On this day in 1977, JVC introduced the VHS tape at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. Its main competitor was Sony’s Betamax, which had been introduced a year earlier. Betamax cassettes were smaller and had better picture quality than VHS, however, they were also more expensive and had less recording time. VHS eventually won out over Betamax, gaining 60% of the North American market in 1980. The first movies to be released on VHS in North America were “The Sound of Music”, “Patton”, and “M*A*S*H” in 1977. The highest selling VHS tape of all time is “The Lion King”, with over 55 million copies sold worldwide. “Titanic” has the distinction of being the only movie available on VHS and in theaters at the same time. VHS started declining in popularity after DVDs were introduced in March 1997. The last major studio film to be released on VHS was “A History of Violence” in 2006. Production of all VHS equipment stopped by 2016. Learn more in the audio below.