A videocassette is a plastic case containing magnetic tape used to record and play back television shows and movies. Before streaming services and DVDs, families watched movies at home by inserting videocassettes into machines called VCRs (video cassette recorders). The most common format was VHS, which dominated home entertainment from the 1980s through the early 2000s.

The tape inside worked like a long ribbon that stored video and audio information magnetically. To watch a movie, you'd slide the cassette into your VCR, and the machine would pull the tape across special heads that read the information and displayed it on your TV. You could rent videocassettes from video stores, record TV shows to watch later, or buy movies to keep in your collection.

Videocassettes had quirks that seem strange now: you had to rewind them before returning rentals to the store, the picture quality degraded if you watched them too many times, and if the tape got tangled or broken, your movie could be ruined. Despite these limitations, videocassettes revolutionized entertainment by letting people watch what they wanted, when they wanted, instead of waiting for shows to air on TV.

By the mid-2000s, DVDs and later digital streaming made videocassettes obsolete, but many people still have boxes of old VHS tapes in their attics.