If you know one thing about JVC it’s that
they invented VHS, probably because they won’t stop banging on about it! But JVC has a long
history that goes back to the start of the 20th century, and it doesn’t begin in Japan,
but New Jersey. What’s with the “Victor” name in the Japan Victor Company, how did
a Japanese company with American roots fair during the Second World War, and why haven’t
we seen much innovation from them lately? This is the JVC Story. [music] The invention of recorded audio at the end of the 19th century led to a gold rush of
companies wanting to capitalise on this new technology, like the AI gold rush today. One
such company was the “Victor Talking Machine Company”, founded in 1901 in New Jersey.
It became famous for the “His Master’s Voice” logo which came from a painting showing
a dog named “Nipper” listening intently to his deceased owner’s voice. The original
painting rather embarrassingly showed an Edison phonograph, not a Victor machine, but this
was edited out for the “His Master’s Voice” logo of course!
Victor grew quickly, thanks to its early adoption of the 78rpm record format, but they sunk
again upon the introduction of wireless radio. Why buy physical media when you could “stream”
it for free, especially when live broadcasts sounded better than records? Victor’s response
was higher quality recordings done with electrical microphones and amplifiers, launched in 1925
with a big splash as “Victor Day”. They launched the first consumer record player
to play these recordings – the “audiophile’s” choice for the 1920s.
Victor’s success led to subsidiaries in other countries, and in 1927 they founded
the Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan and were responsible for pressing the first
Japanese phonograph recording. Two years later Victor was purchased wholesale by the Radio
Corporation of America or RCA, less for the record player business and more for their
distribution network to sell more radios. A few months after the purchase, the Wall
Street Crash led to a big decrease in the record player market. Consumers who could
barely afford food let alone records switched to listening to the radio for free. Victor
of Japan switched from making phonographs and records to producing radios and speakers
in the 1930s, and also produced Japan’s first locally made television in 1939.
With the outbreak of war between Japan and China, RCA weren’t comfortable with a Japanese
subsidiary, so withdrew their funding. It was bought by one of the 15 Japanese zaibatsu,
or family-run mega-corporations. RCA allowed the company to continue using the “Victor”
and “His Master’s Voice” trademarks, but only in Japan. The company would go on
to be sold to Tokyo Electric, a company that would go on to become Toshiba.
Being named after an American company while fighting the Americans wasn’t ideal, so
Victor of Japan renamed itself to the Nippon Onkyo Company in 1943. You may think that
the “Onkyo” name means that there’s some connection between JVC and high-end audio
company Onkyo, but sadly no. “Onkyo” in Japanese roughly translates to “sound resonance”.
A completely separate company became that Onkyo we know today, and in fact there was
another company “Nippon Denki Onkyo” that became Denon.
At the end of the war Victor of Japan was renamed once again to the Japan Victor Company,
or JVC for short. Ownership changed again to the Industrial Bank of Japan, but they
quickly ran into financing problems. Japan was on its knees after the war, and there
was no money to repay JVC’s debts and keep the company going. The bank approached Toshiba,
again!, and also the American RCA company to take on JVC, but there was no interest.
JVC would eventually be owned by Matsushita, better known by their Panasonic brand.
JVC’s main focus after the war seems to have been producing radios. Like after the
Wall Street Crash, times were hard in post war Japan which meant few people were buying
records. But by 1953 the economy had recovered enough that JVC began selling records once
more, and by the late 1950s they were producing musical instruments and
stereo reel-to-reel tape recorders. A seminal moment came in 1959 when JVC developed
their first video tape recorder. They weren’t the first to create this technology. Bing
Crosby, the famous crooner had proposed one as early as 1951, and the BBC had shown off
their VERA machine that had been developed in 1952. That machine wasn’t practical though
– the tape was pulled through at a rate of 5 metres (16’) per second! What made
the JVC machine revolutionary was the two-head helical scan system that meant the tape speed
was much slower, however the machine was still the size of a small room, so only really useful
for TV studios. This quickly changed. In 1963 the KV-2 was
a great deal smaller, with a built-in monitor. By this point it could record at a speed of
15cm (6”) per second, meaning a 1 hour TV programme could fit on a standard 7” (18cm)
reel of 1” (2½cm) video tape. Video recorders were starting to become somewhat practical.
They would become even more practical with the first colour video cartridge recorder
in 1966. This formed the basis of the U-Matic video cassette standard, created with JVC’s
parent Matsushita and Sony, and released in 1971. JVC had been manufacturing TVs throughout the 1960s, and in 1970 introduced the “Videosphere”.
With the world fascinated in space travel, this was a novelty TV shaped like a space
helmet from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was truly portable, and could be run off
a battery pack or a car’s cigarette lighter, but it was perhaps the iconic look that made
it sell so well. JVC was also moving into high-end audio, as
Japanese electronics became a force on the world stage. In 1971 they developed CD-4 with
old American partner RCA. It was arguably the best of the quadraphonic systems for LPs,
but like all other quadraphonic systems it was ultimately a failure.
The Victor company had always been both a hardware business producing phonographs, and
a record producer, working with recording artists. JVC had continued this tradition,
but in 1972 spun their record business off into a separate company. That company would
go on to create US and European divisions, would spend the late 1980s and 1990s producing
console games, and survives today as Victor Entertainment at the URL JVCMusic.co.jp.
U-Matic had failed to gain a hold in the consumer video market due to its high cost and short
running time. For the next generation of video technology, Sony, Matsushita and JVC went
their separate ways, producing their own standard. As we all know, Sony produced Betamax, JVC
created VHS, and Matsushita released its VX format. As you may have never heard of VX,
you won’t be surprised to know it was short-lived. Matsushita quickly threw their weight behind
VHS from their subsidiary JVC to try to head off Sony’s dominance. JVC were happy to
license their format to all takers, and Matsushita’s backing encouraged other companies to support
it over Betamax. VHS won the format war despite being the last of the formats to be released.
I’ve now realised the first video recorder I experienced was the first VHS machine that
JVC produced – the HR-3300EK, although it was branded by Granada which where we rented
the device from. JVC wasn’t just video though, they still
sold a wide range of audio products, both high and low end. JVC also tried their own
line of Walkman style cassette players, and sold a range of car stereos. On the Hi-fi
end, in the 1970s JVC offered a wide range of Hi-fi components, including speakers. The
GB-1E globe speakers were supposed to sound the same no matter where in the room you sat
and were the height of 70s fashion! In the 1980s JVC introduced direct-drive cassette
decks that were supposed to offer much better sound through better speed stability. By 1990
they were offering DAT recorders and digital sound processors.
Like many Japanese electronics companies, they would dip their toe into computers through
the MSX format, but like those other companies they weren’t very successful.
JVC would offer better quality video recording with the S-VHS standard. They would also add
high quality stereo sound and compact VHS-C tapes for camcorders. JVC introduced W-VHS
that allowed for analogue high definition video, then Digital-VHS or D-VHS that, that as you
can probably work out, recorded video digitally. VHS was ideal for recording vast
amounts of data. 8 track digital audio recorders for the music industry used VHS tape.
As the world started turning to disc-based video formats such as DVD, JVC stuck to their
guns, refining D-VHS into D-Theater. That offered higher quality video, but with few
consumers owning high definition TVs, and discs being more convenient – these new
VHS formats failed to gain any traction. Most people didn’t even buy S-VHS video recorders.
They stuck with a standard VHS video recorder, probably recording in lower quality “long
play” mode until they bought a DVD player and a DVR to record their TV programmes.
JVC’s inability to capitalise on DVD was due to its lack of funds after backing a previous
disc format a decade earlier. You may be aware of Laserdisc – a large optical disc that
provided better quality video playback than VHS. JVC, again backed by Matsushita offered
the rival VHD format, that also went up against the CED format by JVCs old parent RCA.
CED would be the ruin of RCA in the 1980s. JVC faired a little better. VHD was a moderate
success in Japan, and JVC could also fall back on its VHS royalties, but with the lack
of success of Laserdisc and CED, JVC never launched VHD worldwide and its lack of success
damaged JVCs finances. There was talk of a Hi-Vision version of VHD,
but with the success of VHS for playing back pre-recorded films, there was little incentive
for JVC to push VHD hard as they were only cannibalising sales of their own format. Better
to promote D-VHS, but that also didn’t gain much traction.
The failure of all these new formats, and expiring VHS patents severely damaged JVCs
finances. 4,000 jobs were cut between 1991 and 1995. R&D budgets were slashed, but they
did introduce the first widescreen TV in 1991 and they developed the new Video CD standard
with Philips. Video CD promised to be a more convenient video format, but with a maximum
vertical resolution of just 288 pixels it didn’t look that great, not that much better
than VHS, and it couldn’t hold a full movie on one disc. DVD fixed both of these problems
and that wrongfooted JVC, although they did contribute their MPEG compression work from
Video CD. JVC had sold a video camera with their early
VHS machines, and continued selling a range of popular VHS camcorders in the 80s and 90s.
The company then moved into producing video projectors. JVC tried selling PCs, but this
was already a crowded market and they found it hard to make inroads. By 2001 JVC accounted
for only 7% of parent Matsushita’s sales. They shed a further 3,500 jobs and continued
to report losses. Parent Matsushita wanted to get rid of JVC,
and did a series of deals to merge it with Kenwood, creating JVCKenwood in 2008. The
two companies combined their efforts in car entertainment, and dropped loss making lines
like camcorders. In the 2020s JVC sells car entertainment systems,
rebranded TVs, headphones, a couple of Bluetooth speakers and a boombox. The best part of its
range seems to be its award winning projectors. In Japan they sell some more rebranded products,
a few more audio products and a camcorder. The JVC brand was introduced to Japan in the
1990s, but the company is still known as Victor and they still own that brand for the Japanese
market. So, if you want earbuds with the "His Master’s Voice” logo, they’re available
in purple for just £32 or ¥5,940 ($40 USD, €37, $61 AUD).
Sadly they don’t make record players, but there’s a limited edition music box designed
to look like those old Victor phonographs – a snip at ¥1.2M or around £6,400
($8,000 USD, €7,300, $12,300 AUD)! VHS was a success because it was a good format,
but also because it had the backing of Matsushita, and that JVC aggressively licensed the technology.
Back in 1901 the Victor company capitalised on the success of recorded audio. In the 1960s
JVC realised the next logical step was recorded video. They refined the technology into something
that was the right product for the time. JVC realised VHS had a limited life span as
customers demanded cinematic experiences. The problem was their timing. They developed
VHD in the 70s and it hit the market just as customers were buying video recorders.
They didn’t want two systems, especially as VHD’s quality wasn’t much better than
VHS. Why buy it when all your local video rental shops stocked VHS tapes? JVC backed
the Video CD standard, really just video files on a compact disc, but optical media in the
1980s couldn’t contain enough information for a full movie at a decent resolution. VHS
tape could hold all that information and more, which is why JVC created the S-VHS and D-VHS
standards, but they were fighting their own product – VHS – that customers had just
bought. Why upgrade when there aren’t higher quality tapes at the rental shops, and rental
shops won’t stock the tapes if there aren’t any players. It’s the classic chicken and
egg story. The same problem happened with D-VHS, there weren’t any high definition
TVs – they were just too expensive to produce, so there was no market. Like VHD, JVC got
the timing wrong. The failure of CD-4 and VHD wounded the company’s
finances, meaning they had to fall back on evolving their VHS line to keep paying the
bills, but when the VHS royalties dried up they were a spent force. VHS was definitely
JVCs crowning achievement. No wonder they’re always banging on about it! Victor and JVC capitalised on the boom in recorded audio and video. A similar boom for
bicycles and then automobiles happened around the time this audio boom happened, and one
company that benefitted more than most was Dunlop. After all, you’ll always need new tyres!
Watch the full history of the company on the right. Thanks for watching and I’ll
see you in the next video!
