Video Compact Cassette
The Philips Video Compact Cassette (VCC) was the first practical home video cassette recorder system. The format appeared at around the same time as the Sony N1500 VCC recorder cost nearly £600 in the UK when it was introduced in 1973 - that's the equivalent of more than £4500 today.
The system used large cassettes with 2 co-axial reels, one on top of the other, containing half inch wide slant azimuth technique to prevent crosstalk between adjacent video tracks, so had to use an unrecorded guard band between tracks. This gave the system a comparatively high tape speed of around 11.5 inches per second.
The recorders themselves were mechanically very complicated and proved somewhat unreliable. The VCC system was rapidly superseded by the superior VHS and Betamax systems, which offered longer playing times, slightly better resolution and greater reliability.
However, the VCC system brought together many advances in video recording technology to produce the first truly practical home video cassette system, and led directly to the development of the systems that ultimately replaced it.
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