The development of practical domestic video recorders was one of the greatest achievements of the electronics industry in the second half of the twentieth century. Despite being at one time commonplace, the technical challenges involved in recording pictures on magnetic tape were formidable – the precision and accuracy required go way beyond anything found in hi-fi.

Although studio machines had existed since the late nineteen fifties, the first video recorder offered at a price appropriate for the domestic user did not appear until 1965. This, the Wesgrove VKR500, cost about £100 in UK money, as a kit of parts, or half as much again fully assembled. It used fixed heads and a very high linear tape speed of up to 120 inches per second (i.p.s.) to generate the 2MHz of bandwidth required to satisfactorily record the 405 line monochrome British TV pictures of the day. The downside to this arrangement was a very short recording and playback time; running the tape at lower speeds helped, but picture quality suffered.

The answer was to use rotating heads to scan a slowly moving tape at a sufficiently high speed. Philips and Sony had semi-professional models available using this technology just before the VKR500 appeared, but these were considerably more expensive. For example, the Philips EL3400 could record for up to 45 minutes on its 1-inch wide tape but cost nearly ten times as much. Unusually for a video machine, this model used valves for the bulk of its circuitry, but it was the coming of cheap and compact transistorised assemblies that helped push video recorders into the home.

A selection of video cassette formats, from left to right: JVC VHS (back) and VHS-C (front). Philips VCR (back) and Video 2000 (front). Sony Betamax (back) and Video 8 (front).

The next big step forward came from Sony's CV-2000, launched in August 1965. This open-reel model was little larger than a high-quality audio machine and cost around three times as much as the Wesgrove. It was the first practical domestic video recorder, although still far from straightforward to use. It had no built-in TV tuner, so to record programmes, a separate signal source was required. Sony offered an adapted 9" receiver/monitor for the purpose, or the user could buy a simple video camera for around £125. Pictures could only be shown on a video monitor, although an RF modulator that allowed connection to a standard TV set was available at extra cost.

The British version of the CV-2000 recorded pictures in the 405 line standard, but the follow-up CV-2100 was built to work with the new 625 line programmes, although only in black and white. This Sony and its successors became popular in the industrial and educational sectors and remained on the market well into the nineteen seventies. They weren't really intended for time-shifting TV programmes. Instead, they represented an alternative to film formats like Super 8. The hardware cost a lot more and was considerably bulkier, but recordings could be viewed instantly on location since darkroom processing was not required, and the tapes could be reused many times. The ability to show the recordings anywhere there was a TV set was a major advantage!

SMART LOADING

Philips N 1500: The first video cassette recorder.

The audio market had already shown that interest in tape-recording increased dramatically when simple cassette loading was offered. Philips invented the audio Compact Cassette format back in 1963, so it had a head start in video. Around the same time as RCA announced its doomed 'Selectavision' system, the Dutch electronics giant premiered its N1500 video cassette recorder.

This one machine included all the technical refinements necessary to make video a compelling proposition for the home user. It used cassettes that had either a 30 minute or a 60-minute running time and could record in colour directly from the owner's existing TV aerial. Pictures could be shown on an unmodified TV set, and a built-in timer allowed unattended recordings to be made. It was also possible to watch one programme while recording another.

Offered to professional users in 1972 and to the domestic market in 1974, the N1500 defined what a video recorder should be. It was a true masterpiece and was cleverly priced at the same level as a quality colour TV set, around £400 in the UK. To obtain what was then a long playback time, a lot of tape was needed, and this was accommodated in a reasonably small cassette by stacking the spools one on top of the other. The format was simply called 'VCR' (Video Cassette Recording) and was later adapted to have slightly more than double the playback time by an ingenious refinement of the head design. This was later to become universal in all video cassette recorders.

The new long play model was called the N1700 and was not compatible with the N1500 series machines, although the same cassettes were used. To further complicate matters, Grundig also released video recorders based on the VCR type cassette, but some used a different (and incompatible) recording method called SVR (Super Video Recording). Despite giving excellent results, the SVR machines were not a great commercial success.

Meanwhile Sony had developed its open-reel recorders into a cassette format, which it called U-Matic. These machines could record in colour just like those of Philips, although most were intended for business use rather than home. U-Matic cassettes used spools that were flanged in such a way that as the tape emptied from one, it took up the same space as it wound onto the other. This kept the cassette size down, and U-Matic remained popular for decades as a professional and broadcast format, as its technology and performance gradually improved.

Sony SLV-401: an early Sony VHS recorder using Hitachi mechanicals (1988).

DOMESTIC BLISS

Sony's key domestic format was Betamax, offered first in 1975 in the USA and Japan before its European release. UK sales of Betamax started in 1978 with the SL-8000, a machine akin to a slightly shrunken U-Matic. Sanyo also marketed a similar model, the VTC-9300. Despite its bulk and quality build, the VTC-9300 was for a time the cheapest video recorder on the UK market and sold well. The SL-8000 and the follow-up SL-8080 were basic, but 1979 saw a jump ahead in technology in the form of the SL-C7. Smaller but technically dense, the C7 introduced a multi-event microprocessor-controlled timer and the ability to scan through the tape at high speed with clear colour pictures on the screen.

JVC's VHS (Video Home System) appeared a year or so after Betamax, in 1979. The company's association with the vast Matsushita organisation gave it the technical and financial resources to develop an excellent system that combined high performance and low running costs. The longest tape lengths played for 3 hours, and the initial machine, the HR-3300, was compact, attractive, and easy to use. Part of the problem with the Beta machines was that Sony had insisted that the picture should appear instantly as soon as the play key was pressed. This required that the tape be laced around the head drum at all times, causing needless head wear during fast forward and rewind. Sanyo produced one Beta model, the VTC-5000, which did not do this, but all the Sonys did and so required frequent (and expensive) head replacements as a result. '

B&O Beocord VHS90: the first VHS hi-fi deck from B&O, built by Hitachi (1986)

Such an arrangement was not part of the VHS system, making the recorders that used it tough and reliable. Supporters of the Beta system claimed that it offered superior picture quality, but the difference was marginal in practice. By the early eighties, the top VHS models, such as the Panasonic NV-7200, could equal the best of what the Beta camp had to offer. Soon all of Japan's large manufacturers had backed VHS, despite pressure from Sony. JVC, Panasonic, Sharp, Hitachi, Akai and Mitsubishi turned out a bewildering array of VHS equipment, leaving Beta to Sony, Sanyo, Toshiba and NEC. In a clever move, even Sanyo began to abandon Beta prematurely by offering a range of VHS machines under its Fisher sub-brand. In the UK, TV market leader Ferguson bought rebadged JVC recorders to sell as its highly successful 'Videostar' line, starting in the Christmas of 1979.

Philips responded with its last word in video, the V2000 format. Introduced in 1980, the debut machine was the futuristic VR2020. Fully computer-controlled, the VR2020 showcased some astounding technologies. A technique called 'Dynamic Track Following' (DTF) doubled the usable information density of the tape, allowing for the first time a flip-over cassette to be used. This increased the maximum recording time to 8 hours in two 4 hour sides. Dynamic Track following worked using extra signals recorded onto the tape, which the head tips, which were suspended on flexible piezoelectric elements, could precisely follow. Later models also offered still picture and slow-motion modes almost up to broadcast machine standards, but V2000 came too late and failed in the marketplace.

Philips gave up in 1985 and began to produce VHS models with Matsushita. One was a pure Japanese design based on the Panasonic NV-370. Another used a Panasonic deck and Philips electronics. The VR 6560 was pure Philips, styled identically to the last V2000 models. Sony too gave up the struggle with Betamax a few years later, introducing VHS machines with decks from Sanyo and Hitachi before finally designing its own, first seen in models like the excellent SLV-715. As well as supplying mechanisms to Sony, Hitachi became the preferred supplier of custom-designed video recorders to B&O, which had previously been tied to Philips and V2000. By the end of the nineteen eighties, the format war for full-sized recorders was over, and VHS had won.

Philips VR 6560: Latecomers to VHS, the first all-Philips VHS machine (1984)

IMPROVING THE BREED

As the picture performance of video recorders improved, it became clear that sound quality was now the poor relation. Narrow tracks and low tape speeds combined to restrict the available quality to something which was really only suitable for speech programmes. Against these tight limitations, the designers found a way to record high-quality sound alongside the picture but 'deeper' onto the tape's magnetic coating using frequency modulation techniques. This, at a stroke, gave video recorders proper 'hi-fi' sound, stereo capability and a frequency response covering the complete audio spectrum. Hi-fi sound appeared on the Betamax system first, featuring on models such as the Sony SL-HF100. Similar facilities soon became a part of VHS, too, with Panasonic's NV-830 being one of the best early VHS hi-fi recorders available.

Although the primary use of video recorders was taping TV programmes and watching rented films, an interest in making' home movies' with a camera remained. To begin with, the layout of an over-the-shoulder portable recorder with a separate camera was the only practical one, but by the mid-eighties, the first camcorders began to appear. The launch models from market leaders Sony and Panasonic used standard-sized cassettes, but it soon became apparent that a useful reduction in size could be achieved with a smaller cassette. Sony's Video 8 format, named after the 8mm wide tape it used, reached fruition at the same time as the tiny charge-couple device (CCD) image sensor.

Sony AV-3420 and CCD-V8: A decade and a half of progress; Sony CCD-M8 palm-sized camcorder (1985) in front of a Sony AV-3420 open reel portable monochrome VTR (1971).

These two innovations made possible the first palm-sized camcorder, Sony's CCD-M8 of 1985. As one of the new models which launched the V8 format, it was an incredible piece of work. V8 combined all the best aspects of the formats which proceeded it, along with some new technology which had not been seen before. A development of the DTF system from V2000 was used, known as ATF (Automatic Track Finding). It used similar principles to guide the heads, but instead of piezoelectric crystals, Sony steered the heads by adjusting the tape speed in minute increments. FM sound recording gave bright, noise-free results despite the low tape speed, and advanced tape formulations were used to give 3 hours of recording time from a cassette scarcely larger than the standard audio type. A facility for digital sound was designed in from the start, making low-cost home digital audio recording a practical proposition for the first time.

JVC responded with VHS-C, a compact version of VHS that used the same tape width and track format. This allowed VHS-C cassettes to be played in any standard VHS machine using a simple mechanical adaptor. The recently developed VHS LP (Long Play) format gave the shrunken VHS-C cassette a playing time of up to 90 minutes.

THE VERDICT

Videocassette machines showed what was possible with highly developed analogue electronics and precision-engineered mechanisms. Some models are now on the verge of collector status, with high prices being paid for mint and fully working examples. Head and mechanical wear are the key enemies of any video recorder, with little chance that new replacement parts will ever be available. Against this, the quantity of machines which were sold was truly vast, so with care, it is still just about possible to restore and maintain most models.

Videotape recorders went from being niche professional broadcast equipment to the ultimate, ultra-desirable consumer product, and then slowly to an object of derision to those who think newer is always better. Years from now, people will marvel at the ingenuity that electronics designers showed, at a time when complex mechanical analogue solutions were needed to deliver functionality that we now use smartphones for, without a second thought. We will never see its like in our homes again.

As streaming boxes and hard disk recorders go out of date and become obsolete and unsupportable, no doubt there will still be a video cassette being played somewhere, on one of the most finely engineered objects it was ever possible to own. 

Want more? Head on over to Part Two now!

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