The late 1970s were absolutely wild for home video technology, with major electronics companies throwing millions at different recording formats and betting everything on which one would end up in American living rooms. Betamax had superior technology and an early mover advantage, so giants scrambled to create something that could challenge the frontrunner. The winner would control how families watched movies at home for the next twenty years. Which company created the VHS format that completely demolished the competition and turned those chunky black cassettes into a cultural phenomenon?
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Correct Answer: JVC
(Source)Every Blockbuster in the 1980s was basically a shrine to JVC's brilliant strategy, even though most people renting "Top Gun" for the fifth time had no clue about the brutal corporate war that made it all possible. Unlike Sony, JVC knew regular people would care more about convenience than picture quality, so they released a cassette that could record for twice as a long as anything Sony was selling. Then they licensed the tech to everyone else and a flood of VHS players hit the market. Suddenly Sony, originally locked their Betamax to only their machines, was under siege. By 1985, VHS had completely annihilated Betamax, and JVC went from being a relatively unknown company to the one that defined how an entire generation experienced movies at home.
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