Video Home System

The Video Home System (VHS) is the recording and playing standard for video cassette recorders (VCRs), developed by JVC and launched in 1976.

It became the standard in the 1980s after competing in a fierce format war with Sony's Betamax and, to a lesser extent, Philips's Video 2000.

The physical looks of a VHS cassette.

A VHS-cassette contains a long 1/2 inch magnetic tape which is wound from one of two spools to the other, allowing it to slowly pass by the reader head of the video cassette recorder.

Several improved versions of VHS exist, most notably S-VHS, an improved analog standard, and D-VHS, which records digital video onto a VHS form factor tape.

VHS-C tapes (C for compact) was used in camcorders and could be played back in a regular VHS player with an adapter. It was this development that hampered the sales of the Betamax system, because the Betamax cassette geometry prevented a similar development.

VHS tapes have approximately 3 MHz of bandwidth, and about 240 lines of resolution.[1]

Although VHS officially stands for Video Home System some early reports claimed that the initials originally stood for Victor (Company) Helical Scan system.