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Video Recorders

Video Recorders or VCR, is a machine which uses a videotape cassette which contains a magnetic tape to record video and broadcasts from terrestrial and digital television. Until the introduction of DVD recorders they were the only way to record a certain channel at a particular time. For over twenty years from the late 1970s it was the only game in town if you wanted to record a TV broadcast. The VCR had first been born in the 1950's but only in the late 1970's did the technology become technically advanced enough to record accurately and for a good duration. Soon after the technology launched on the mass market a war was fought between two formats "JVC's VHS vs. Sony's Betamax". This lead to stores and rental services having separate selves for both formats. Experts expected Betamax to succeed over VHS because technically it was more sophisticated (somewhat like Sony's Blu-ray disks present day), but because VHS boasted a two-hour recording time compared to Betamax's initial one-hour recording time it won the war (VHS also boasted a cheaper price and was also more widely available). VCR's initially only came with mono sound which is the single band sound system and is still included with more basic video recorders. In the 1980's the Nicam sound system was introduced and this allowed the playback of programmes in crystal clear Nicam stereo sound, and meant a VCR could be connected to a stereo Hi-Fi system. Later in the 1990's Videoplus+ was introduced where a system allowed you to pre-program your machine to record TV programmes. Videoplus+ was included TV listing magazines and newspaper listings so every TV broadcast had a specific code number to input into your VCR to easily setup a pre-program recording. The picture quality of a VCR is decided by the amount of "heads" it has. Basic machines come with "Two heads", "Four heads" have improved picture quality and "Super VHS" has the ultimate quality a VCR can produce.