JVC HR-3300
The JVC HR-3300 VIDSTAR is the world's first VHS-based VCR to be released to the market, introduced by the president of JVC at the Okura Hotel on September 9, 1976. Sales started in Japan under the name Victor HR-3300 on 31 October 1976. Foreign sales followed in 1977 with the HR-3300U in the United States, and HR-3300EK in the United Kingdom.
In 2008, the HR-3300 became the first VCR to be registered with the National Museum of Nature and Science, based in Tokyo, Japan. It was noted as one of the 85 most disruptive ideas by Business Week in 2014.
The first VCR system sold directly to home users was 1963's Telcan from the UK, but this was not a commercial success. Sony's CV-2000 was a complete system based on commercial 1⁄2-inch tape on open reels, requiring the user to thread the tape around the helical scan heads. In order to conserve tape, the system recorded every other frame of the television signal, producing 200-line output. Similar models from Ampex and RCA followed that year. The number of open-reel VCRs continued to increase during the late 1960s, leading to the EIAJ-1 standard for 1⁄2-inch tape on a 7 inch reel. The follow-up EIAJ-2 built the take-up reel into the VCR body.
In September 1971, Sony introduced the U-matic format, aimed at professional users, which replaced the open reels with a cassette. The next year Philips introduced the Video Cassette Recording format specifically for home users. Over the next five years, a number of companies introduced similar cassette-based home formats, all of which were incompatible. Among the better known examples are Sanyo's V-Cord from 1974, Sony's Betamax from 1975, and Panasonic's VX from 1975.
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