I know it was invented,much earlier,but I want to know,when did people start buying them for home use?I`m thinking it was around 1982.Maybe 1980 or 81.
It was around 1976 when the Sony Beta Max made its debut on the market. Fine quality video but tapes only held about 30 minutes of recording. In the next few years it was overwhelmed by a system designed by JVC which could record up to 90 minutes of video.
Even today you'll still see some television news crews using Beta Max format because of the higher quality video. News clips don't have to worry about overshooting the 30 minute limit.
Of course all of the video tape formats are nearly dead as they have been replaced by digital DVD (which is being replaced by Blue Ray DVD, a format that can pack even more and higher quality recording on a DVD disk.)
