The Unofficial History of Home Theater, Part III

By Mike McGann
Posted Thursday, November 30, 2006

Editor's note: this is part III of the history of Home Theater. If you've read the first two parts, then undoubtedly you'll want to find out how it ends. We won't spoil it other than to say Rosebud was a sled.

An exciting invention
While most of the development of the 1960s concerned creeping up the giant TV screen size of 25 inches, things got more interesting in the 1970s. The first projection TVs — which were dim and often blurry — came out. But better yet, the world of technology invented something even more important in the 1970s:

The format war.

Sure, going back to the Gramophone versus Edison tube player, there were a handful of brief marketplace battles over formats. As most were in categories that had only a few early adopters, there wasn’t much of an opportunity to hose over the consumer.

But then came the 1970s, and along with popularizing such things as tofu and platform shoes, electronics makers got the hang of non-compatible, competing formats.

While there have been a number of format wars - as they say, your first love is always the most painful. The invention of the home video recorder sparked a classic format war, one that left purists gnashing their teeth, normal people confused and ushered in a new era where every new technology is driven by one thing at first: porn. (And before you argue that, consider for a moment, that you are on the Internet).

While video tape had been around since the late 1950s (Ampex sold the first video deck to TV networks in 1956), most commonly as two-inch reel-to-reel affairs that were about as big as Volkswagen Beetle and slightly less dependable, there was no way for people at home to record video. The use of tape, a natural extension of the iron oxide audio tape originally developed in Germany in the 1930s but not commercially available in the U.S. until the late 1940s, wasn't really a practical solution for homes.

While audio moved smoothly from ½ inch reel to reel for consumers to the ¼ inch tape audio cassette in 1962, with a brief side trip to the ½ inch 8-track, a format developed in large part by Ford, before moving back to audio cassette, which finally caught up in capacity and audio quality by the mid-1970s — there was never much of a music format war until the 21st century. Sir, put down the MiniDisc and rejoin us here on Earth.

Anyhow, peaceful coexistence was not to be for video tape.

While there were a number of cassette-based video formats rolled out, only three had any market penetration: U-Matic, Betmax and VHS. The last two you probably know, but Sony’s U-Matic was first, and while it did dismally as a home recorder after hitting the market in 1970, it was giant hit with TV stations and even schools, neither of whom were put off by the expense, about $2,500.

The U-Matic, which remained a staple of video production well into the 1980s (I worked with it at Westinghouse in the early 1980s, and still have some pesty college projects recorded on U-Matic tape) was originally equipped with a TV tuner, clock and timer like later VCRs. While it used ¾-inch tape, many of the fundamental design elements would carry over a few years later to the Betamax.
And while Phillips and other companies tried and failed to create home recording systems going back to the mid 1960s, it was Sony that broke through in 1975 with the ½ inch Betamax. It could only record for one hour, was kind of pricey and consumers couldn’t get any prerecorded movies. Despite that, its primitive time-shifting features were a hit because they worked.

But as you know, a format war isn’t much of a war without a competing format. JVC introduced the two-hour VHS format, a slightly larger cassette using a bit less elegant recording head design, which recorded at somewhat lower quality, but worked equally well for the masses.

Sony responded by slowing down the tape to allow two hours of recording (and reducing video quality some), and then RCA, which took on the marketing lead for VHS, did the same thing and offered four-hour recording. This back and forth would end with VHS ultimately able to hold nine hours of low-resolution video and the marketing back and forth became more shrill.

Neither format really took off, though, until consumers could buy video tapes of movies — or at least rent them. And while VHS had an advantage of number of titles, it was one area that VHS appeared to have a virtual monopoly: porn. While porn production exploded in the early 1980s, virtually all of it was released on VHS and not Beta. Within a few years, what had been a fairly even race, turned into a romp, with VHS running away into the lead, forcing Sony to eventually sell VHS machines.

Beta continued in the hands of a few purists and was widely used for video production, in part because of its superior design. A digital version came out in the late 1990s and continues to be used in video production, while digital VHS formats, and even HD-VHS formats never really caught on. VHS whithered away to first a commodity product and, then ultimately, a disposable one. A failed marketing argument used to keep VHS sales afloat noting the how the front-loading slot on the machines were the perfect size to fit a peanut butter and jelly sandwich backfired when a commercial aired during Saturday morning kids' TV shows, prompting two-year-olds around the country to test it for themselves.

But the concept of a format war caught on, the PBJ fiasco notwithstanding. If manufacturers were worried about a consumer backlash, they might have been surprised to see consumers happily buy new VHS units to replace their beta machines. Still, it took some time for this to catch on — and only brave pioneers in the computer age and gaming companies were able to put this in practice effectively before the end of the century.

While I won’t list every pre-2000 format war — and there were a decent number — here’s a few highlights: Mac vs. Windows — with Beta vs. VHS long over and both formats painfully retro, this format war is now more than 20 years old. Although Apple did virtually everything it could to lose the war in the 1990s, Microsoft’s sloppy design, need to be compatible with a jazillion hardware designs and poor implementation of both the Internet and user interface allowed a resurgent Apple to get up off the mat and begin building marketshare with OSX, a fully modern operating system. If, as some predict, Vista is a bloated planecrash, this could actually get interesting again.

Another long term battle has been Sony’s PlayStation versus XBox. Both Sony and Micorsoft know their way around format wars — and some might suggest have been solely responsible for a number of them over the years — neither side has been able to vanquish the other, with sales tied to the newness of each side’s current generation system. This mammoth battle left Sega a smoking ruin on the side of the road and left Nintendo — which a generation ago wiped out Atari with the original NES, rolling the dice on the less powerful Wii in a bid to keep even slightly relevant in the console world.

Maybe one of the most humorous format wars has been SACD versus DVD-A. Instead of settling on one higher resolution format, the industry managed to create to amazingly similar formats (yes, I know, SACD sounds a bit better) when it was going to be tough sledding to get consumers to move beyond CD with only one format. While both sides argued about higher resolution and better sound (if, uh, you have good enough equipment to actually reproduce it), people were instead buying iPods — and listening to their favorite music at lower digital resolution than CDs. Even with a handful of decent players that play both formats (although it’s rare to have one that plays both exceptionally well), neither format has taken off.

Some might argue that there was (or is) something of a format war between Dolby Digital and DTS. Well, it’s a rivalry only in the sense that Bambi vs. Godzilla was a rivalry. Ask most people about DTS and they’ll tell you it’s a car.

This foreshadows another amazingly self-destructive format war: HD-DVD vs. Blue Ray. Put aside that only a trained eye on a large enough display call tell the difference between a standard DVD and either one of these formats and that’s assuming you own a display that is high enough resolution to actually display a full 720p or 1080p signal, (sounds familiar, right?) the fact that there are two competing formats has buyers shying away from the players, even thought they’ve begun a drop in price in recent months.

Murder by numbers
But there have been advances, almost all of which have come in the transition from analog to digital.

CD’s, still going strong after almost 25 years on the market, were the vanguard of the digital revolution, killing the LP record and all but wiping out the cassette. Although downloading services such as iTunes are probably the death knell of the CD over the long haul — it opened the door to the digital entertainment world we all live in now.

Digital satellite TV, such as DirecTV and Dish Network, forced cheap cable operators to upgrade their offerings and create something called digital cable. And while both businesses are likely going to be doomed within two decades by Internet-based video delivery systems, the move to digital video generally meant clearer pictures (although there are resolution issues at times) and many, many more channels.

While marketing people had trouble with esoteric audio formats such as SACD, DVD had no such issue. Although before launch back in the 1990s, it looked like there would be another pointless format war, everyone made nice and DVD exploded on the scene. Consumers could see the difference — and they could hear it, too. After some initial resistance, all of the Hollywood studios got on board, and now DVD is so important to their businesses that a number of studios are considering releasing DVDs on the same day and date as theatrical releases, to maximize their marketing dollar.

Another winner, it appears is HDTV: high-resolution, digital broadcast/cable/satellite TV. Again, consumers can see bigger, better, sharper pictures — and millions of colors they could never see on their old TVs. The entire TV experience has become much more theatrical and engrossing.

Digital technology also brought us Tivo (and for a while Replay) and other digital video recorders, which worked much more seamlessly, although some people seem to have an unnatural attachment or hatred of the little Tivo guy, which is an unusual side effect. And of course, there’s the Internet, a bazillion digital computers all talking to each other which continues to change everything about how we are entertained to how we work.

And digital cellphones, PDAs and yes, even GPS systems to keep us from getting lost or finding Chinese food at 3 a.m.

More To Come
And while we’re in a bit of a seeming lull, after the massive digital transition of the late 1990s and early 2000s, we may see a whole new world of changes in coming years as quantum computing begins to take hold — and carbon nanotubes vastly reduce the size and power consumption of various devices.

You own a music player someday that is nothing more than a memory chip implanted in your arm. The chip run off your body’s electric current and you’ll listen through tiny impants. You’ll tap a small metal probe connected to your computer or home entertainment system and download your music to the chip.

A similar system could send video right to your optic nerve, and create and immersive and real environment.

In the nearer term, we’ll see even flatter, larger displays, some of which will be flexible. We’ll see the end of old cathode ray tube, already on it’s death bed — and we’ll also see the end of plasma, CRT’s hipper, flatter cousin, as LCD and OLED become flatter, less power hungry and produce better, cheaper pictures.

The biggest challenge in the coming years: integrating technology better and more naturally into our lives and our culture. while we’ve created the ability to be in touch 24/7 it’s not healthy over the long haul for people — and new options and new ethical codes will be created to make life more livable and technology more transparent.

Whether that means the end of pop up ads — or worse, ads jumping into our psyche from cyberspace — is unclear, as all of the old models of advertising and subscription seem to have been destroyed.

Whatever happens, you’ll probably end up hearing way too much about it.

And now the quiz.

Stop by our forums and tell us what you think is the biggest innovation in home entertainment history. No essays required, but feel free to elaborate.