The Arrival of Betamax and VHS in the UK

1978: The Dawn of UK Home Video

I’m lucky enough to be one of the few individuals in the country who regularly fire up a Betamax and VHS machine - please now, don’t be jealous. In truth, it’s a niche passion, but one which I have little conscious control over - I need to dig up this nation’s televisual past, even if it does involve investing in technology which could conk out in seconds with no available aftercare. The things I do for my country, eh?

Anyway, the plaudits for my efforts will, along with my surely guaranteed knighthood, have to go on the backburner for now. Let’s cast our minds back, shall we, to that momentous period when Betamax and JVC waltzed onto the excitable dancefloor of British consumerism. The early-1970s had already seen the Philips N1500 VCR system, but it went unloved and unnoticed by most. But by the late-70s, lessons had been learned and it was time for a marketing war.

Sony had launched Betamax in Japan in 1975, and JVC followed up with VHS in 1976. The UK, as ever, was fashionably late to the party, but Betamax and VHS finally reached our shores in 1978. Thus, the video recorders war began, an epic tale of technological one-upmanship as covered quite magnificently in the following articles from Broadcast magazine.

VHS was first out of the blocks in June 1978, with JVC launching their HR3300 - priced at £738.75 - model in March 1978 for consumers looking to record Tom Baker in Doctor Who. Sony, meanwhile, weren’t going to let this go unchallenged, and launched their SL800 model in June of the same year - costing £750. Blank tapes for each format were priced neck and neck, so it really was anyone’s guess as to who would win.

Anyway, the Betamax vs VHS battle has been told a million times before, so I won’t bore you with half-truths and misconceptions of superior picture quality or the importance of porn distributors. Instead, I’ll simply furnish you with the following articles for you to digest and remember a time when plastic cassettes full of magnetic tape made it feel as though the future had finally arrived.

If you’d like to support Curious British Telly, please consider donating to the site fund via PayPal by clicking here.