DBWI: What if VHS beat LaserDisc in the Format Wars?

When it comes to early home video, LaserDisc comes to mind for almost everyone. We all have fond memories of going out to buy or rent the newest movies on those large Vinyl-sized movies, which were just pretty to look at, both the movie quality and the shiny golden discs themselves, and flipping halfway allowed for an intermission or a snack break or whatnot, and just added to the charm of the format. (PS, what are some of your fondest memories of the format?) However, competition in the Format Wars was fierce, with Betamax and especially VHS threatening to corner the market. What do you think would've happened if the Format Wars would've progressed in a different way?
 
With an easier to pirate/copy format winning, we might see a hardening of copyright law in the 1990s or 2000s.
Yeah, can you imagine the Internet in a world like that? Although, my dad did buy quite a few (more expensive) recordable LaserDiscs, and recording those home movies resulted in some happy memories.
 
Well, without rampant piracy scaring media producers from allowing "legitimite" streaming options we probably would have had more people online. Maybe people outside of Japan would be browsing the internet on their phones.
 
Well, without rampant piracy scaring media producers from allowing "legitimite" streaming options we probably would have had more people online. Maybe people outside of Japan would be browsing the internet on their phones.
We would all be phone slaves. Btw, What format did you believe deserved to win?
 
Well, I had both a Pioneer LaserDisc player and a Philips Video 2000 Video-Compact-Cassette recorder, the first used to play back rented LDs and the other to record TV programmes and, later on, after the purchase of a "video stabilizer", that would filter out the MacroVision copy-protection signal on the LDs, to record the content of the rented out LDs.

It was always a trade-off between playing-time and picture quality and I chose to go for the extremes, with LD offering 2 times 60, later on 2 times 90 mintes per medium and the best picture quality, BetaMax offering 195 minutes, VHS up to 300 minutes and Video 2000 2 times 240 minutes in SP and 2 times 480 minutes in LP mode and the poorest picture quality.

This of course was largely mitigated when Philips and Grundig introduced their improved Super Video 2000 recorders in 1989, that could capture the full picture quality of the original LDs, to which Pioneer responded by launching HQ-LDs in 1990, offering up to 1152 lines of resoöution for PAL-HD-TVs, which, by the mid 1990s became the global HD standard.

I can hardly imagine the hassle it would have been for video rentals to wind back returned VHS tapes, because unlike BetaMax and Video 2000, VHS machines did, for a long time, not offer autorewind. I can still remember how angry our video rental guys could get when you returned a Video 2000 cassette rewound on the wrong side, especially if it happened repeatedly. They even started charging a rewinding fee.

The easier handling and the smaller storage space needed were, next to the superior picture quality, the main reasons why video rentals preferred the LD format and started phasing out Video Compact Cassettes by the late 1980s. BTW Gatrett_Cartoonist, even if you hadn't stated your location, it would have been obvious that you are from America since you didn't even mention VCC / Video 2000, which held the lion share in the video cassette market in Europe throughout most of the 1980's while hardly present in the American market at all.
 
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