OT: VHS

  • Thread starter Dave Plowman (News)
  • Start date
But my mistake above says inadvertently what I feel. Why name
a new system so awkwardly -- Video Home System -- when Home
Video System is how most would say it? Unless it were a translation
from the Japanese.
Click to expand...
I'll buy the suggestion that it originally meant "Victor Helical Scan". It
makes perfect sense. It would have been changed to "Video Home System",
because most consumers have no idea what "helical scan" means.
 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm@mendelson.com> wrote in message
news:slrnh950ne.sqr.gsm@cable.mendelson.com...
William Sommerwerck wrote:

I'll buy the suggestion that it originally meant "Victor Helical Scan".
It
makes perfect sense. It would have been changed to "Video Home System",
because most consumers have no idea what "helical scan" means.

Because not everyone thinks in English. SECAM is an acronym for
"Sequential Color with Memory" according to the Wikipedia, but I have also
seen it as starting with System. That one came out ok, but the other well
know French acronym, GSM stood for "Mobile System Group".

The later Global System for Mobiles is revisionist history as GSM was
orginally
designed as pan European (if you count the UK around 1980 as being a part
of
Europe). :)

The US also tends to make acronyms from whom they came from, e.g.
NTSC (National Television Standard(s) Committe), JPEG (Joint Photographic
Experts Group) and MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group).

VHS was successfull because Sony refused to lower prices below cost on
units sold in the US. The EU countries threatened to put a quota (in
addition to a very high tax) on VCR's if Sony and JVC did not restrict
the number of VCRs they sold in the EU. Sony just reduced production, JVC
shifted it to NTSC units and "dumped" them (sold below cost).

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
Click to expand...

I liked the original French trade protection measure , against imported
VCRs. They didn't ban them, just made sure there was only one customs
clearence house in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles from
ports/airports/rail or motorways.
 
In article <slrnh950ne.sqr.gsm@cable.mendelson.com>,
Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm@mendelson.com> wrote:
VHS was successfull because Sony refused to lower prices below cost on
units sold in the US. The EU countries threatened to put a quota (in
addition to a very high tax) on VCR's if Sony and JVC did not restrict
the number of VCRs they sold in the EU. Sony just reduced production, JVC
shifted it to NTSC units and "dumped" them (sold below cost).
Click to expand...
VHS 'won' the UK market through supplying the largest rental companies at
very low unit costs. In the UK, TV and later VCR rental was a popular
option. Indeed my elderly next door neighbour still rents both - although
she's paid for them several times over.

--
*Some days you're the dog, some days the hydrant.

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
 
The US also tends to make acronyms from whom they came from, e.g.
NTSC (National Television Standard(s) Committe), JPEG (Joint
Photographic Experts Group) and MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group).
Click to expand...
It's Moving Pictures Experts Group.
 
William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'll buy the suggestion that it originally meant "Victor Helical Scan". It
makes perfect sense. It would have been changed to "Video Home System",
because most consumers have no idea what "helical scan" means.
Click to expand...
Because not everyone thinks in English. SECAM is an acronym for
"Sequential Color with Memory" according to the Wikipedia, but I have also
seen it as starting with System. That one came out ok, but the other well
know French acronym, GSM stood for "Mobile System Group".

The later Global System for Mobiles is revisionist history as GSM was orginally
designed as pan European (if you count the UK around 1980 as being a part of
Europe). :)

The US also tends to make acronyms from whom they came from, e.g.
NTSC (National Television Standard(s) Committe), JPEG (Joint Photographic
Experts Group) and MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group).

VHS was successfull because Sony refused to lower prices below cost on
units sold in the US. The EU countries threatened to put a quota (in
addition to a very high tax) on VCR's if Sony and JVC did not restrict
the number of VCRs they sold in the EU. Sony just reduced production, JVC
shifted it to NTSC units and "dumped" them (sold below cost).

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
 
In article <slrnh955a3.3rp.gsm@cable.mendelson.com>,
Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm@mendelson.com> wrote:
VHS 'won' the UK market through supplying the largest rental companies
at very low unit costs. In the UK, TV and later VCR rental was a
popular option. Indeed my elderly next door neighbour still rents both
- although she's paid for them several times over.

Do you have to put a shilling in them to watch a program?
Click to expand...
;-). Of course you still could since the 5p is based on the same coin.

I don't think the large rental companies did pay as you view.

So TV rental wasn't common in the US?

Perhaps the same as car leasing here - still not common with private
owners.

--
*INDECISION is the key to FLEXIBILITY *

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
 
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

VHS 'won' the UK market through supplying the largest rental companies at
very low unit costs. In the UK, TV and later VCR rental was a popular
option. Indeed my elderly next door neighbour still rents both - although
she's paid for them several times over.
Click to expand...
Do you have to put a shilling in them to watch a program?

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
 
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

I don't think the large rental companies did pay as you view.
Click to expand...
ok, it was a joke.

So TV rental wasn't common in the US?
Click to expand...
No not at all. The main advantage of TV/VCR rental was the low taxes. Since
you were renting the device, you paid tax on the rent (VAT?) and not on
the unit.

No such taxes in the US.

Perhaps the same as car leasing here - still not common with private
owners.
Click to expand...

Car leasing is popular because you don't have to sell the car at the end of
the lease period to go out and buy a new one. If you plan on keeping the car
a long time, it makes very little financial sense.

There is an old joke about the time to buy a new car is when the ashtrays
are full.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
 
William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'm not an old codger but I understood it was 'Video Homes System'.
Could be a translation thing the extra 'S'.

Why a plural?

Of course VHS was 'invented' by JVC after they stole a peek at Sony's
Betamax system.

Not really. There was at least one helical-scan consumer VCR before Betamax.
(U-matic was not a consumer system.) People forget that Betamax wasn't the
first consumer VCR, it was the first successful consumer VCR.
Click to expand...
Ampex was developing an early VCR technology that they sold to the
Japanese when they decided not to pursue the home video market.


Cartrivision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartrivision Some of the prototypes and
test jigs were still at the old Avco (The Aviation Company, which later
became Avco Financial Services) plant that became Cincinnati,
Electronics when I worked there in the mid '70s.

http://www.totalrewind.org/mainhall.htm is a British site about early
VCRs.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!
 
"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" wrote:
There is an old joke about the time to buy a new car is when the ashtrays
are full.
Click to expand...

In that case a lot of people would only own one vehicle their whole
lives.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!
 
Michael A. Terrell wrote:

In that case a lot of people would only own one vehicle their whole
lives.
Click to expand...
Now yes, but back in the 1950's and 1960's it was very "in" to smoke. I was
watching the season 1 Twilight Zone (1959) shows and almost all of them had
people smoking in them.

I did not smoke, which in the late 1960's made me a "social cripple".

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
 
"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:

In that case a lot of people would only own one vehicle their whole
lives.

Now yes, but back in the 1950's and 1960's it was very "in" to smoke. I was
watching the season 1 Twilight Zone (1959) shows and almost all of them had
people smoking in them.

I did not smoke, which in the late 1960's made me a "social cripple".
Click to expand...

I have never smoked, and always thought that they looked like fools
in movies & on TV. Even cartoon characters pushed tobacco products.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!
 
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