In 1986, it seemed like everyone was talking about VCRs, especially VHS VCRs. But this was an example of it taking years to become an overnight sensation. The first VHS VCR, the JVC HR-3300, was announced September 9, 1976. JVC started selling it in Japan on October 31, 1976.
The conventional story about the VHS VCR is wrong
The way you hear the story today, Sony released the Betamax VCR but got greedy, charging too much to license the technology to others. And then VHS came along as an open format, superior in every way, and immediately steamrolled Sony and its expensive, inferior technology.
The reality is more complicated than that. Sony, JVC, and Matsushita had collaborated on an earlier format called U-matic that used cassettes rather than reel-to-reel tape. But it was too expensive to gain mass adoption in home use. The three companies started working on their own consumer-grade formats. Sony had the backing of the Japanese government, who wanted to avoid consumer confusion. JVC countered by creating VHS as an open standard and convincing Matsushita to join in. Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Sharp soon followed.
The tradeoff between the two was recording time versus quality. Betamax recorded at a higher resolution, 250 lines versus 240 lines, but VHS could record two hours on a single tape, versus an hour for Beta.
Today it’s popular to say nobody noticed the difference in recording quality. If you connected the VCR to the TV over RF, you probably didn’t notice much difference on most TVs. But when you copied tapes, you got less generational loss with Beta. Of course, no one copied tapes, so that’s why no one talks about that.
But the difference in price is also something people tend to overstate. The JVC HR-3300 wasn’t cheap. Upon initial release in 1977, it cost $1,200 while its contemporary Sony SL-7200A cost $1,295. So it was about 7.5 percent cheaper than a Betamax. The cost came down, but slowly. According to the February 1979 issue of Popular Science, the JVC HR-3300 cost $1,050. The same article listed a few cheaper VHS units on the market, priced at $995. There were also Beta units on the market at $995.
VHS won due to a combination of factors and some of them are things I rarely see anyone mention. One of them: VHS models tended to be easier to repair.
Features of the JVC HR-3300
Of course the main features of the JVC HR-3300 were the ability to record 2 hours of video on a cassette, and then play it back. It also included a timer to schedule recordings, which was an extra option on some units, including Sony’s first Betamax unit. But it also included a novel feature to let you dub different audio into a video recording.
One notable feature it lacked was the ability to pause playback. That came with later models.
Although JVC undercut Sony in price slightly, we can’t look at it as a cut-rate unit. It delivered a good selection of features for 1977.
Why it took 10 years for VCRs like the JVC HR-3300 to get popular
Today, waiting 10 years for a technology to catch on sounds absurd. But technically, VCRs were illegal to use in the United States when the JVC HR-3300 reached the market. The concept of recording TV to watch later being fair use wasn’t proven yet, and Universal and Disney sued Sony in 1976. It took 10 years for Sony to prevail, with the Supreme Court ruling in Sony’s favor in January 1984.
The manual included a disclaimer on the back that said the legality of recording copyrighted material for private use had not been clarified, and sale of the product did not mean JVC represented that copyrighted materials could be recorded.
So it wasn’t just about the technology being new and expensive, and Sony greedily charging royalties. The VCR manufacturers were pricing liability into the product. That liability inflated prices much more than Sony’s royalty, especially in the early years.
But the 1984 Supreme Court ruling meant VCR manufacturers weren’t liable, and that allowed prices to come down. VHS won the format war soon after.
VHS rentals soon became popular, largely because of the cost of pre-recorded movies. And the patience of the industry paid off.
By then the first VHS VCR, the JVC HR-3300, was long obsolete. But its legacy extended into the 21st century.
JVC HR-3300 value
Being the first VHS VCR, the JVC HR-3300 is historically significant. Being early also means not a lot of them sold. I haven’t seen very many examples of them sell, but the last one I saw sell went for $325 after fees.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.