Talk:VHS

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Frequently asked questions

Why does this article insist that VHS stands for "Video Home System"? I've found several sources claiming the acronym stands for "Vertical Helical Scan".: While there are possibly several meanings for the acronym, JVC, the company that invented VHS, as well as the two chief engineers who worked on the project, have mentioned (see references in the main article) that "Video Home System" is the original interpretation. Literally etched in stone, a plaque commemorating the invention of VHS at JVC can be found mentioning "Video Home System" as the meaning at the entrance hall of of the VHS Commemorative Hall in the JVC Yokosuka Plant, 58-4, Shinmei-cho, Yokosuka, Kanagawa 239-8550, Japan. The hall is open to the public by appointment. The actual text is as follows:

“

At the Yokohama Plant of Victor Company of Japan, Limited, a team of engineers headed by Shizuo Takano and Yuma Shiraishi developed VHS (Video Home System) format. They looked ahead to the need for home video tape recorders and embodied their idea in unique inventions. The first model JVC HR-3300 was announced on 9 September 1976. Their basic design with subsequent improvement gained wide customer acceptance. VHS became the world standard for home video tape recorders.

”

Further evidence shows that JVC defined the VHS acronym as early as 1971, when the company published an internal document titled VHS Development Matrix; the VHS acronym was chosen even before key components and methods of the technology were chosen. Now that Google hosts the entire collection on Popular Science magazine - a prestigious technical source on-line, five different issues ranging between 1977 and 1984 reference VHS as "Video Home System" (same kind of search for "Vertical Helical Scan" came up with zero matches.)

Despite the documented evidence mentioned earlier, it appears that in later years, European pundits attempted to push "Vertical Helical Scan" as its meaning. Some say that this is how VHS records video. However, VHS' actual operation contradicts this belief, as VHS uses a slant azimuth recording method - a helical scan method that produces a diagonal video track, and not a vertical track which is impossible to do when the tape is moving past the tape head at a constant speed. Other pundits say that "Vertical Helical Scan" was the original meaning, and JVC changed the meaning later on. Again, the slant azimuth recording, M-loading, and many other aspects of VHS was already chosen during development of the Matrix. Despite these findings, many secondary sources stemming from European influence subscribe to the "vertical" meaning, even though no documented proof in the form of magazines or other academic material from the 1970s or 1980s have been presented. All sources citing this meaning can only be found on-line, all are dated post-2000, and none cite resources dating back to the 1970s/1980s.

Bottom line, when weighing the resources, the manufacturer, the chief engineers, as well as an overwhelming consensus of sources from both the East and West, "Video Home System" is what this article will use.

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Contradiction in audio recording section

The fifth paragraph under Original linear audio system seems to directly contradict the second. Specifically, the second paragraph starts with "Sound cannot be recorded on a VHS tape without recording a video signal, even in the audio dubbing mode", while the fifth says "High-end consumer recorders take advantage of the linear nature of the audio track, as the audio track could be erased and recorded without disturbing the video portion of the recorded signal."

Which is correct? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xjph (talk • contribs) 14:14, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe both... theoretically an audio signal can be present without a video signal, but the video signal serves for synchronization and determining the correct tape speed. If the audio gets replaced, the video signal is still there and used for synchronization, so this can be done without problems. While without a video signal, synchronization is problematic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.112.234.57 (talk) 07:41, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

PVR USB STABITLY FORMAT wants back the wiggles tv tapes usbs 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 pnp santa clauses people recorded tv on computers library s dvd burners ruined people computers should t be people computers to burn should be on the vhs players dvd combo burn programs usbs on dvd disc vhs broadcast should be instagram tik tok daily mail triple j wesbites now broadcast this day today digital now blue picture blue and white moving satelite lines pal antenna input to tape on blank vhs tapes now on dvd burn program vhs combos usb program disc neo burn vob — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.188.189.73 (talk) 18:57, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Home recording decline

In the decline section of the article, mainly pre-recorded tapes are given as the reason as they were replaced by DVD's. But VHS was also about home recording and time-shifting TV broadcasts, and this doesn't play a role in the article when it comes to VHS's decline. This would either have been replaced with hard disk or DVD recorders (were the latter ever used for home recording?) and then made obsolete by higher resolution TV standards incompatible with VHS (also fueled by flat TV's capable to display this higher resolution) and by digital libraries you can watch on demand so there is no need to record the TV broadcasts yourself. An indication for this replacement would be the sales of blank tapes and VHS recorders (which can really record, not only play back tapes), but as a non-insider I'm not sure when all of this happened and how the sales of blank tapes and recorders declined over time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.112.234.57 (talk) 07:41, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is actually rather strange that VHS and recordable DVDs managed to disappear without anything really replacing them. You just can't record TV like you used to. There are hard drive recorders, but your collection vanishes if you drop whatever service you were using. Algr (talk) 22:44, 20 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Home DVD recorders with an ATSC tuner were rare. I had one from before ATSC, and then later connected the video output of the converter box to it. That still works, but I don't do it so often. I also now have a box with ATSC tuner and HDMI output, and also composite, S-video, and component video output. I can feed that into the DVD recorder, usually with the S-video signal. More recently, I got an ATSC tuner that can record to a USB stick. These are very reasonably priced compared to DVD recorders or VHS recorders. It does seem that TiVo is a big reason for less interest in DVD recorders. Gah4 (talk) 21:17, 23 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

DVD recorders never really replaced VHS as they were never quite as user-friendly. And after the switchover to digital TV, you couldn't simply record directly with either device. At around the same time, satellite and cable TV companies (followed by suppliers of terrestrial TV decoders) were supplying set-top boxes with inbuilt recording capability, so having a standalone recorder wasn't a necessity. 2A02:C7C:C429:CF00:C0B1:9CC3:3D77:4618 (talk) 14:39, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Distribution Video Audio, Inc.

The article, "VHS era is winding down" was published December 2008 and not October. That is the reference of the sentence mentioning that company and mentioned in the "Modern Use" section. That is reference nine. Should we say it was December when the company stopped shipping VHS tapes to America? Never mind. I found the quote "On a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a Palm Harbor, Fla., warehouse run by Ryan J. Kugler, the last major supplier of the tapes.". This means it was a Palm Harbor, Fla. warehouse where the last batch of VHS tapes were shipped from. @Evope (talk) 21:03, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Picture of RCA Model CC-4371 In The Article

The picture in the article of the RCA Model CC-4371 says it is a full VHS model. That's not true, it's a VHS-C camcorder. The information for the actual image seems to be wrong, rather than just the caption on this page. I'm just an anon, but if someone could look into this, that would be great 193.42.0.140 (talk) 04:33, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]