It happened in 1977...

[Grand Torino]

The VHS system was an invention of JVC. The technology was first introduced in Japan in 1976, and the United States received its first VHS-based VCR system approximately a year later. Though there were a number of early competitors in this field, the war for dominance in the consumer market finally came down to Sony's Betamax technology versus JVC's VHS.

By this time, Sony's Betamax already had a jump on the market, as Betamax was unveiled to the public in 1965. The Sony SL-8200 for Betamax was soon facing off against JVC's Vidstar VCR for VHS cassettes, with both options entering the market in 1977. Though competition was stiff between the two incompatible formats, VHS ultimately won consumers over with its longer recording time and lower price tag.

VHS and Betamax, though, had some stark differences. JVC's product could record for two hours – enough to record a full-length movie – while Betamax had a recording capability of only an hour.

Ultimately, VHS won the battle, and tech lore has it that the porn industry played a big role in that victory. Sony reportedly wouldn't let pornographic content be put on Betamax tapes, while JVC and the VHS consortium had no such qualms.

[No_0ne]

Betamax was a vastly superior recording system to VHS, with a better tape transport mechanism and much higher recording quality possible.  Sony erred in insisting on relatively high licensing fees, while VHS was essentially open-source, so companies could reduce cost by adopting VHS over Beta.  The increased recording time of VHS was due to the lower resolution, as both formats began producing tapes with longer recording times this advantage proved negligible. It wasn't until the advent of "Super VHS" that the JVC format could rival the quality of Beta, but by that time the Beta format was already doomed to failure due to poor marketing decisions by Sony ...

 

Edited November 11, 2018 by No_0ne