When digital came along many consumers didn’t see the benefit and preferred to stick with traditional forms such as VHS. The same people said the same thing when film cameras came along and slides/transparencies (which by the way we can digitise and turn them into digital photos for you) were the preferred medium for taking photographs. Analog had its drawbacks and digital won out and is here to stay. Once you go digital you never go back.

Standard-Definition Analog

Standard-definition analog video formats which provided up to 576 lines of resolution were captured on camcorders and transferred to VHS tapes. Betamax were the first consumer 1/2″ videotape format manufactured by Sony. Betacam were smaller format 1/2″ videotape version of Sony’s Betamax consumer format and used in betacam cameras. VHS were the most popular consumer 1/2″ videotape format, developed by JVC in the 1970’s. The camera format tape was a VHS-Compact (VHS-C) tape which was hugely popular especially when VHS won the analog tape wars in the 1980’s. Video-8 was the first 8mm videotape format to compete with VHS and Betamax in the late 1980s. This was improved upon to the highest picture image quality of Hi8
camera tapes, which were high-resolution 8mm videotape from Sony.

Digital Revolution

There were early professional tapes with magnetic tape, but the first consumer units were called DV and MiniDV. They were widely used videotape format used by consumers. Professionals used them early on for weddings and other special occasions.  The digital version of Sony’s Hi8 8mm videotape was called Digital-8. Expensive compared to mini-DV it was not so successful and only used by a small number of consumers.

The DVD (digital versatile disc) was a revolution and the next affordable, virtually cheap progression from VHS. The home movies from digital formats such as mini-DV would be transferred onto DVD. The home computer revolution of the 1990’s with Windows 95 onwards made DVD the ultimate choice and destined VHS to the history books.

How to get my VHS to DVD’s

We offer a complete service converting all your old analog format tapes to DVD, USB and onto the cloud (google drive) to work with all your smartphones and computers. Whether you have old VHS tapes made from VHS-C tapes, or you still have the original camcorder tapes from 8mm cameras, we can convert them all onto DVD for you. We have a special offer for all readers of 10 tapes for £60. Just use code 10TAPES to get your discount.