In 1956, the first video recorder was created by Ampex for professional broadcasting use. However, this was not used at home and was made for television broadcasting studios due to it's hefty price of $50,000. Toshiba, Philips, Sony, and even more companies were all trying to get into the market due to it's success with the studios. They began to create it for more uses involving medical use, businesses, airlines, etc.
1963 was the year that the Telcan was created by the Nottingham Electronic Valve Company and became the first ever home video recorder. Of course, like the beginning of everything, it was a failure. The thing only recorded 20 minutes of black and white video, you had to build the thing yourself, and it was still real expensive for the average household. However, many companies still saw something in the device as they began to try and improve on it, making it more affordable, and actually sold it in one piece.
As the video recorder became more popular and began a library of videocassette tapes of movies, Philips created the VCR in 1970 which became the true video recording experience in the household... but not at first. This thing was expensive at over $2,000! Even now it still confuses me that nothing is ever successful at first and it's because the developers make the same mistake everytime. $2,000 for a VCR? No one can afford that so why not sell it at a loss in the beginning instead of no one buying anything and wasting money anyways. They eventually find ways to build it cheaper but wouldn't you at least want sales? Your losing money anyways but anyways that rant is over.
The VCR eventually did pick up steam in 1975 and had six big companies developing them with the most successful companies coming from Japan, Sony and JVC. They began to make them more advanced and affordable and making an impact in the households across the world.
Being the most successful, they dominated most of the home markets which brought the competition directly between them. Sony was trying to one up JVC by creating the Betamax, which is the equivalent to the Blu Ray player against the DVDs, expect it was a failure. Of course it was one of the two standards in the households, but it just wasn't convenient to the consumer. The Beta had a higher resolution, but it only recorded one hour while the VHS recorded 2 to 4. Also when recording home movies, the VHS was able to rewind and show what was recorded in the cameras while the Beta was only straight recording, if you messed up, oh well. And you couldn't see it until it was finished. Over time, VHS took pretty much 75 percent of the market and the Beta vanished. It was innovative in ways when it created a second fast forward option on the Betamax which sped it up even more. It also began to create tapes that could record more time.
Pretty much after the Betamax, VHS was what the majority of households owned and became the standard. There was tons of other viewing experiences coming out at the time like the laserdisc which came in like vinyl albums because they were giant discs and showed higher resolution videos and audio. The thing was pretty cool but who the hell owned one. Everyone used VHS and at the time resolution wasn't as big a deal as it is now with High Definition TV's that really show quality.
However, all good things come to an end. The VCR was really successful in the 80s and 90s. Who doesn't remember popping in their favorite Disney VHS movies! In the 2000s, the DVD came out which was the beginning of the digital age of video. VCR's were still around in the early 2000's, but only to the people who haven't moved on to the DVD players. In 2005, it pretty much became obsolete. Movies stopped producing for it, and video cameras became handheld, recording on mini cassettes and even digital. The VCR was a revolution, becoming a form of pirating as well being able to record the TV, an easy way to record memories with video cameras, and changed the way we watched video entertainment.
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