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Although Quad became the industry standard for 20 years, it had drawbacks such as an inability to freeze pictures, and in early machines, a tape could only reliably be played back using the same set of hand-made tape heads, which wore out very quickly. Despite these problems, Quad could produce excellent images. Unfortunately, very few early videotapes still exist. The high cost of early videotapes meant that most broadcasters erased and reused them, and regarded videotape as simply a better and more cost-effective means of time-delaying broadcasts than the previous kinescope technology, which recorded television pictures onto photographic film. However, some early broadcast videotapes have survived, including The Edsel Show , broadcast live in 1957, and 1958's An Evening With Fred Astaire , the oldest color broadcast videotape known to exist.

The first first domestic videocassette recorders were launched in the early 1970s, but it was not until the Japanese systems, Sony's BetaBeta can stand for: Β or β the 2nd letter of the Greek alphabet. See Beta (letter). Beta should not be confused with a similar-looking but unrelated letter in German language orthography, ss, which denotes a long "s" sound. The plant genus Beta ( 1975Events January January 1 Watergate scandal: John N. Mitchell, H. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman are found guilty of the Watergate cover-up and are sentenced to 30 months to 8 years in jail on February 21 January 5 The Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia, i) and JVC's VHSThe Video Home System better known by its acronym VHS is the recording and playing standard for video cassette recorders (VCRs), developed by JVC and launched in 1976. It became a standard format for consumer recording and viewing in the 1980s after compe, were launched, that videotape moved into the mass market, resulting in what came to be known as the "format wars". VHS finally won, mainly due to its longer recording time compared to Beta.