[ceebee23]

Although I am no expert in this field, the primary limitation with standard domestic VCRs, was and is the luminence under chroma recording method.

This limits the luminence ie monochrome resolution to around 240 (VHS) 270 Beta) lines.

Both SVHS and Beta ED extended the resolution to around 350-400 lines for SVHS and up to 500 lines with Beta ED.

Buth this required metal tapes and substanitally revised electronics.

Of course from the early days of vcrs there was always the option of Laserdisc and in even CED disks which offered superior images.

Both formats had issues (CED didn't survive for very long in the NTSC market let alone the PAL market).

But back to NTSC 405 line which was an option for the UK ....in many cases 625 line tv sets both colour and black and white, especially early colour sets would not have been much "sharper" than their 405 line cousins so waiting 15 years or more to go to colour didn't really add much.

The sad part of the UK not adopting colour in the 50s is that all those great BBC dramas from the 50s and 60s are only black and white!