Uh, yes, VHS was (is) absolutely a standard.
One developed by JVC and released in 1976 in Japan.
Sony had its own proprietary standard, which was Betamax....
Sony pushed for the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry to adopt it as "the" standard for home video... which would have meant everyone else paying Sony to use it since it wasn't an open standard.
JVC countered with their VHS standard, which WAS open, and thus others could build machines using it cheaply in comparison.
Eventually Panasonic, Sharp, Mitsubishi, and Hitachi all supported JVCs idea, not wanting sony to have an advantage by owning the "winning" standard.
That's a popular urban legend- but unsupported by any actual data or evidence.
The reason VHS won is largely attributed to 2 things:
1) Beta cost more-a lot more- roughly
3 times more for a machine and
2) Beta launched with a 1 hour max recording capacity. Too short for movies. JVCs VHS did 2 hours. Enough for movies. (and RCA would be along shortly with 4 hours on VHS machines to handle things like football games)
Betamax remained significantly more expensive year after year, and It wasn't until the early 1980s that Beta caught up to VHS on recording times, and by then the fight was largely lost for them, with 75% of the market being VHS already.
If you want more evidence debunking the porn myth I suggest this link-
VHS vs Betamax: How influential was the pornography industry in the format war?
Several posts reiterate the facts I've told you (that it was mainly about recording length and price) with sourced links backing those facts up....then the answer near the bottom more directly debunks the porn aspect by pointing out these facts:
A) Porn was also available on Beta (with evidence and links to that fact)
B) Porn was only a tiny fraction of sales in the total home video market during the time the VCR format wars were going on compared to "regular" content
