Back in 1996, the year that the DVD format was released, JVC finalised the specifications for the D-VHS format – a digital tape format that used MPEG2 to store SD and HD content with many DVD-like features.

With support from Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips, the D-VHS format boasted the ability to record up to 3.5 hours of High Definition content at a bitrate of 28.2 Mbps or between 7 and 49 hours of Standard Definition content at bitrates ranging from 14.1 Mbps down to 2 Mbps.

D-VHS also supported 5.1 channel and 2 channel PCM audio, and full compatibility with all ATSC broadcasting formats for HDTV support – this was its major advantage over DVD, which is only just waking up to high definition content through HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

The format only supported bitstream recording, which meant that analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion wasn’t native to the standard – however IEEE1394 (commonly known as FireWire) was incorporated as a standard interface for D-VHS and most D-VHS decks included encoders and decoders that permitted analog interfaces.

Backwards compatibility with S-VHS and VHS was a bonus, however the confinement to a linear storage medium (tape) would always be a serious disadvantage as compared to optical, solid state, or hard disk mediums – which support random access so we don’t have to rewind and fast-forward to get to the content that we want to play back.