High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The videotape format war was a period of intense competition or "format war" of incompatible models of video cassette recorders (VCR) in the late 1970s and the 1980s. The first home VCR to became widely available was the Philips Video Cassette Recording system, released in 1972. However, the first system to be successful with consumers was Sony's Betamax in 1975. This was quickly followed by the competing VHS (Video Home System) format from JVC, and later by Video 2000 from Philips. Subsequently, the Betamax-VHS format war began in earnest. Other competitors, such as Sanyo's V-Cord and Quasar's "Great Time Machine" quickly disappeared.