In the 1970's the market for movies and television available for home video was VHS and Betamax videotape. Video Home System (VHS) was developed by Victor Company of Japan (JVC) and was released in Japan in late 1976 and in the United States in early 1977.

The two formats battled for market control, VHS ultimately narrowly won dominating 60 percent of the North American market by 1980 and emerging as the dominant home video format.

The Laserdisc was invented and originally called "Videodisk" by David Paul Gregg in 1958, and enhanced by James Russell in 1965. Dr. Gregg was employed by Westrex a division of Western Electric.

Laserdisc was the first optical videodisc format. MCA and Philips initially marketed the format, in 1978, as MCA DiscoVision, with the first release being ‘Jaws’. Laser disks became more of a niche format that appealed mostly to hard-core video enthusiasts. The disks didn't catch on as much as it could have because of several factors: the hardware was too expensive, the disks could not be used to record therefore viewers were restricted to pre-recorded films and many movie distributors were refusing to put out their movies in this format.

In 1995, Philips and Sony announced a new technology, the "digital video disc" or DVD and sounded the commercial death knell of all three formats. The last Laserdisc titles were released in the US in 2000, and in Japan in 2001.

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