Video Home System

The Video Home System (VHS) is the recording and playing standard for video cassette recorders (VCRs), developed by JVC and launched in 1976.

It became the standard in the 1980s after competing with Sony's Betamax and, to a lesser extent, Philips's Video 2000.

A VHS-cassette contains a long 1/2 inch magnetic tape which is wound from one of two spools to the other, allowing it to slowly pass by the reader head of the video cassette recorder.

Several improved versions of VHS exist, most notably S-VHS, an improved analog standard, and D-VHS, which records digital video onto a VHS form factor tape.

VHS-C tapes (C for compact) was used in camcorders and could be played back in a regular VHS player with an adapter.

VHS tapes have an approx. 3 MHz horizontal resolution and 250 lines vertical resolution.

Although VHS officially stands for Video Home System some early reports claimed that the initials originally stood for Victor (Company) Helical Scan system; see Helical scan.