The videocassette recorder (or VCR, less popularly video tape recorder) is a type of video tape recorder that uses removable cassettes containing magnetic tape to record audio and video from a television broadcast so it can be played back later. Many VCRs have their own tuner and can be programmed to record the signal on a particular channel during a particular time interval. Celebrate the Century - 1970s - VCR Transforms Entertainment - Video Cassette Recorder This image is a postage stamp produced by the United States Postal Service after 1978. ... A video tape recorder (VTR), is a tape recorder that can record video material. ... Magnetic tape is an information storage medium consisting of a magnetisable coating on a thin plastic strip. ... Audio can mean: sound that can be heard electronics or other signals of frequencies audible to humans (about 20--20,000 Hz) broadcasting or reception of sound high-fidelity sound reproduction sound recording and reproduction in general I hear in Latin This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which... Video is the technology of processing electronic signals representing moving pictures. ... A tuner is a device to adjust the resonant frequency of an antenna or transmission line to work most efficiently at one frequency or band of frequencies. ...

Later model VCRs can record and play tapes both in Short Play (SP) format and in Long Play (LP) format. LP format increases the available recording time, at the loss of some signal quality. Some can even record/play in the Extra Long Play (EP, ELP, or SLP) format, which slows down the tape speed to about one third of SP.

History

Before the advent of the VCR proper, reel-to-reel VTRs were marketed by Sony, Ampex, RCA, Philips, and others. Most of these did not have timers, and were mainly used by schools and colleges to record educational programmes, and by businesses as a means of distributing training films. Even earlier, in the 1950s, British enthusiasts could buy home kinescope kits which allowed the filming of TV shows on 16mm film. Sony Corporation (Japanese katakana: ソニー) (TYO: 6758), (NYSE: SNE) is a global consumer electronics corporation based in Tokyo, Japan. ... Ampex is based in Redwood City, California. ... RCA, formerly an initialism for the Radio Corporation of America, is now a trademark used by two companies for products descended from that common ancestor: Thomson Consumer Electronics, which manufactures RCA-branded televisions, DVD players, video cassette recorders, direct broadcast satellite decoders, camcorders, audio equipment, telephones, and related accessories; and... Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Royal Dutch Philips Electronics Ltd. ... Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium Events and trends Technology United States tests the first fusion bomb. ... The term kinescope originally referred to a type of early television picture tube. ... (Redirected from 16mm film) 16mm film was initially created in the 1920s as an inexpensive amateur alternative to the conventional 35 mm film format. ...

In 1958, Ampex took its color video tape recorder to Russia and demonstrated it before Vice President Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the USSR. A color video recording was brought back to the US and seen on American television. RCA also had taken color television equipment and cameras to the USSR. 1958 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Ampex is based in Redwood City, California. ... Order: 37th President Vice President: Spiro Agnew (1969–1973), Gerald R. Ford (1973–1974) Term of office: January 20, 1969 – August 9, 1974 Preceded by: Lyndon B. Johnson Succeeded by: Gerald R. Ford Date of birth: January 9, 1913 Place of birth: Yorba Linda, California Date of death: April 22... Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchyof (Khrushchev) (Russian: Ники́та Серге́евич Хрущёв  listen, April 17, 1894 – September 11, 1971) was the leader of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin. ... RCA, formerly an initialism for the Radio Corporation of America, is now a trademark used by two companies for products descended from that common ancestor: Thomson Consumer Electronics, which manufactures RCA-branded televisions, DVD players, video cassette recorders, direct broadcast satellite decoders, camcorders, audio equipment, telephones, and related accessories; and...

In the early 1970s the Dutch electronics company Philips developed a format called "VCC" (Video Compact Cassette, also known as both the "VCR" and the N1500 format, after its model number) that used square cassettes with a recording time of one hour. The machines were equipped with crude timers that used rotary dials. The machines were expensive and the system never caught on. Events and trends Although in the United States and in many other Western societies the 1970s are often seen as a period of transition between the turbulent 1960s and the more conservative 1980s and 1990s, many of the trends that are associated widely with the Sixties, from the Sexual Revolution... Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Royal Dutch Philips Electronics Ltd. ... The Philips Video Compact Cassette (VCC) was the first practical home video cassette recorder system. ...

It was not until the late 1970s, when European and Japanese companies developed more technically advanced machines with more accurate electronic timers and greater tape duration, that the VCR started to become a mass market consumer product. By 1980 there were three competing technical standards, with different, physically incompatible tape cassettes. 1980 is a leap year starting on Tuesday. ...

One, the Video 2000 or V2000 system, also from Philips dropped out of the running quite quickly. It worked well, and gave a good quality recording and playback, as it used piezoelectric head positioning to dynamically adjust the tape tracking. It was also notable in that its cassettes had two sides, like a record or audio cassette. However, V2000 hit the market after the other two rivals, and managed only limited sales in Europe before vanishing. Video 2000 (V2000) was a video recording standard developed by Philips and Grundig as a competing format to VHS and Betamax. ... Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Royal Dutch Philips Electronics Ltd. ... Piezoelectricity is the ability of certain crystals to produce a voltage when subjected to mechanical stress. ... World map showing location of Europe A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ...

The two major standards were Sony's Betamax (also known as Betacord or just Beta), and JVC's VHS. Betamax was generally reckoned to make and play slightly better quality recordings and used smaller media, but VHS rapidly overtook it in sales. Image of Video Home System cassette. ... © 2004 by Tomasz Sienicki, tsca#sdf. ... Sony Corporation (Japanese katakana: ソニー) (TYO: 6758), (NYSE: SNE) is a global consumer electronics corporation based in Tokyo, Japan. ... Sonys Betamax is the 12. ... Victor Company of Japan, or (Japan Victor Company) JVC, is a large international corporation headquartered in Yokohama, Japan, which produces audio, video, and consumer electronics products. ... Top view VHS cassette with US Quarter for scale Bottom view of VHS cassette with magnetic tape exposed The Video Home System, better known by its acronym VHS, is a recording and playing standard for video cassette recorders (VCRs), developed by JVC (ironically, with some of its critical technology under...

As more VHS recorders came into use, and more VHS films became available, network effects eventually squeezed Betamax out of the consumer market, though a related system called Betacam still remains in use for high quality professional recording equipment. The network effect causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer dependent on the number of customers already owning that good or using that service. ... Betacam and VHS size comparison Betacam SP L, Betacam SP S, VHS Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videotape formats developed by Sony from 1982 onwards. ...

Various reasons are given for the failure of the Beta consumer format:

• Some accounts claim that VHS won because it initially allowed for twice the recording time

• Others attribute the success of VHS to the greater availability of pornography on that medium, reflecting the long standing tradition of pornography being the driving force for the takeup of new media (the Internet being another obvious example).

• JVC and Sony used different marketing models for their technology: JVC licensed their VHS technology to consumer electronics companies like Zenith and RCA, which then produced low-cost VCRs, enriching JVC through royalties paid under its license. Fewer companies were licensed to produce Beta machines.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DVD gradually overtook the VCR as the most popular format for playback of prerecorded video. DVD Video Recorders and Digital video recorders such as TiVo have recently begun to drop in price in developed countries, signaling the end is near for VCRs in those markets. Pornography (from Greek πορνογραφια pornographia — literally writing about or drawings of harlots) is the representation of the human body or human sexual behaviour with the goal of sexual arousal, similar to, but (according to some) distinct from, erotica. ... Categories: Corporation stubs | Consumer electronics | Electronics companies of the United States | Electronics companies ... RCA, formerly an initialism for the Radio Corporation of America, is now a trademark used by two companies for products descended from that common ancestor: Thomson Consumer Electronics, which manufactures RCA-branded televisions, DVD players, video cassette recorders, direct broadcast satellite decoders, camcorders, audio equipment, telephones, and related accessories; and... A license or licence is a document or agreement giving permission to do something. ... Events and trends Technology The World Wide Web was born at CERN Explosive growth of the Internet; decrease in the cost of computers and other technology Reduction in size and cost of mobile phones leads to a massive surge in their popularity Year 2000 problem (commonly known as Y2K) Microsoft... Major controversy over U.S. presidential election, 2000 September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack on New Yorks World Trade Center and Virginias Pentagon killing over 3000 people. ... DVD is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for storing data, including movies with high video and sound quality. ... DVD is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for storing data, including movies with high video and sound quality. ... The personal video recorder (PVR), also called digital video recorder (DVR), is a consumer electronics device that records television shows to a hard disk in digital format. ... The TiVo personal video recorder is a consumer video component allowing users to capture television programming to internal hard drive storage. ...

In November 2004, Dixons, the largest electrical retailer in Britain, announced that it was to phase out sales of VCRs entirely. 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Dixons Group plc is a United Kingdom-based consumer electronics retailer. ...

Piracy protection

Macrovision is a system that reduces the quality of recordings made from commercial video tapes, DVDs and pay-per-view broadcasts by adding random peaks of luminance to the video signal during vertical sync. These confuse the automatic level adjustment of the recording VCR which causes the brightness of the picture to constantly change, rendering the recording unwatchable. Macrovision is a company that creates electronic copy prevention schemes. ... DVD is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for storing data, including movies with high video and sound quality. ... Pay-per-view is the name given to a system by which television viewers can call and order events to be seen on TV and pay for the private telecast of that event to their homes later. ...

When copying from a videocassette, the Macrovision-distorted signal is stored on the tape itself. By contrast, on DVDs there is just a marker asking the player to produce such a distortion during playback. All standard DVD players include this protection and obey the marker, though unofficially many models can be modified or adjusted to disable it. DVD is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for storing data, including movies with high video and sound quality. ...

New media

The S-VHS format has been introduced in an attempt to breathe new life into the aging VCR technology, but it has not gained sufficient momentum in the consumer market due to the new digital video formats. S-VHS or Super VHS was an improved, backward-compatible version of the VHS standard for domestic video cassette recorders. ... Digital video is a type of video recording system that works by using a digital, rather than analog, representation of the video signal. ...

For home video recording, both Personal Video Recorders (such as TiVo and ReplayTV) and DVD recorders are becoming popular, although neither has yet supplanted the VCR. In fact, Tivo cooperates well with VCRs which can be used to archive PVR recordings. However, the introduction of recordable DVDs with sufficient recording capacity on to the regular market with their advantage of random access could spell the doom of the VCR once the price comes down significantly. The personal video recorder (PVR), also called digital video recorder (DVR) or digital personal video recorder, is a consumer electronics device that records television shows to a hard disk in digital format. ... The TiVo personal video recorder is a consumer video component allowing users to capture television programming to internal hard drive storage. ... ReplayTV is a personal video recorder manufactured by Digital Networks North America, Inc. ... A DVD recorder is a consumer electronics device that records analog or digital audio/visual (A/V) signals in a digital format onto a digital video disc (DVD). ... In computer science, random access is the ability to access a random element of a group in equal time. ...

The main drawback with recordable DVD is not the technology itself, but of the disc formats. At present, no less than three different types of DVD recordable disc exist. These are DVD + (plus), DVD - (dash) (both in record once and rewritable versions) and DVD-RAM (which is always rewritable). All three are backed by different consumer electronics manufacturers, and none shows any sign (as of 2004) of gaining "critical mass" in the marketplace. Consumers wary of another format war (similar to the Betamax versus VHS debacle of the early 1980s), has meant that sales of consumer DVD recorders have been comparatively sluggish, although many recorders are now able to record onto both DVD+ and DVD- media. 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Home video cassette recorders became available in the early 1970s, though the first system to be successful was Sonys Betamax. ... Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...

Another important drawback of DVD recording is that one DVD is limited to two hours of recording if the quality is not to be significantly reduced, while VHS tapes are readily available up to 210 minutes (standard play) in NTSC areas and even 300 minutes in PAL areas. The advent of the recordable two-layer DVD in late 2004, if it gets widely adopted, will reduce this disadvantage.

See also

• Telerecording
• TV/VCR combo
• Kinescope
• Write protection
• Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios
• Dew warning

Telerecording (known as kinescoping in the USA) is the British name for a process pioneered during the 1940s for the storing of electronically-shot television programmes on film, which was used for the preservation, re-broadcasting and sale of television programmes before the use of commercial broadcast-quality videotape became... This is a photo of a typical TV/VCR combo. ... The term kinescope originally referred to a type of early television picture tube. ... Write protection, (also known as record protection) is a mechanism that prevents erasure of valuable data by the accidental recording or storing of new data. ... Sony Corp v. ... A dew warning, also known as a dew alarm or dew signal, is an error indication on VCRs and camcorders if the VCR/camcorder develops dew inside the unit from being exposed to extreme temperature and/or humidity changes. ...

External links

• Total Rewind – the Virtual Museum of Vintage VCRs (http://www.totalrewind.org)