Many technologies and just things in our world appeared under, to put it mildly, strange circumstances. Other things have gained popularity under strange circumstances. In this article, we will give an example of how adult films were able to influence not only society, but also the standards that have been entrenched in our homes for decades. It sounds a little strange, but everyone who lived in the eighties and nineties of the last century enjoyed the fruits of this influence in their lives. Intrigue?
Information carriers
First of all, it is worth remembering the main consumer media. It is hardly worth remembering paper, papyrus and birch bark, since the massive accumulation of information has gone literally in the last couple of decades. Here and there you can find statistics showing that over the past 5 years (under other data from 5 to 15 years) we have generated such an amount of information that exceeds everything that has been accumulated before us in the entire history of mankind.
First of all, this became possible due to the greater availability of memory in the wide market and the endless photos of cats that take this memory. And what did you want - pictures, too, content, like books that were written by ancient thinkers.
The most popular and widespread types of media used over the past 40 years are the following:
- 5.25-inch floppy disks
- 3.5-inch floppy disks
- CDs
- DVDs
- audio cassettes
- Betamax cassettes
- VHS cassettes
If you have not yet guessed what will be discussed, I will tell you. Today we will talk about VHS cassettes.
There were times when we chose what to see not on Kinopoisk, but on such shelves.
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What is VHS?
The VHS cassette format was introduced by the renowned electronics manufacturer JVC in the mid 70s of the last century. You can even say that it marked the transition to a real unification of formats, since before that each manufacturer offered what he himself considered necessary. JVC with its VHS has become a serious competitor to the Betamax formats from Sony and Video 2000 from Grundig and Philips.
VHS cassettes were based on tape 0.5 inches (12.65 mm) wide and from 170 to almost 500 meters long. All this was packed in a plastic case with dimensions of 188 × 104 × 25 mm. The speed of the tape movement along the head of the tape recorder was 3.335 cm / s for the 525/60 standard (NTSC, PAL-M)
The largest cassettes could fit a full 5 hours of video in a 576i. They were labeled E-300. In addition, there were variants E-120, E-180, E-195 and E-240, which contained the corresponding number of minutes of recording. At the same time, the E-195 cassettes were offered as an extended version of the E-180 cassettes, which made it possible to record a guaranteed film with advertising. By the way, they were the most popular.
To read the tape in the tape recorder, a special design of the mechanism was provided. When the cassette was placed, the coils were unlocked, allowing them to rotate freely, and the film was passed through a system of rollers and the head itself with a diameter of 62 mm. The tape drive design was called M-shaped and was simpler than the U-shaped in Betamax cassettes.
The difference between VHS and Betamax
Now we will not go into the details of the differences between these two types of cassettes, just note the main ones that allowed these media to compete with each other.
In fact, Betamax cassettes provide higher quality video recordings, but they are more complex and expensive. If this difference can still somehow be leveled, then the differences in recording technology will not allow VHS to compete with Betamax in terms of video replication. The fact is that the latter use the technology of separate recording of luminance and chrominance tracks, allowing replication of Betamax cassettes with significantly lower losses.
It would seem that in the war of these two formats, all the advantages are on the side of Betamax cassettes, which should have allowed Sony to gain a foothold in this field. But the Japanese had one small miscalculation. Or maybe it was intended.
The secret to VHS popularity
Oddly enough, the main reason for the popularity of VHS tapes is that the creators of other formats adhered to strict licensing restrictions and did not agree to support porn studios. It was the second factor that had a great influence on the spread of the VHS format, which lasted until the mid-2000s, when it was replaced by DVDs. In 2003 alone, the number of films released on DVD exceeded the number of films released on VHS. And the last work, officially released on such cassettes, in 2006 was the film "Justified Cruelty" by David Cronenberg.
The last film to be released on VHS.
The ability to buy the fruits of the porn industry and the subsequent emergence of video recorders for VHS tapes made this format a real hit, despite its many disadvantages. Already in 1985, signs of a clear dominance of VHS over Betamax were recorded.
According to various estimates of experts, for the entire existence of the format in the world, about 900 million players for VHS cassettes have been sold. By the way, the last VCR was released by Funai in 2016. That is, quite recently.
In addition to the usual VHS, there were also compact VHS-Cs. The photo shows an adapter from VHS-C to VHS.
Surely even our youngest readers have come across this format. This once again speaks of the speed of technology spread in recent years. Literally fifteen years ago, VHS could be easily found on sale, but now they look so outdated that the words "dinosaur" and "prehistoric" pop up in my head. It's only the beginning. Soon, today's 4K formats will also be viewed from a purely historical perspective.
Artem Sutyagin