The VHS Tape Was On Its Way Out, They Predicted in 1980!

[BBC Tomorrow's World clip, 1980]

In 1980, Michael Rodd of Tomorrow's World looked at the latest video recorders and then at something the programme was sure would replace them: the video disc. It looked like a record, played films on your television, and promised a sharper picture than any tape. It was, according to the programme, the format of the future.

It wasn't. But the story of why is worth telling, and it ends somewhere surprising.

You can see the full video here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/videos/c19dwnm7mmpo.

Video recorders in 1980

By 1980, home video recorders were in the shops, but few people owned one. They were expensive, and most families rented rather than bought. Buyers also had to pick a side in a three-way format war: JVC's VHS, Sony's Betamax and Philips' Video 2000, all incompatible with each other.

Tape had one huge advantage. You could record on it. Programmes could be taped off the television and watched later, which was a novelty in itself. But the picture was soft, the tapes wore out, and winding to the right scene took time.

The video disc promise

The video disc was sold as the record player for pictures. Films would come on discs, pressed cheaply in their thousands like LPs, and play with a quality tape couldn't match. Three rival systems were heading for the shops.

LaserVision (Philips). Read by a laser, so nothing touched the disc, and it didn't wear out. It offered roughly twice the picture detail of VHS, with perfect pause and slow motion. Philips had planned a UK launch for 1980, then 1981, and the first player, the VLP-700, finally went on sale in May 1982. The format later became better known as LaserDisc.

CED or SelectaVision (RCA). Read by a stylus in a groove, much like a record. RCA spent 17 years developing it, and the first player went on sale in the US in March 1981. Hitachi brought players to the UK in late 1983.

VHD (JVC). The company behind VHS backed a disc too. In the UK, Thorn EMI built a disc pressing factory in Swindon for a planned 1984 launch, then cancelled it in late 1983. VHD survived in the UK only as a training and education tool.

Why the disc lost to VHS

The video disc had one fatal flaw: it couldn't record. You could only watch what you bought, and in the early 1980s the range of films on disc was small and expensive. Meanwhile, video recorders were getting cheaper, rental shops were opening on every high street, and families could tape programmes off the television.

The results were brutal. RCA stopped making CED players in 1984 and pressed its last discs in 1986, losing an estimated $650 million. Thorn EMI wrote off around £20 million on its VHD plans. LaserVision launched in the UK with a catalogue of about 120 titles and a high price, and never really caught on outside Japan, although it later found a loyal following among film enthusiasts.

Tomorrow's World wasn't alone in getting it wrong. Some of the biggest companies in electronics bet heavily on the disc. The public chose tape.

The disc gets its revenge

The laser technology behind LaserVision didn't go to waste. It led directly to the compact disc, which arrived in the UK in 1983 and transformed music. In 1996, DVD finally delivered what the 1980 video disc had promised: a sharp picture on a small, cheap disc. Within a few years DVD had replaced VHS in the shops, and Blu-ray followed in 2006.

So Tomorrow's World was right in the end, just twenty years early. The video disc did become the format of the future. It simply took a different shape.

Your tapes today

Tape won the battle of the 1980s, which is why so many family memories from that decade and the next are recorded on VHS, VHS-C, Video8, Hi8 and MiniDV. Those tapes were never meant to last forever. Magnetic tape degrades with age, and the machines to play it are no longer made.

At Photo Revivals, we digitise home video tapes so your family films can be watched on a computer, TV, tablet or phone, shared with relatives and kept safe for the future. Get in touch to find out more.