Timeline of video formats
A video format is a medium for video recording and reproduction. The term is applied to both the physical recording media and the recording formats. Video is recorded and distributed using a variety of formats, some of which store additional information.
Timeline of video format developments
| Year | Physical media formats | Recording formats |
| 1889 | Film | An analogue medium that is used for recording motion pictures or animation. It is recorded on by a movie camera, developed, edited, and projected onto a screen using a movie projector. It is a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film base coated on one side with a gelatin emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. |
| 1956 | Quadruplex videotape | The first practical and commercially successful analogue recording video tape format, developed and released for the broadcast television industry by Ampex. |
| 1971 | U-matic | Analogue video format developed by Sony, among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette. Mainly saw use in the television broadcast industry. |
| 1975 | Betamax | Analogue video format developed by Sony. Inspired the later Betacam professional format. |
| 1976 | Type B videotape | Reel-to-reel analogue recording video tape format developed by the Bosch Fernseh division of Bosch in Germany. It became the broadcasting standard in continental Europe, but adoption was limited in the United States and United Kingdom, where the Type C videotape format met with greater success. |
| 1976 | Type C videotape | Professional reel-to-reel analogue recording helical scan videotape format co-developed and introduced by Ampex and Sony in 1976. Displaced the 2-inch quadruplex videotape in the broadcasting industry. |
| 1976 | VHS | Analogue video recording on tape cassettes. Beat Betamax to become the dominant format for home analogue video. |
| 1978 | LaserDisc | Analogue video that was read via laser stored on a 12 inch disc. |
| 1981 | Capacitance Electronic Disc | The Capacitance Electronic Disc is an analogue video disc playback system developed by RCA, in which video and audio could be played back on a TV set using a special needle and high-density groove system similar to phonograph records. |
| 1984 | 8mm | Three related video cassette formats: the original Video8, Hi8, its improved variant, and Digital8. With much smaller tapes than VHS and Betamax, this format became very popular in the consumer camcorder market. |
| 1987 | Super VHS | An improved version of the VHS standard for consumer-level video recording. S-VHS improves luminance resolution by increasing luminance bandwidth. Increased bandwidth is possible because of the increased luminance carrier from 3.4 megahertz to 5.4 MHz. The luminance modulator bandwidth also is increased: in contrast to standard VHS's frequencies of 3.8 MHz to 4.8 MHz, S-VHS uses 5.4 MHz sync tip and 7.0 MHz peak white. |
| 1995 | DV | DV, from Digital Video, is a family of codecs and tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. |
| 1997 | DVD-Video | Digital. MPEG-2 video format and Dolby Digital or Digital Theatre System audio format stored on a DVD. |
| 1999 | VideoMD | Digital format which stored video on MiniDisc. Saw limited use. |
| 2001 | MicroMV | Proprietary videotape format introduced in October 2001 by Sony. It is the smallest videotape format. |
| 2003 | DualDisc | Digital. Multiple formats encoded onto the same disc. |
| 2005 | HD DVD | Digital. Uses VC-1, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, or H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2 video formats and Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio audio formats. |
| 2006 | Blu-ray Disc | Digital. Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio. |
| 2008 | slotMusic | Digital. Primarily used for MP3, however may also include high-quality images and videos. Stored on microSD or microSDHC. |
| 2008 | Blu-spec CD | Digital. PCM |
| 2016 | Ultra HD Blu-ray | Digital H.265/MPEG-H Part 2. Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio. |