Victor Co of Japan Ltd is following the Philips Electronics NV Digital Compact Cassette approach in its efforts to keep its VHS standard alive as the world prepares to go digital. It has developed a new home videotape recording format called D-VHS, which it said will enable up to 49 hours of highly compressed digital video to be recorded on each tape – but the players are being designed so that they also play VHS and S-VHS analogue tapes. JVC claims D-VHS has been endorsed by most major electronic companies and video cassette tape makers including Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd, Hitachi Ltd, Sony Corp, Philips and TDK Corp. Recorders are expected to appear at $1,500 to $3,000 next year.
