JVC gave the world VHS and won the home video format war
In 1976 JVC unveiled the first VHS video recorder in Tokyo, priced at the equivalent of US$1,060. Sony's Betamax had arrived a year earlier with smaller cassettes and slightly sharper pictures. Yet JVC's format won the battle that followed. The same company had also built Japan's first televisions back in 1939.
JVC began in 1927 as the Japanese arm of the Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey, making phonographs and records. When the Radio Corporation of America bought Victor in 1929, the Japanese subsidiary came with it. Because rights to the Victor name and the His Master's Voice dog logo belonged to different successor companies abroad, it sold as Victor at home but as JVC or Nivico for export. From the 1950s Matsushita, now Panasonic, owned most of it.
Its engineers liked novelty. The 1970 Videosphere, a portable television in a casing shaped like a space helmet with an alarm clock at the base, sold well. In 1971 JVC introduced CD-4, the first discrete four-channel quadraphonic system for vinyl records. The 1976 model 3060 combined radio, cassette recorder and a 3-inch television, making it the world's first boombox with all three. A 1982 portable player had a radio built into its headphones, though JVC struggled to make such products succeed.
The VHS recorder was the Victor HR-3300, launched at Tokyo's Okura Hotel on 9 September 1976 and sold in the Akihabara district from 31 October. JVC also developed the VHD video disc and, later, hard drive camcorders; in October 2001 it received an Emmy for pioneering consumer camcorders. In 2005 it announced the first dual-layer rewritable DVD-RW media.
Beyond electronics, JVC sponsored football from 1982, including Arsenal's shirts and the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan. As its fortunes faded, Matsushita cut its stake, and on 1 October 2008 JVC merged with Kenwood to form JVCKenwood. The independent company is gone, but the brand survives under its successor.
Source: JVC
