 1" Type C's quality was still quite high). However, unlike 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
1 inch type B videotape
1 inch type B VTR is a reel-to-reel analog recording video tape format developed by the Bosch Fernseh division of Bosch in Germany in 1976...
. Type B machines (also known as BCN) used the same 1" tape as Type C but they lacked C's shuttle and slow-motion options. The picture quality was slightly better, though. Type B was the broadcast norm in continental Europe for most of the 1980s.
December 7, 1963 - Instant Replay is used for the first time during the live transmission of the Army Navy Game by its inventor, director, Tony Verna.
Cassette formats
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
introduced a prototype for the first widespread video cassette, the 3/4" (1.905 cm) composite
Composite video
Composite video is the format of an analog television signal before it is combined with a sound signal and modulated onto an RF carrier. In contrast to component video it contains all required video information, including colors in a single line-level signal...
U-matic
U-matic
U-matic is an analog recording videocassette format first shown by Sony in prototype in October 1969, and introduced to the market in September 1971. It was among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette, as opposed to the various Reel-to-Reel or open-reel formats of the...
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 1/2" (1.27 cm) component video
Component video
Component video is a video signal that has been split into two or more component channels. In popular use, it refers to a type of component analog video information that is transmitted or stored as three separate signals...
Betacam
Betacam
Betacam is 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....
family (introduced in 1982), which, in its digital variants, is still among the professional market leaders. Panasonic
Panasonic
Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...
had some limited success with its MII system, but never could compare to Betacam in terms of market share.
The next step was the digital
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
revolution. Among the first digital video formats Sony's D-1
D1 (Sony)
D-1 is an SMPTE digital recording video standard, introduced in 1986 through efforts by SMPTE engineering committees. It started as a Sony and Bosch - BTS product and was the first major professional digital video format.- Format :...
, which featured uncompressed digital component recording. Because D-1 was extremely expensive, the composite D-2
D2 (video format)
D-2 is a professional digital recording videocassette format created by Ampex and other manufacturers through a standards group of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and introduced at the 1988 NAB convention as a lower-cost alternative to the D-1 format...
and D-3
D3 video
D-3 is an uncompressed composite digital video videocassette format invented at NHK, and introduced commercially by Panasonic in 1991 to compete with Ampex's D-2. It uses half-inch metal particle tape at 83.88 mm/s . Like D-2, the video signal is sampled at four times the color subcarrier...
(by Sony and Panasonic, respectively) were introduced soon after. Ampex introduced the first compressed component recording with its DCT
DCT (videocassette format)
DCT is a digital recording component videocassette format developed and introduced by Ampex in 1992. It was based on the D1 format, and unlike the uncompressed recording scheme of D1, it was the first digital videotape format to utilize data compression...
series in 1992. Panasonic trumped D-1 with its D-5
D5 HD
D-5 is a professional digital video format introduced by Panasonic in 1994. Like Sony's D-1 , it is an uncompressed digital component system , but uses the same half-inch tapes as Panasonic's digital composite D-3 format...
format, which was uncompressed as well, but much more affordable.
The DV
DV
DV is a format for the digital recording and playing back of digital video. The DV codec was launched in 1995 with joint efforts of leading producers of video camcorders....
standard, which debuted in 1996, 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. However, due to concerns by the entertainment industry about the format's lack of copy protection
Copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy obstruction, copy prevention and copy restriction, refer to techniques used for preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons.- Terminology :Media corporations have always used the term...
, only the smaller MiniDV cassettes used with camcorders became commonplace, with the full-sized DV cassettes restricted entirely to professional applications.
For camcorders, Sony adapted the Betacam system with its Digital Betacam format, later following it up with the cheaper Betacam SX and MPEG IMX formats, and the semiprofessional DV
DV
DV is a format for the digital recording and playing back of digital video. The DV codec was launched in 1995 with joint efforts of leading producers of video camcorders....
-based DVCAM system. Panasonic used its DV
DV
DV is a format for the digital recording and playing back of digital video. The DV codec was launched in 1995 with joint efforts of leading producers of video camcorders....
variant DVCPRO for all professional cameras, with the higher-end format DVCPRO50 being a direct descendant. JVC
JVC
, usually referred to as JVC, is a Japanese international consumer and professional electronics corporation based in Yokohama, Japan which was founded in 1927...
developed the competing D9/Digital-S
Digital-S
D-9 or Digital S as it was originally known, is a professional digital video videocassette format created by JVC in 1995. It is a direct competitor to Digital Betacam. Its name was changed to D-9 in 1999 by the SMPTE...
format, which compresses video data in a way similar to DVCPRO but uses a cassette similar to S-VHS
S-VHS
S-VHS is an improved version of the VHS standard for consumer-level analog recording videocassettes. It was introduced by JVC in Japan in April 1987 with the HR-S7000 VCR and certain overseas markets soon afterwards...
media.
High definition
The introduction of HDTV video productionVideo production
Video production is videography, the process of capturing moving images on electronic media even streaming media. The term includes methods of production and post-production...
necessitated a medium for storing high-definition video
High-definition video
High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...
information. In 1997, Sony bumped its Betacam series up to HD with the HDCAM
HDCAM
HDCAM, introduced in 1997, is an High-definition video digital recording videocassette version of Digital Betacam, using an 8-bit DCT compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 1080i-compatible downsampled resolution of 1440×1080, and adding 24p and 23.976 PsF modes to later models...
standard and its higher-end cousin HDCAM SR. Panasonic's competing format for cameras was based on DVCPRO and called DVCPRO HD. For VTR and archive use, Panasonic expanded the D-5 specification to store compressed HD streams and called it D-5 HD
D5 HD
D-5 is a professional digital video format introduced by Panasonic in 1994. Like Sony's D-1 , it is an uncompressed digital component system , but uses the same half-inch tapes as Panasonic's digital composite D-3 format...
.
VCRs
Videocassette recorder
The videocassette recorder , is a type of electro-mechanical device that uses removable videocassettes that contain magnetic tape for recording analog audio and analog video from broadcast television so that the images and sound can be played back at a more convenient time...
s were launched in 1971 (based around U-matic
U-matic
U-matic is an analog recording videocassette format first shown by Sony in prototype in October 1969, and introduced to the market in September 1971. It was among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette, as opposed to the various Reel-to-Reel or open-reel formats of the...
technology). Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
entered the domestic market the following year with the N1500. Sony's Betamax
Betamax
Betamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...
(1975) and JVC's VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
(1976) created a mass-market for VCRs and the two competing systems battled the "videotape format war
Videotape format war
The videotape format war was a period of intense competition or "format war" of incompatible models of consumer-level analog video videocassette and video cassette recorders in the late 1970s and the 1980s.- Overview :...
", which VHS ultimately won. At first VCRs 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 theatre or having to wait until it was telecast. It also made it possible for a VCR owner to begin time shifting
Time shifting
Time shifting is the recording of programming to a storage medium to be viewed or listened to at a time more convenient to the consumer. Typically, this refers to TV programming but can also refer to radio shows via podcasts....
the recording of films and other television program
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
s "off the air". 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" in which a film could make money. In some cases, films that did only modestly in their theater releases went on to have strong performance in the rental market (e.g., cult films).
VHS has become the leading consumer format for home movies
Home movies
A home movie is part of the motion picture filmmaking process made by amateurs, often for viewing by family and friends. When the hobby began, home movies were produced on photographic film, but accessibility of video production with video cameras and low cost data storage devices has made the...
after the "videotape format war
Videotape format war
The videotape format war was a period of intense competition or "format war" of incompatible models of consumer-level analog video videocassette and video cassette recorders in the late 1970s and the 1980s.- Overview :...
", though its follow-ups S-VHS
S-VHS
S-VHS is an improved version of the VHS standard for consumer-level analog recording videocassettes. It was introduced by JVC in Japan in April 1987 with the HR-S7000 VCR and certain overseas markets soon afterwards...
, W-VHS
W-VHS
W-VHS is a HDTV 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 named MUSE....
and D-VHS
D-VHS
D-VHS is a digital recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for Data VHS, but with the expansion of the format from standard definition to high definition capability, JVC renamed it Digital VHS and uses that...
never caught up in popularity. In the late 1990s in the prerecorded video market, VHS began to be displaced by DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
. The DVD format had 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 magnetic field (such as by being left near a speaker), DVDs 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 than 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 (that 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 digital video recorder
Digital video recorder
A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...
s (DVR). DVR devices, which record shows onto a hard disk, 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 cheaper 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.
Camcorders
VHS-C
VHS-C is the compact VHS videocassette format introduced 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 can be played back in a standard VHS VCR with an adapter...
and Video8
8 mm video format
The 8mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats for the NTSC and PAL/SECAM television systems. These are the original Video8 format and its improved successor Hi8 , as well as a more recent digital recording format known as Digital8.Their user base...
. VHS-C
VHS-C
VHS-C is the compact VHS videocassette format introduced 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 can be played back in a standard VHS VCR with an adapter...
was a downsized version of VHS, using the same recording method and the same tape, but in a smaller cassette. It was possible to play VHS-C tapes in a regular VHS tape recorder by using an adaptor. After Super VHS had appeared, a corresponding compact version, Super VHS-C, was released as well. Video8 was an indirect descendant of Betamax, using narrower tape and a smaller cassette. Because of its intricate U-shaped tape loading and narrower tape, it was not possible to develop an adapter from Video8 to Betamax. Video8 was later replaced with Hi8, which provided better resolution and high-quality sound recording, and was similar to Super VHS-C.
The first consumer-level digital video recording format, introduced in 1995, used a smaller Digital Video Cassette (DVC). The format was later renamed MiniDV to reflect the DV
DV
DV is a format for the digital recording and playing back of digital video. The DV codec was launched in 1995 with joint efforts of leading producers of video camcorders....
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 provided near-broadcast quality
Broadcast quality
Broadcast Quality is an term stemming from quad videotape to denote the quality achieved by professional video cameras and time base correctors used for broadcast television, usually in standard definition...
video and sophisticated nonlinear editing capability on consumer equipment. In 1999 Sony backported the DV recording scheme to 8-mm systems, creating Digital8
Digital8
Digital8 is a consumer digital recording videocassette for camcorders based on the 8 mm video format developed by Sony, and introduced in 1999.The Digital8 format is a combination of the older Hi8 tape transport with the DV codec...
. 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
Analog video
Analog video is a video signal transferred by an analog signal. An analog color video signal contains luminance, brightness and chrominance of an analog television image...
tapes. As of 2008, Digital8 camcorders have been removed from the equipment offered by Sony.
Sony introduced another camcorder cassette format called MicroMV
MicroMV
MicroMV was a proprietary videotape format introduced in 2001 by Sony. This cassette is physically smaller than a Digital8 or DV cassette. In fact, MicroMV is the smallest videotape format — 70% smaller than MiniDV or about the size of two US quarter coins. Each cassette can hold up to 60 minutes...
, 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
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...
, are the two most popular consumer 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.
Future of tape
The latest trend in consumer camcorders shows the switch from tape-based camcorders to tapeless camcorderTapeless Camcorder
A tapeless camcorder is a camcorder that does not use video tape for the digital recording of video productions as 20th century ones did. Tapeless camcorders record video as digital computer files onto random access data storage devices such as optical discs, hard disk drives and solid-state flash...
solutions, like built-in hard disk drives, optical discs and solid-state memory. In particular, Canon have not introduced a completely new HDV
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...
consumer camcorder for a third year in a row, confining itself to minor modifications to the 2007 model. Sony and Panasonic have removed their consumer tape-based camcorders from the North American market completely. In professional video recording settings, such as broadcast television, videotape was still heavily used in the mid- to late 2000s, but tapeless formats like DVCPRO P2
P2 (storage media)
P2 is a professional digital recording solid-state memory storage media format introduced by Panasonic in 2004, and especially tailored to electronic news-gathering applications. It features tapeless recording of DV, DVCPRO, DVCPRO25, DVCPRO50, DVCPRO-HD, or AVC-Intra streams on a solid-state...
, XDCAM
XDCAM
XDCAM is a a series of products for digital recording using random access solid-state memory media, introduced by Sony in 2003. Four different product lines — the XDCAM SD, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX and XDCAM HD422 — differ in types of encoder used, frame size, container type and in...
and AVCHD
AVCHD
AVCHD is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video....
, are gaining broader acceptance.
External links
- The Loss of Early Video Recordings
- History of Recording Technology (WayBack Machine)
- History of Magnetic Tape (WayBack Machine)