When I was four or five years old, I remember seeing a cardboard display case adorned with pristine copies of Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, complete with the bat symbol logo and yellow plastic packaging. This was my introduction to the video home system. The year I was born made me a member of the late majority.
In the United States, the first glimpse at the VHS video player and cassette took place at a press conference in June 1977. The same month as the Apple II computer went on sale, the VHS made its US debut, and Elvis performed his final concert before his death.
VCRs were the first home-use machines. VHS was overtaken by Sony's format by two years. VHS was based on an open standard and held a number of advantages that made it successful. It is capable of recording an average-length movie. It was less expensive.
It's true that cheaper is relative. Popular Science notes that at a time when the U.S. minimum wage was less than $2 per hour, the VHS Vidstar "deck" had an asking price of $1,200. The price of a blank tape, which sold for $20, was the equivalent of $92 in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars.
The VHS format, which celebrates the 45th anniversary of its U.S. debut today, seems hopelessly outdated. There is a good chance that younger readers don't remember using or watching a VHS player in the early years of this century.
What is surprising about VHS is that it is almost fifty years old. While it is the end of an era for physical analog media, it also sets in motion a lot about how we enjoy entertainment today. VHS, I wish you a happy birthday.
It has gone largely unnoticed that a remarkable change has taken place in our everyday behavior. It's difficult to remember how strange the VCR was when it first appeared, and what a commotion it caused.
Fast forward was written by James Lardner just one decade after the VHS arrived in America. According to figures in Lucas Hilderbrand's Inherent Vice, more than 50% of households in the US owned a VCR by that point. Five years later, the number would be more than 75 percent. It's worth noting that around 22.8% of the U.S. subscribes to the leading streaming service.
VHS has changed the viewing habits of a nation. After only a few years, most consumers saw their first video cassette player, marveled over it, and grew accustomed to its everyday ubiquity. The internet- connected PC and the phone are two of only a few pieces of technology that can achieve this.
Timeshift, a phenomenon that was taken for granted today, was the biggest behavioral shift VHS brought in. The only way to watch a movie was when it was on VHS. When a movie was released, it had to be seen in the theater before it was shown on TV. You have to buy the movie novelization if you want to see it again.
VHS made a big change to this. It was possible to rent or buy a videotape and watch it whenever and wherever you wanted. If it was on television, you could record it, and then watch it at an hour that suited you.
Basic Instinct starts at 9 a.m. It's absolutely true. Good morning America? There's no problem. Did you mean Born on the Fourth of July in June? Why wouldn't it work for you?
To make it even easier, VHS tapes could be turned off midway and you could remember where in the movie you were when you started them. They could be fast-forwarded, rewound, played in slow motion or paused completely. The way in which you watched entertainment has changed.
The ability to control the flow of the movie-watching experience made it possible for parents to make changes to the movie. In the movie Scream, a hip teen mentions that he swung by the video store to rent a Tom Cruise movie. If you stop it, you can see his penis.
It was not possible for VHS machines to show exactly which moments were being fast-forwarded, rewound, or paused for possible Scientologist penile spotting. This innovation allowed the streaming services of today to strip-mine these behaviors to inform the kind of movies and TV shows they would make. When you pause, rewind, or fast- forward the show you are watching, it is tracked byNetflix. Tracking the time and day you watch the shows will give you a better idea of how you watch.
VHS is not solely responsible for forging the viewing habits of a nation. Movie studios made more money from home video releases than they did from theaters. It marked the beginning of an age in which home entertainment was more important than movies. For many, many more people, video was where they were first seen to begin with.
The year 1988 was when video rentals and sales began to surpass box office returns for producers, according to a professor at Georgetown University. When Hollywood starts to realize, 'Oh, we're making videos,' that's really the moment. If they do well in the theater, it's a bad thing for us. The goal is to get people to remember the name of the title so that they can rent it.
VHS gave a lot of opportunities for cult hits, ignored at the box office, to flourish, but it also helped fan the flames of obsessive fandom. Star Wars is a great movie to see in a crowded theater. Video helped solidify an almost religious reverence in the theater-free years between 1983's Return of the Jedi and the Star Wars trilogy special editions in 1997.
There is an internet-aided overanalysis of pop culture that leads to videos like "I Watched Avengers:Infinity War in 0.25x Speed and Here's What I Found". The VHS legacy is still going strong.
VHS helped us figure out our current streaming services. Those browsing the shelves in their local video rental store probably experienced the first sense of aimlessly scrolling through endless viewing options. Without today's safety net, it was the paradoxes of choice in action.
Philip Baker is a 46-year-old collector of VHS tapes and runs the website VideoCollector.co.uk. They have an x-factor about them. I like the illustrations on the covers of mediocre movies, like the one by EnzoSciotti. It was a huge gamble to find something that could be rented weekly. You can get a preview with the streaming services, and there are hundreds of titles available to watch instantly. It is possible to stop a movie if you don't like it. If it was the VHS era, you paid your money. You are watching it.
Unlike the DVD, VHS was originally introduced as a recordable technology, which is important when it comes to the future of VHS. Although DVD-R formats appeared on the market, less people burned their own DVDs than ever recorded their own VHS tapes, either with the aid of an accompanying camcorder or simply by taping things off the television. This drive to make everyone participate in what Lucas Hilderbrand calls a new kind of amateur archives feels perfectly at home in an age in which millions of people have their own channels, contribute to Wikis, track their viewing habits on Letterboxd, or simply chronicle their lives on social media
VHS prepared us for a new world. The only thing it asked was that we rewound the tape.
VHS tapes were made until 2006 David Cronenberg's A History of Violence was the last major Hollywood studio picture to be released on the format. VHS did not signify the end of the physical media era. It was followed by both the DVD and the HD DVD formats.
VHS enjoyed cultural relevancy for a solid two decades before DVD came along, and more than a quarter-century before DVD took the sales lead in 2003.
In 1997, the company began as a mail-order rental company for DVDs, instead of VHS tapes. The economics of sending out a big VHS tape wouldn't have added up, which would have meant that it wouldn't have been in a position to launch its streaming service.
VHS used to be a part of the cultural position of this world. There is no doubt that the times have changed when it comes to physical media. VHS marked the beginning of the end, and the last time that a lot of the world's entertainment wasn't seen by people sitting on the toilet was just before the dawn of the phone.
Is VHS still alive? It has in some ways. The technology is still influential in others. Philip Baker reckons his collection is thousands, spread over a couple of locations. He notes that he no longer collects because he has run out of space. The video aesthetic is ingrained in our collective nostalgia.
Less than a decade after the VHS format was left for dead, the music video for Eminem's " Berzerk" opened with a distinctive blue tracking screen and scanned lines. The video made use of VHS-style grain, skewed images at the top and bottom of the frame, and other VHS-era artifacts. Most people understood that the intent was to pay tribute to the analog artists of the past. He was a man of video games.
Since then, this type of visual language has become standard. The rainbow flares and muffled sound of worn-down videotape images seem to be the same as the effects seen in quirky meme culture. A degradation of picture and sound quality, once a source of annoyance to viewers, has now become the equivalent of vinyl crackles. So be it, if they have to be added to the recordings.
VHS wasn't flawless. The machines and tapes were bulky and degraded after viewings, making them feel ephemeral. They changed the way we view entertainment and still feel modern. The impact of VHS can't be overstated, whether you want to return to the days of "be kind, rewind" or feel that the streaming era is a golden age.
I will return some tapes if you excuse me.
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