VHS

The Video Home System (better known by its abbreviation VHS) is a consumer-level analog recording videotape-based cassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan (JVC).

The 1970s was a period when video recording became a major contributor to the television industry. Like many other technological innovations, each of several companies made an attempt to produce a television recording standard that the majority of the world would embrace. At the peak of it all, the home video industry was caught up in a series of videotape format wars. Two of the formats, VHS and Betamax, received the most media exposure. VHS would eventually win the war of, and therefore succeed as the dominant home video format, lasting throughout the tape format period.

In later years, optical disc formats began to offer better quality than video tape. The earliest of these formats, Laserdisc, was not widely adopted, but the subsequent DVD format eventually did achieve mass acceptance and replaced VHS as the preferred method of distribution after 2000. By 2006, film studios in the United States had stopped releasing new movie titles in VHS format. On December 31, 2008, the last major United States supplier of pre-recorded VHS tapes, Distribution Video Audio Inc. of Palm Harbor, Florida, shipped its final truckload. As of 2012, most of the VHS tapes being produced are 6 and 8 hour (EP mode) blank tapes in NTSC countries, and 4 hour (SP mode) tapes in PAL countries.