Claim: VHS was released in late 1976 in Japan.

The Video Home System -LRB- VHS -RRB- is a standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes . Developed by Victor Company of Japan -LRB- JVC -RRB- in the early 1970s , it was released in Japan in late 1976 and in the USA in early 1977 .   From the 1950s , magnetic tape video recording became a major contributor to the television industry , via the first commercialized video tape recorders -LRB- VTRs -RRB- . At that time , the devices were used only in expensive professional environments such as television studios and medical imaging -LRB- fluoroscopy -RRB- . In the 1970s , videotape entered home use , creating the home video industry and changing the economics of the television and movie businesses . The television industry viewed videocassette recorders -LRB- VCRs -RRB- as having the power to disrupt their business , while television users viewed the VCR as the means to take control of their hobby .   In the 1980s and 1990s , at the peak of VHS 's popularity , there were videotape format wars in the home video industry . Two of the formats , VHS and Betamax , received the most media exposure . VHS eventually won the war , dominating 60 percent of the North American market by 1980 and emerging as the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period .   Optical disc formats later began to offer better quality than analog consumer video tape such as standard and super-VHS . The earliest of these formats , LaserDisc , was not widely adopted . However , after the introduction of the DVD format in 1997 , VHS 's market share began to decline . By 2008 , DVD had replaced VHS as the preferred low-end method of distribution .