Australian Home Video

The History of Home Video in Australia begins in 1979 when pre-recorded video cassettes of films first became to come on the Australian market.

Unlike Europe and America, in Australia only the formats VHS and Betamax were marketed to the general public where as other formats such as Video 2000 and CED Disc where also available at the time in Europe.

During the early 80's films released onto home video had few laws to govern what could be released and there was no laws saying they had to be certificated by the OFLC (Official Film And Literature Classification board). For a period the Censorship Board simply viewed the tapes and passed them as 'Special Condition', the definition of which was:

That the film/tape will not be exhibited in any State in contravention of that State's law relating to the exhibition of films.

In February 1984 it became law for all video tapes to be classified, this was due to the Video Nasties stir in the UK at the time which led to the Video Recordings Act of 1984 from which Australia quickly followed suit. The censors began the slow task of reviewing all the titles that had been released up until that time from which some were deemed obscene and rated RC (Refused Classification).

The Video Recordings Act was amended in 1986 to further protect copyright holders against piracy and touch up on the roughness of the original act. In 1989 it was again amended with a mandatory style that rating certificates had to be presented. The Certificate had to be printed on the bottom left of the Video's cover in a bar and on the bottom of the index, this was to make the ratings advice more noticeable to parents and guardians. Recently in 2006 the certificate's mandatory style was updated again, this time with rounded rectangle boxes resembling stickers containing the colour coded certificate.