Beta vs VHS. A world in which Beta won.

[@zamiadams4343]

Great video man, just subbed, I love video!

[@jkmac625]

It wasn't just Thames that had MII, Anglia in Norwich did too. I went for a job interview at Anglia in 1996 and their videotape area had Panasonic MII decks and a single Sony BVW-75 BetaSP deck sat on a bench, presumably for exchanging tapes in that format. At that time Anglia's transmissions came from Meridian so it's possible they had some MII decks too. I was told one reason the BBC went with D3, apart from the fact Digi-Beta hadn't been invented yet, was being Composite Digital rather than Component Digital the "new" D3 machines (AJ-D350s) could easily be swapped with an existing 1 inch reel to reel video recorder. You've got to remember at the time (1991/92) places like BBC TV Centre were all wired up for PAL analogue signals, so there was no infrastructure to take advantage of component video. Sony's competing format at the time was the 3/4 inch D2 format, in fact the digital video inputs and outputs on a D3 VTR are called a D2 interface. So the choice at the time for a composite digital VTR was either D2 or D3 and they went with D3. There was an even more obscure format called Ampex DCT that was being tested, which I believe is similar to D2 with 3/4 inch tape. The D3 format wasn't just used to archive older 2 inch and 1 inch tapes, the format was also used to make new programmes throughout the 90's and into the early 2000's, so yes there would have been a vast collection of D3 tapes to be digitised in the BBC archives. Although by the late 90's the 1 inch archiving project were making simultaneous recordings on both D3 and Digi-Beta rather than two D3 copies. Digi-Beta was being used for post production work at the BBC during the 90's but it only became a transmission format in 1998 and exclusively for 16:9 widescreen programmes. D3 continued being used for regular 4:3 programmes, which is why it was still going in the early 2000's. As more productions changed over to filming in widescreen the D3 format was used less and less, and towards the end of it's life just used for archive programming. Channel 4 also went for D3 and then onto D5 (not sure about HD-D5). An optional board could be fitted to D5 VTRs (AJ-D580s) which allowed them to playback D3 recordings for backward compatibility. Some ITV regions also adopted the D3 format, I think one of them was Thames (the MII connection) and possibly Tyne Tees. I used to have a BKSTS wall chart back in the 90's that listed all the videotape formats and which UK broadcasters used them. Even JVC's Digital-S (D9) format was used for number of years as a cheap alternative to Digi-Beta by one major BBC production until they switched to HD, while others saw BetaSX as the cheaper digital alternative. DS/D9 was still in regular use when JVC released the later decks with 4 audio channels and front panel jog/shuttle control. The 4 track machines could playback older 2 track recordings, but I remember a warning sticker on the top of the 4 track machines (a JVC sticker) warning about the audio insert editing compatibility between the 2 variants. I never saw a DS/D9 deck fitted with the firewire option only SDI. Firewire didn't even come fitted as standard on Sony's broadcast DVCam decks (DSR-2000, DSR-60 etc), so firewire wasn't commonly used in broadcast TV. The DSR-2000 did have a way to copy the DV data directly between 2 machines without the optional firewire card, but it was done using a BNC connector/interface. I didn't see firewire in regular use until DVCPRO-HD arrived, as it was the only way to access the original 1440x1080 image as the HD-SDI output was upscaled to 1920x1080.

[@glenwoofit]

Interesting. I worked in a TV studio for 10 years and was a vision engineer so I used DIGI Beta a lot. I got out in 2005 so didn't see the HD version of Beta. Sony lent us a full HD system in 2003 to shoot a episode on when HD was new and I remember seeing for the first time a Sony HD 1080p CRT, It was huge but mesmerising to look at as it looked perfect. It was on a trolly in the CAR (room) while all the editing and transfers were being done so every time I passed I had to look at it.

[@aegisofhonor]

M was actually first developed by RCA but was such a massive flop that they gave up on it right away. Panasonic picked it up and made M-II or M-2 or whatever it was renamed as and it was 'slightly" more successful in the commercial space but betacam blew it out of the water in proliferation.

[@nostalgoteket.tvogradioark1494]

Danmarks radio TV also started out as the BBC by digitizing their oldest material 2 INCH tapes on the D3 format from 1992. But when Sony launched Digibeta in 1993, Danmarks Radio TV purchased the first Digibeta and then transferred to this new format. that was much more stable than the D3. Digibeta used the 4:2:2 encoding. I'm quite envious of your HD Cam SR. I would love to own one like that 🙂

[@dirkdeweerdt6956]

I don't agree on V2000. I worked in a repair shop and in it's time most of the V2000 vrt's worked fine and they needed no more time to service as VHS. Most service time was for Beta, aligning mechanicly and electronicly after head swap. Now you do a terrific job but the units are now more than 30 y old. I repaired (1980's) every day vrt's (Belgium), most VHS followed by V2000 and than Betamax. The systems preform more or less the same, being Beta most expensive and a tiny better as the others. I like your video's!

[@video99couk]

Only a few early Sony Beta models needed the head eccentricity to be aligned. From the SL-C9 onwards they were pre-aligned like VHS, as were Sanyo and Toshiba Beta heads. I think most people who have worked on V2000 machines will say that they are complex and troublesome.

[@janmos5178]

@Dirk De Weerdt I agree. Grundig models were often unreliable but Philips Video 2000 models from the second generation onward were more reliable. Perhaps very few of the decent ones came to the UK that is why the author of the video has such experiences. Also Grundig already improved the reliability of the third series of its Video 2000 machines after 1983, but it took too long and cost too much.

[@montana01971]

@@janmos5178 no he is right. V2000 was a disaster. The Philips machines broke down all the time. All my cousins had them and they were a nightmare.Never seen a Grundig. Philips marketing had many people in the Netherlands believe V2000 was a "technically superior" system. That was just an urban legend which is sometimes still heard today.

[@janmos5178]

@@montana01971 They didn't all break down, even the statistics don't confirm it. This is what you could write if you had access to all copies. But yes, the percentage of failure devices was high. But how urban legend can be misleading is shown, for example, by Matsushita-Panasonic. NV 370, 630, 860 models are famous for their quality, meanwhile in 1985 they had so many post-warranty repairs that the famous Japanese MITI ordered their replacement in Japan. Fans of these VCR,s don't mention it but the press of those years, did. This just goes to show how, without careful analysis of statistical sources, you can get it wrong.

[@tekvax01]

The D3 format was introduced several years before DigiBeta was released. I worked at a large network in Ontario, and they had hundreds of D3 tapes. The format from Ampex was of excellent quality, however, the transports were very labour-intensive. We also had the D1 and D2 formats. D5 and HDcam are still in service today, for some distribution of movies, and long-format shows. The Digibeta heads were extremely expensive and had 17 flying heads on the drum. they were a nightmare! We used BetaSX in Sony Flexicarts for over 15 years, and still have several machines, and a large library, that we are slowly transferring to file-based XMF formats.

[@MarkHimsley]

As you said, D3 came out years before DigiBeta. And it was a direct replacement for 1" VTR - with composite video in and out, so expensive infrastructure didn't have to be replaced when 1" VTRs were replaced with D3 VTRs. That's why Auntie BBC bought them.

[@SFtheGreat]

The enthusiasm of your progeny is what I needed to start the day with joy and the will of life. And regarding the question at 0:40, the answer is D-VHS obviously. I have a brand new release scheduled for 2023 in that format, the first ever PAL D-VHS prerecorded cassette.

[@northernplacecorporation]

*regarding

[@SFtheGreat]

@@northernplacecorporation Yes, thank you for pointing that out, I must have slipped my fingers on the keyboard.

[@northernplacecorporation]

@@SFtheGreat At least I didn't slip my fingers on the keyboard on my laptop!

[@laustinspeiss]

6:55 Blooper tapes were often done undercover - using loaner equipment that was on trial by a facility. The mainstream gear was often too busy, so the techs used the updike demo equipment to ‘play’ in their spare time.

[@JimTimber]

In fact DAT won the battle.. even though SVHS was lurking.. it was the industry standard for television before the digital pen drive age. Great video.. very interesting !!

[@stanislavnepochatov8381]

Well professional market is a totally different beast. For home video you can cut almost any corner and get away with it as long as it selling out. Maybe several formats with many-many competitors. Professional industry tends to cut formats instead of corners. And collaboration between manufactures even for single format is unlikely cause equipment quality may vary. But pros likes consistency. Also in my opinion Betacam is separate format from Betamax. Even if Betacam decks can play Betamax tapes. When Betacam was introduced forwat war was still going so maybe they just was hoping to support Betamax by saying: "look it's professional format".

[@video99couk]

Yes I know I was stretching the point a little with domestic Beta to Betacam, but the lineage is no more stretched than from VHS to MII. This video was made primarily for new viewers who may not have realised that Beta based formats lived on and VHS based formats generally didn't.

[@TTVEaGMXde]

D3 records a digitized CVBS signal, with which one can save Quadruplex and B or C format unchanged. But that actually only made sense when a BBC employee invented the Transform PAL decoder at the end of the 90s. The alternatives would be comb filters like in the Canopus ADVC-100 (SAA7114) with mediocre sharpness and usable CrossColor interference suppression, or a comb filter with excellent CrossColor suppression but extreme crawling dot formation (Terratec Grabby PRO). There is supposed to be a software solution against crawling dots, but I haven't tested it.

[@Capturing-Memories]

SingMai made a modern capture device that uses 3D comb filtering and actually can reduce dot crawl from composite sources dramatically.

[@rpb424]

… and we still have (and use today) all the Transform PAL decoders that have ever existed

[@jkmac625]

The Sony DVW-(A)500P had a simple PAL decoder for recording from composite sources, so it couldn't correct for variations in chroma phase. Not all of them could take a composite signal, it seems the decoder board was an option and not fitted to all machines. External decoders seems to do a much better job. Sony must have improved later decoder boards as the one fitted in their DSR-2000P DVCam studio recorder could correct chroma phase errors.

[@TTVEaGMXde]

@@jkmac625 BKDW-506 is the name of the optional composite in circuit board. If designers live in an NTSC country, you can be happy that PAL has been optimized at all.

[@rpb424]

Your comments about D3 and the BBC are way off the mark in terms of branding it a failure. Around 1990 the BBC was nearing completion of its new Post Production Centre in Stage 5 at Television Centre, and needed to settle on a digital cassette based format to populate it, replacing the large and aging C Format based machines (Ampex VPR2 etc.) used for editing and transmission up to that point. Digital Betacam was still a few years away, and formats like Sony D1 were hideously expensive, so D3 was chosen to fit within the new infrastructure, and ran successfully for more than a decade as the main editing and TX format. Included innovations such as Preread were a game changer for fast turnaround operations such as sport editing. There were a lot of D3 problems early on being a new format, with heads wearing out in a matter of maybe 50 hours use, but these problems were quickly ironed out. Panasonic even had their own workshop within the Post Production Centre in the early days. I say this from the point of view of being one of the senior engineers who ran and maintained all this throughout that time. As for D3 archive content, by the end of this year we’ll have got through all the tapes that we intend to preserve, and even after that we are designing and building some D3 preservation capability right now for the odd tape that will crop up now and then.

[@video99couk]

Other comments here have pointed out that Digital Betacam was not ready when D3 was available, so as you say, that was clearly the reason that D3 was selected. There's a mention in Wikipedia about insufficient capacity to run the BBC's archives, which perhaps would benefit with and update from your knowledge.

[@rpb424]

Happy days. Saturday afternoons would be spent down in the BBC1/2 transmission suites checking the track linearity of all the D3 machines amongst other things. Particularly on the larger cased 3 hour tapes used for feature films, where they tended to be more prone to playback errors if out of spec too much.

[@RetroWorkshop]

To add, D3 fitted nicely into the largely analogue PAL infrastructure at BBC production centres. Analogue PAL composite video was the format used in TV studios, editing and other production areas. If you put in a load of component machines, the PAL signal would need to be decoded and recoded with resulting artefacts. The D3 with its analogue PAL input would fit nicely into a composite studio, edit suite or transmission area (ie most of Television Centre) without the need to decode and recode the PAL signal. Once it was on the D3 tape, you got all the benefits of digital storage.... TC1 (the big studio at BBC TV Centre) was analogue PAL when I started as a trainee in 1997. Good old composite video was THE broadcast format for a very long time. Most TV Centre studios used SDI as the late 1990s, but would often be fitted out with D3s (and fancy digital PAL coders to convert from component (SDI) to digital PAL (to the D3). They could be swapped out for Digibeta to record component from the SDI, if editing was to be done on the increasingly common Digibeta.

[@rpb424]

How I miss the analogue days of having to time things into vision mixers, replay lines etc., and having to worry about things like SCH phase and 8-field sequences. 🙂

[@RetroWorkshop]

@@rpb424 The RS tweaker gets far too little use these days!

[@andrew1479]

I used to make timecoded transmission masters of feature films for national broadcaster in Malta. Amazingly they selected S-VHS as their standard transmission format!

[@northernplacecorporation]

The color performance of S-VHS is TRASH! Malta might've went for Betacam or DigiBeta, but NOPE! S-VHS was chosen!

[@gideon3648]

Great Video. I have been hoping you would do a video on the consumer to Pro video tape format evolution for some time and this didn’t disappoint. I was gifted a non-working Sony SL-C6 MK II around 1989 when doing work experience (which I subsequently got repaired) and this got me into using Beta at home. I actually got a Sony SLF-25 Beta from Thames TV in the auction when they closed. Latterly I used the Pro Beta derived formats at work, mostly DigiBeta and HDCAM. Rather unsurprisingly I have a lot of love for Beta. Very interesting to learn more about the Pro VHS derivatives as I never really came across those. Curiously I see a slight connection between the last consumer and Pro physical formats I used; Blu-ray recorders at home and SONY XDCAM HD disc recorders at work that use the Sony “Professional Disc” format (this being a disc format using blue-violet lasers like Blu-ray).

[@richclips]

Excellent video as always, very informative and interesting. I think you might have forgotten Sony XDCAM, although quite short-lived... I might have missed it if you mentioned it :) I used to work at framestore in Soho, we had umats a plenty, D1, beta, betaSP, digitbeta, hdcam, hdcamSR, XDcam, Panasonic D5 as well as clipstations and clipstationpro disk based systems, another from Edifis, and a whole host of film kit, rank cintel telecine and Philips spirits... All good fun :) yes indeed the old D1 machines were about £100,000 and a HDCAMSR started at about £75,000 plus options. Mind you, the old SGI onyx 2 computers were about £250,000 and I looked after 8 of those 😅 let alone Sony broadcast monitors at £20k plus and Dolby 40inch grading monitors at around £40k. Madness really. Thanks again Colin.

[@Petertronic]

I repaired a lot of Framestore's VCR's in the 90's! Remember Metro?

[@allanbroadfield5121]

I started out on Beta as it had superior quality to VHS to my mind. Unfortunately the heads appeared to wear pretty quickly, and I wondered if this was due to the fact that it rewinds while laced. I seem to remember that you stated thatt a particular Sanyo model rewound in the cassette. Is that the case with all Sanyos?

[@video99couk]

Nearly all Sony machines rewind while laced (just one duplicator did avoid that). Sanyo machines after about 1981 unlaced for rewind, such as the hugely successful VTC5000. From my experience Sanyo machines do have better head life than Sony, with the exception of the Sanyo VTC-M40 whose heads I suspect were actually built by Sony. The last Sanyo which remained laced during rewind was the VTC5300/VTC5400, which despite the number, is earlier than the VTC5000, VTC5150 and later front loading models.

[@MrBetaByte]

Interesting video and I so get the point on *Beta* lasting for so long too. Interesting comparing this to Technology Connections who brought out a video that contradicts some of what you say and at the same time I think misses the point that Beta did last as a domestic format until 2002 with machines still being released up to this date but the cassette format lasting up until 2016. Betacord didn't last nearly as long and in the UK, at one point in the early 80's, Sanyo produced the cheapest video recorder money could buy. Quality wise, NTSC is a different beast and I do get the negligible difference in quality when using B2/3 and VHS SP/LP but in PAL land Beta was one-speed and the quality was, in my humble opinion, better than the contemporary VHS units - so much so I recorded school shows on both Beta and VHS, VHS to the school and Beta for the archive for future release. A very interesting take on the whole Beta vs VHS battle. A really great video and great to have the kids involved too.

[@video99couk]

At a technical level, myself and Technology Connections don't actually contradict each other. We cover a lot of the same points. I just got there two days earlier!

[@jkmac625]

I watched the Technology Connections video just before watching this one. The problem with both PAL Betamax and Video2000 is they're both stuck in 1980's technology. VHS continued to improve to the point where S-VHS recorders like the JVC HRS-7600 with it's TBC/3DNR function have a remarkable picture with very little chroma noise. Unfortunately VHS did go downhill in terms of picture quality towards it's final days, to the point where I'd say yes a 40 year old Betamax probably would beat a 10 year old VHS.

[@montana01971]

@@jkmac625 Beta also improved with super Beta and later ED Beta

[@jkmac625]

@@montana01971 Unfortunately there was only 1 PAL Super Beta recorder sold in the UK (HF-950) and ED Beta was never released in PAL format. I believe the last Betamax for the UK market was in 1986 and it was only a mono machine (SL-F25).

[@stevesether]

Technology connections did a great video on how the BetaCAM technology works. Betacam actually separates the color information into a separate channel, as well as the individual color elements as well. It also does some quite sophisticated time division multiplexing to store the 3 different color elements. Apart from the tape, and the tape loading mechanism, it's really a completely different technology than BetaMax.. So I think it's a bit misleading to say it's derived from Beta, since the only thing the two technologies share is a tape, and some tape loading mechanisms.

[@video99couk]

You think it's not right to say Betacam is derived from Beta like MII is derived from VHS? Well that's a matter of opinion of course.

[@stevesether]

@@video99couk I think it's misleading. It propagates the idea that Beta was a superior technology, which it wasn't.

[@stevesether]

@@mattquinn-caledoniantelevi2522 Interesting about the betacam. I disagree about technology connections. I think it's fully possible to research a topic well and present it in a usable format to educate the public. This is exactly what all journalists do. Most do it VERY poorly. Technology Connections does it well IMO. He never claims to be a full expert on anything, only to present a topic in digestable and understandable way. In the end, it's still a youtube channel, not a college course. So I think it's a bit disingenuous to compare him him to a "one page ahead" college professor. I've seen those people (Teaching Assistant in College mostly), and they were truly terrible instructors that shouldn't have been doing what they were doing. They also represented themselves as experts, which Alec doesn't do.

[@TTVEaGMXde]

@Matt Quinn The Y/C part is not translated so well in the German Google Translate version. So here's the clarification that, for example, the SONY BVW-10P has 2x CVBS out, Dub out 685 KHz (U-maticH) and Dub Component out connections, but no S-Video connection.

[@stevesether]

@@mattquinn-caledoniantelevi2522 I guess I'm not too certain what you're saying has any relationship to what I said.

[@doskungen]

Hey Video99! WOW Video2000... I remember a kid in school (back in the 80's) whose family had moved to Sweden from Holland. They had one of these machines. The one and only time I got to experience it. Horrible picture quality from what I remember. Kinda interesting to get to see those weird audio tape looking cassettes again. 🙂

[@Petertronic]

Great video Colin. I love all the history behind the various formats.

[@simon7030]

I worked for Staffordshire County Council Education Department in the Audio Visual Dept.My bosses chose Betamax to go into all the schools for use recording BBC schools programming.They said Betamax was far superior picture wise to VHS so yhe main machine was the C7 then the C6.I was in the TV production 3 man unit and we started on reel to reel Sony CV and AV machines for recording and editing (monochrome only)We moved on to betamax SL3000 then the F1 for recording in the field.Then we went to low band Umatic.Ironically the schools never had their Betamax machines stolen as the thieves only wanted VHS so it was a blessing in disguise! Great Channel

[@video99couk]

Alas the C7 was not the most reliable of video recorders, I'm sure you had a few troubles with those.

[@stevec00ps]

Ha Technology Connections has just released a video on Beta too. Great video of yours though - really enjoyed it! Some things there I've never heard of.

[@video99couk]

Bit of a coincidence there, we cover the same subject, albeit with a different angle, within a couple of days. Hopefully my video will get recommended by KZbin to people who watch his!

[@UHF43]

I believe it was the other way round, JVC developed their Digital-S format that could achieve broadcast quality video using 4:2:2 subsampling and Panasonic took advantage of it. I read in a D-9 brochure it was developed together with FOX network as a less costly alternative to Betacam for news gathering.

[@tekvax01]

Thought D9 was 4:2:0 or 4:2:1 selectable. No wait… that was D7 dvcpro.

[@UHF43]

@@tekvax01 DVCPRO was always 4:1:1

[@jkmac625]

@@tekvax01 Digital-S/D9 was 4:2:2 and I'm sure 4:2:2 was printed on the front panel. It was supposed to compete with Digi-Beta but it had slightly higher compression around 3:1 compared with Digi-Beta's 2:1, so it's closer to DVCPRO-50 quality. DVCPRO is 4:1:1 but DVCPRO-50 is 4:2:2. Can't remember anything being 4:2:1 but DV(PAL) was 4:2:0.

[@richrootes]

Thanks for that, Colin - excellent video!

[@northernplacecorporation]

However, what I've known about Digital Betacam, HDCAM, and HDCAM SR, is that those three, could have 40 minutes in 60i on a short tape (50 minutes in 24PsF on both HDCAM and HDCAM SR), and 124 minutes in 60i on a long tape (155 minutes in 24PsF, again on both HDCAM and HDCAM SR). MPEG IMX, which came out after HDCAM, Betacam SX, and Digital Betacam, held 60 minutes on a short tape (20 minutes more than Digital Betacam; 71 minutes in 625i), and 184 minutes on a long tape (60 minutes more than Digital Betacam; 220 minutes in 625i). As for Betacam SX, which came out before HDCAM and MPEG IMX, however, that held for 62 minutes on a short tape (2 more minutes than MPEG IMX, which came later), and 194 minutes on a long tape (10 more minutes than MPEG IMX, which, again, came later).

[@video99couk]

I wasn't aware of all those running time figures. Getting an hour of professional video on a small tape is impressive.

[@lukasgayer5393]

Lovely video! Nice to see the D tapes together. I´ve got two brand new ones in my collection. They are becoming quite rare. Here in Czechia they are unobtainable. Most people don´t even know them.

[@VoyageOne1]

Super VHS is what the ADAT audio tape format was based off 😎

[@video99couk]

I've featured one of those on my channel too.

[@Capturing-Memories]

Max is the winner, I don't care what everyone else thinks. The irony is that VHS too lived up to 2016 and the last consumer model was made by Funai.

[@video99couk]

Yes VHS staggered on until 2016 too. It may be however that blank tapes were discontinued earlier for VHS that Betacam / HDCAM.

[@northernplacecorporation]

@@video99couk *than Betacam/HDCAM.

[@more.power.]

Thank you this was a great show and tell episode. Cheers

[@cinemaipswich4636]

The TV News Cameras were all Beta Max. They knew more lines meant more quality.

[@paulstubbs7678]

7:08 I got a shock, when the first Beta(max) machine you showed was my first Beta machine - well it looks awfully like it, pity the model number didn't make it. Mine was a HiFi version, SLHF100AS. When I went shopping, the Beta produced a better picture in my eye, so that's what I bought.

[@video99couk]

Yes that's a Sony SL-HF100 Beta HiFi. I have three of those in good working order, they are my go-to machines for most Beta tape transfers.

[@sidecarcn]

I'm not sure how you can say BETA won. They had no consumer market. Even in television production we stopped using BETA in 2002.

[@stickytapenrust6869]

DigiBeta use carried on for quite a while after 2002 and even now archive programmes are still dubbed from original formats to DigiBeta.

[@sidecarcn]

@Matt Quinn - Caledonian TV The UK was always far behind the rest of the world. At NHK we threw them out in 2002. Mind you we were already using hi-def television back in the mid70s.

[@GreenAppelPie]

He’s talking studio use I assume, unless it was a quite different consumer market the UK. Beta was definitely a better picture but AFAIK it was the cheaper machines and tapes with an acceptable picture that made it King in the US.

[@dunebasher1971]

@@sidecarcn No, NHK was always far *ahead* of the rest of the world. TV production in Europe, the USA and most of the southern hemisphere was widely using Beta, be it SP, Digi or HDCAM, well into the 2010s.

[@sidecarcn]

@Matt Quinn - Caledonian TV the image quality of what the BBC or the ITV channels was putting out was horrible compared to what NHK had. By 1972 NHK had moved to HDTV with 1125 lines of resolution. Then in 1980 to Hi-Vision. You guys were still stuck using old EMI 2001 cameras.

[@AussieTVMusic]

My first VCR was a Sanyo Betacord machine from 1981 and cost me $600 au. It weighed about 8kg and lasted until I bought a stereo vhs player in 1990.

[@CreeperOnYourHouse]

Technology connections made a video in this vein just yesterday; what a coincidence!

[@video99couk]

Very odd coincidence. Maybe viewers of that will be recommended my video by KZbin. We take a different tack on the subject but cover some of the same things including MII.

[@MartinFarrell1972]

I'd love to have all that kit. I'd never leave the room

[@jameslaidler2152]

There's a video from the Sony CD factory in the states from circa 1995 of the employees making Michael Jackson's History CD set, in fact as a direct measage to him, and the master tape console was this massive unit with a Umatic deck built into it, and that was their master tape. I love DAT, but Sony could have done better with their 8 mm tape formats. Should have been more savvy with marketing films on the digital versions of it. Should have had better market share, but I guess the little fellas could only hold so much content on them. Even Rising Sun by Michael Crichton got into super nerdy detail with their high definition digital 8 mm tape machines, in 1992! C'est la vie. Think the digi-8 would have been an excellent, more robust option than the standard 4 mm DAT tapes. The little buggers can be a might fragile.

[@video99couk]

I also wondered why Sony used 4mm tape for DAT, it was too small.

[@UHF43]

The ADAT was also based on the VHS format and it saw some succes. Didn't it?

[@video99couk]

I have ADAT kit here. It was a low volume product, competing with DTRS on 8mm. Used for multi channel audio.

[@34Kuro]

Indeed, Adat was a success in studios and music production

[@NiddNetworks]

ADAT remains now as a format rather than a medium - 8x 44.1KHz over a TOSLink fibre (or can run 4x 96k with compatible gear). Alesis (who did a lot, if not all, the 8 channel VHS ADAT units) did the HD24 - a disk based 24 channel unit running 3x ADAT streams onto IDE HDDs. Mixing desks, audio interfaces, and other kit all ran ADAT for multi in/out until the likes of AES50, and Dante, which frames the audio in Ethernet packets, then you can send it over wires, fibres, or (in theory) any other Ethernet based media.

[@dale116dot7]

@@NiddNetworksI ran the HD24 system for about 20 years, I switched back to two inch. The HD24 was pretty solid and with the converter upgrade the analogue side was pretty decent.

[@northernplacecorporation]

*success

[@blackhorserepairs]

Thank you, great video

[@zordmaker]

We used a PCM501 with a Panasonic NVF65 VHS recorder for several years in the early '90s with considerable success. So Sony opened the door to successful digital VHS... in a way...

[@video99couk]

However VHS machines didn't have the option to disable the dropout compensator, so Beta was much the most popular format for PCM-F1/501/601/701 recordings. They would occasionally pop up on Umatic too.

[@KarlHamilton]

Always love your videos ❤

[@laustinspeiss]

8:00 almost right. Betacam tapes started on day one as metal formulations, using domestic tapes ‘would work’ with degraded performance and increased wear, and vice versa.

[@laustinspeiss]

@Matt Quinn - Caledonian TV Are you referring to Beta or Betacam ? Consumer Beta was ferric oxide ( or maybe chrome), but pro Betacam was metal from memory.

[@laustinspeiss]

@Matt Quinn - Caledonian TV ha, so i learn something… I never realised Betacam was oxide… or maybe that was the SP variant ??

[@video99couk]

The early Betacam format used oxide tapes which were fully interchangeable with domestic Beta (Betamax). Metal formulation tapes were introduced with BetacamSP.

[@TTVEaGMXde]

@Matt Quinn - Caledonian TV But I'm wondering how to achieve a higher quality without high-grade tapes and a constant head Disc diameter

[@TTVEaGMXde]

@Matt Quinn - Caledonian TV I don't think that the higher tape speed has a serious impact on the relative tape/head speed, since the only thing that actually increases with vhs is the noise between SP and LP. But I'll have the difference calculated exactly at times.

[@MEMPHISFLASH3764]

So Technology Connections recent video upload if i understand it correctly states Betamax and Betacam are two completely different formats so Betamax did loose to VHS as you cannot state sony took beta to the pro level,,, what do you think 😮

[@video99couk]

At no point do I make out that professional Betacam recordings are compatible with domestic Beta. I do make it very clear that Betacam is derived from domestic Beta in just the same way as MII is derived from VHS. But I also show that Betacam is mechanically very close to domestic Beta. My point is that every effort to make a professional format based on VHS failed, because Beta based products were so strong in the marketplace. In the end it's just a matter of semantics whether or not you believe that Betacam and domestic Beta are part of the same family (they clearly are!).

[@srfurley]

You didn’t mention Betacam SX (yellow) or MPEG IMX (Aqua). However, how valid is it to say that Beta was more successful based on the professional formats? These had very little in common with Betamax, the first part of the name though this was dropped from MPEX IMX onwards, the basic design of the cassette shell though this had to be changed somewhat to provide longer runtime for studio use and the loading system, though this was better engineered on the ‘cam’ machines. To say that Betacam was more successful than MII is obviously true, but Betamax doesn’t have much to do with it. In the UK MII was also used by Anglia, and it also saw considerable use in China. That was an odd format, with the small cassette being quite different to the large one, looking more like an overgrown Video 8 one, and going in at one end of the large entry slot. D3 was also chosen by the BFI and on visits to both organisations I spoke to them about this while the formats were in use. The BBC were archiving material material from Quad and 1” C formats, and some U-Matic, mainly high band, for news work. The BFI were recording material off-air for archival purposes. All of this material was in composite PAL form, so a composite digital format was considered appropriate, there would be no advantage to using the expensive component D1. At the time the available formats were basically 3/4” D2 or 1/2” D3; the latter offered a considerable saving in vault space, and lower cost. Digital Betacam was launched later than D3, and I’m not sure if it was actually available when the choice was made, but was known to be coming. However, D3 was uncompressed, as was D5 in its SD form, while Digital Betacam was compressed by about 2:1, and this was seen as a significant advantage to D3 for archival purposes. D3/D5 tapes came in three sizes, the medium as smaller and the large larger than a large Betacam cassette; most BBC productions could probably fit on the medium size, so there would probably be some reduction in storage space as well. HD D5 was used in slightly modified form for a few early experimental digital cinema screenings; I attended one of these. The audience were not told in advance that the screening was not from film, and were asked afterwards about their opinion of the quality. I was aware and that was my reason for going to see it. This competition between formats is nothing new. In 2” days Quad competed with the IVC 9000 segmented helical Machine the 1” B and C formats were in competition as were the original Ampex A format and IVC 800 series in industrial and educational use. Half inch EIAJ competed with several other similar but incompatible formats. One thing does seem to be obvious, there were far too many formats launched, and some of them should not have reached market.

[@video99couk]

I'm considering domestic Beta and studio Betacam to be part of the same family. Other people may not. But I never claim that they are in any way compatible recordings. I've now been told that D3 beat DigiBeta to market, and of course that will have a big bearing in why it was selected. Still it was a bit unfortunate in the end. Formats that should never have existed include D9/Digital-S, in my opinion. And DVCPRO was a lot of trouble, few people have much nice to say about that either.

[@okaro6595]

I never understood the idea of a reversible video cassette. With an audio cassette you listen 30 minutes, then reverse and listen another 30 minutes. Even if the cassette was wound to the "wrong" end it might not hurt, you could still listen it. With video who watches four hours and then reverses and watches another 4 hours. Also with movies it typically is more specific what you want to watch so you might need to rewind before watching half the time.

[@dv_vid]

I've been trying to work out how Betacam stores two colour difference signals on one track. Sony calls it a clever 'CTDM' method. It seems like there has to be digital signal processing going on in order to 'speed up' the signals for recording and slow them down for playback. In a brocure, they show the sideband of the C track to be 3 MHz but the bandwidth of the component signals at 1.5 MHz. Hence there is bandwidth compression.

[@RetroWorkshop]

From my old BBC course notes: Beta SP camcorders, and earlier Betacam models, use analogue CCD stores In the Chrominance multiplexing. The principle is similar, but their linearity and frequency response Is inferior to digital methods.... The second fm modulator handles the R-Y and B-Y in a time-compressed sequential waveform. This is assembled in the BVW 75 using digital sampling and storage. The R-Y and B-Y are each clocked into separate one line duration stores. During the next line of input video, a second pair of stores receives the next line of input R-Y and B-Y. Meanwhile, R-Y Is clocked out of its first store at twice the clock speed, to compress it into 32ps. Then B-Y is clocked from its first store to fill the next 32iiS period. This is called CTDM, and the resultant analogue multiplexed signal feeds the second r.f. modulator. The first pair of stores are now empty, ready to receive new R-Y and B-Y from the input signals. While this is going on, double speed clocks are used to empty the second pair of stores in a sequence of R-Y first, then B-Y.

[@TTVEaGMXde]

@@RetroWorkshop Then my guess is correct, the CCD memory was the cheapest viable solution. SONY has developed several CCD memories as line memorie ICs for color under recorders

[@jkmac625]

@@RetroWorkshop I remember finding a CTDM dub cable at the BBC, not sure where it came from as I never remember anyone using it. I believe it bypassed the TBC and dropout compensator leaving the R-Y and B-Y signals in their compressed format, a bit like the RF dub on U-Matic. I remember reading that you couldn't go too many generations down as it increased the timebase errors each time. I did try it out between 2 BVW-75s and it worked but not sure if there was any noticeable quality benefit.

[@ostsan8598]

So betamax wins if you drop the max, count everything that has beta in the name, and ignore the far larger domestic market completely? I would say the video was just about the broadcast market, but the first minute or so was all about the domestic market.

[@video99couk]

If you consider Betacam to be derived from domestic Beta, as I do, then the Beta family was a success.

[@gxc90]

Both yours and Technology Connections videos are very interesting videos. Though I'm a little confused with the PAL VHS tape speeds and why Betamax only has 1 (!) tape speed verses the three speeds for Betamax and 4 speeds for VHS (SP/LP/SLP or EP/XLP or VP) in NTSC. One day a video will show up to clear up this confusion. :) Cheers.

[@video99couk]

It was probably more marketing that anything else. So PAL Beta has one speed, which gives 3 hours 15 minutes from an L750 tape. Then on VHS there were generally two speeds, SP and LP. Towards the very end of VHS, a very few PAL and SECAM machines were made with EP, but these were so rare as to be almost irrelevant.

[@alancheatley4378]

I had a Sanyo Beta and my mate had a Video2000 machine, we always laughed at the cheek of the rental movies you got on it, half way into the film and you had to turn the tape over 😂

[@lutello3012]

I assumed that's how pre-recorded movies were handled on that format, thanks for confirming.

[@JacGoudsmit]

I had a lot of family members with v2000 recorders and our experience with rentals was that they usually only had the A side recorded, with the entire movie on one side. The B side was blank. This makes more sense than you might think, because in a duplication facility, you don't want someone to have to go around and turn over the cassettes halfway into the duplication. That would cost a lot of extra time and money. In the late 1980s duplication facilities started working with direct contact duplication where a master tape was recorded on a Ferro tape in mirror image, and then duplicated at high speed by pressing it against chrome tape at a temperature that was high enough for the chrome particles to move around and follow the patterns on the Ferro tape, while the Ferro tape wouldn't be hot enough to be affected. But of course this want invented until long after the demise of v2000 (1984).

[@dunebasher1971]

Are you sure you're not misremembering? I've got a number of ex-rental V2000 tapes and they all have the movie complete on one side. Indeed it would have cost the studios more money to use shorter tapes that required turning over during the duplication process, especially since they'd also have to create special two-part masters to dupe from. And in fact, I'm not sure it was even possible to get V2000 tapes short enough to require routinely spreading a movie over two sides.

[@dunebasher1971]

@@lutello3012 It's not. It's either misremembering or deliberate misinformation.

[@JacGoudsmit]

@@dunebasher1971 Indeed. And it would make the experience of renting a movie a lesser experience than recording a movie from TV.

[@barrieshepherd7694]

Great video - expanded my knowledge a lot.

[@SianaGearz]

Matsushita has a habit of calling cursed projects "M2" don't they?

[@hostler]

What was BetacamSX all about? I made a website for Sony about the format in the mid nineties when it launched.

[@video99couk]

Yet in my video transfer business, I hardly ever come across BetacamSX recordings.

[@laustinspeiss]

A great example of volume and marketing. VHS was a flawed technology. Good, but flawed. Beta has a fundamental benefit in technology over the other formats. Head-to-Tape speed. Higher density of recording per second == better image & recording quality.

[@rods6405]

Great Video! You skipped over SX IMX and DTF but still great video!

[@video99couk]

Oh there were variants like SX but they didn't really add much to the story. DTF is interesting, I wonder if Sony gained access to that from Philips as a result of their collaboration on CD.

[@rods6405]

@@video99couk I worked at sony at the time DTF had nothing to do with Philips. But we had fun trying all the different tapes in the wrong machines by plug the holes DTF and SX tapes worked in either machine I seem to remember. I sold plenty of SX& digi in Australia!

[@mindblast3901]

Great Video cheers

[@The_Traveling_Clown]

What does it means when a Beta tape won eject properly from the Tape player? Gears ⚙️, Belts or a capacitor?

[@video99couk]

It depends a lot on which model, but usually it's belt trouble.

[@JacGoudsmit]

After the "death" of Beta in 2016, what are TV studios using now? I guess something like swappable hard disks or SSDs?

[@video99couk]

Correct, they are tapeless, apart from any archives.

[@joefinan9483]

They all use servers now and often supplement it with an EVS machine (a hard disk based, multi-channel recording and playback system). But most of them also still have a couple of Digibeta machines for ingesting archive stuff. I remember very well the days of BBC TV Centre being full of D3 and D5 machines.

[@bobsbits5357]

hi just saw the video on the b450 chipset i went over to to same kind of line of amd 4 over the cpu i got i have to keep running cost down it all ad's up i had alot of bad luck with south chip coming away from the pcb and it's got to last 12 years likle the last set up there are bad sides no pci ports and the windows 10 can't see alot of the older pci-e and drivers will not work like with the scsi 320 pci-e new motherboard are not great

[@mattsan70]

Where did U matic fit into all this = I recall 1974 watching stuff at school on such players

[@JacGoudsmit]

He also didn't mention Philips VCR and Philips VCR-LP. 😉

[@video99couk]

VCR was much earlier. Though to some extent, VCR-LP (N1700 if you like) did compete a bit with VHS and Beta. There was also SVC/SVR from Grundig. I have working machines of all three formats.

[@srfurley]

@@JacGoudsmit Nor the Grundig SVR variant which further reduced the tape speed, but these do not form part of the Beta story. There are many other formats too.

[@stephan.scharf]

I assume nobody is aware about these tons of different video cassette formats out there in the past. Most of them flopped, 5% survived for several years.. VHS, DV, U-matic, Betacam, Digi Beta. That's it. If shipping cost would allow it I would send you a non working CRV6000 set including tons of discs, haha!

[@SRN42069]

In a nutshell JVC's VHS format won in the consumer/domestic market and Betamax failed. Until Sony retried in the professional market with BetacamSP etc and won between JVC's professional VHS DP format. So it really was a complete reversal. With VHS for consumers and then betacam for professional/studios. This is also why people swore for Betamax back then because of Betacam succeding even though for consumers VHS had won and was arguably better in terms of the way it loaded tapes. But in the pro industry Betacam was just better then vhs.

[@terencemcculloch3294]

Holy crap I see 2 dacades of recorded video history disappear. A gap in human history. Thank goodness for film.

[@jamesmitchell8922]

Do you have ant BBC Betamax Video tapes?

[@video99couk]

I've not seen BBC Betamax tapes, but I have seen some from local TV channels. BetacamSP and DigiBeta though, yes lots of those from BBC sources. One of my BetacamSP machines is ex-BBC too.

[@gideon3648]

@@jamesmitchell8922 Hi, BBC did release some home video titles on Beta. I did have a couple, Fawlty Towers comes to mind. I don't think I had any Doctor Who but most of my titles were acquired ex-rental around 1990 so I mostly had films on Beta rather than TV shows.

[@jamesmitchell8922]

@@gideon3648 Yes it was in the first half of the 1980s. They stopped in 1987

[@northernplacecorporation]

*any

[@bobsbits5357]

hi get my mate to watch this he loves the vhs i said only place for SVHS is adat sony 701 es pcm are very good decks i am a very big fan of betacam decks because they are so easy to fix up NOTE THE PRICES OF DECKS used is now going up i just had a uvw 1800 as parts to fix the 2 decks i had not working all decks are around £100 as parts did not pay this the deck was not listed right on ebay time to time i have seen this there's not the video deck number there used to be there are still alot of betacam digi decks around they are very heavy man you will need very good wheels to get them a round on why they don't sell well pick up only alot of the time i never got around to drive a car so i have to find ways getting decks to me they are 2 people to lift one lovge this video SUPER POINT I SAID ALL time beta was the best of them all

[@northernplacecorporation]

You wrote "successful" wrong in the description.

[@video99couk]

Fixed.

[@northernplacecorporation]

@@video99couk Thank you.

[@lolorick5885]

Beta Max was and still is the best VHS became the standard for the rental companies. Sony Betamax was the studio standard

[@kristofkolesar383]

VHS was a much superior design with less headroom, better and more logical tape handling. beta is just something people came up with so they can start wars between anything.

[@video99couk]

Utter rubbish. VHS and Beta were designed at the same time by the same people, which is why they are so similar.

[@wich1]

Betamax ≠ Betacam : kzbin.info/www/bejne/nni5h3SHi8l4hdU

[@video99couk]

My video never says they are the same. In fact technically, myself and Technology Connections cover much of the same ground, I just got there two days earlier.

[@wich1]

@@video99couk You imply they are the same, or at least imply that betacam is some evolution of betamax, while it certainly isn't, it is a completely different technology that just happens to use the same tape transport, because why invent a new one when you already have one. Saying Beta "won" because of betacam is utter nonsense

[@AttilaTheHun333333]

@Matt Quinn - Caledonian TV Who cares if the video is earlier or later or one of the presenters is American? Everyone makes factual mistakes, so did Colin in this video. I for myself enjoyed both videos. No need for this bs undertone which nationality someone has.

[@zx8401ztv]

Well i knew that beta was a better quality, but i never had the money for the posh beta system. So vhs was better than nothing. Vhs also got me into repairing vcr's, i enjoyed that era :-D

[@dunebasher1971]

Domestic Betamax was only better quality than VHS for about a year in the mid-70s. As initially released in 1975, Betamax ran at a higher speed than VHS did when it came out a year later, but because consumers preferred longer recording durations over slightly better picture quality, Sony was forced to cut the speed of Betamax to make it competitive with VHS. From about 1977 onwards, there was effectively no quality difference between VHS and Beta (although the myth that there was lived on), and in fact VHS subsequently got improved further than Beta - VHS got HQ, and S-VHS was higher resolution than SuperBeta.

[@MrBetaByte]

@@dunebasher1971 For PAL Beta was always the same speed - no LP/B2/3. NTSC VCR quality certainly did get messy...

[@jamescrawford2042]

what about jvc digital s and vhs w

[@video99couk]

Digital-S is the early name for D-9 which I cover. I don't believe W-VHS was sold in Europe at all.

[@jameslaidler2152]

(sigh) My reaponses to your responce to my other comment keep going mia. Oh well. In any case, in the mid 1980s magneto optical disks were a thing, and they even had capacities up to 600 and 640 MB respectively which for most albums then was overkill. Not far down the line they got to around 1.2, 1.4 GB, and the far later iterations got up to 9.1 GB. Would have beena far more robust, reliable and longer lasting option. Sure beta is a good solid format, though I hear Umatic machines were murder on their tapes, what's been your experience with umatic? Really think they missed an opportunity with MO disks.

[@video99couk]

I'm ot sure early MO disks were more reliable than tape. Umatic is a reliable format but PCM-1610/1630 tapes are very error prone. The PCM system demanded more than video tape could reliably offer when new. Now the tapes are decades old, it doesn't work well.

[@northernplacecorporation]

*responses

[@northernplacecorporation]

@@video99couk *not

[@jameslaidler2152]

@@northernplacecorporation Well at least you bumped the thread to the top. So thanks I guess?

[@northernplacecorporation]

@@jameslaidler2152 So, there are some typos in the comment you made!

[@lutello3012]

I hope the kids I will never have are more enthusiastic about my nerdy passions. 😛😇🤓

[@video99couk]

Scott has a very flat voice at times so it didn't come across too well.

[@volkerking5932]

Video2000 have a flat scanner-drum angle then VHS and have near the same track length so there is no signal space lower then to the other Systems like you said? 1/4inch with flat scanner-drum or 1/2inch with higher scanner-drum angle is the same track length each. VHS have worst S/N ratio to the signal and color. DTF is much better then stair Heads like VHS, Beta, Video8. Also there was a Hifi Video2000 with digital PCM Audio! but this don't come out. Also a NTSC Version but this don't come out. The Reason why it lost was the Film Industrie they bring out all titles on VHS and Beta but not on Video2000 you nobody buy a Video2000. only 13% market for the System was to less. Thumbs Up 396! Super Video

[@video99couk]

The V2000 track width is very narrow, in order to get the recording onto only half of the tape width. As a result, the signal to noise ratio of the FM envelope from V2000 was very poor and needed some clever electronics to get an acceptable picture. The DTF was needed in order to scan such a fine track (though there was one Grundig V2000 machine built without DTF). I was aware that PCM audio was planned for V2000 but never made it to market. Another unreleased feature was a small V2000 cassette for camcorder use.

[@montana01971]

The reason it lost was also due to the lesser sound and video qualit.

[@volkerking5932]

Video2000 have max. 10kHz of mono or stereo Audio due the slow tape speed. But then was a development in 1981 with a PCM Audio in each track end. A small slot where a analog compressed and then digital recorded PCM. But this machine don't come out.

[@montana01971]

@@volkerking5932 if they started developement in 1981 but the machine still wasnt launched in 1985 when they pulled the plug on V2000 there must be a reason. Probably to difficult to implement. Oh well let's not talk about hypothetical machines but on the ones that were actually for sale, and their sound quality was abysmal

[@northernplacecorporation]

*than

[@mfurmyr]

Success? VHS has sold in billions of cassettes and VHS players where in every house all over the world. This is like comparing apples and oranges.

[@video99couk]

And the profit margin on VHS machines shrank and shrank to near zero. While a Digital Betacam sold for 10s of thousands (£/$/€). Sony didn't do too badly out of Beta and its derivatives. Making anything from VHS and its derivatives became almost impossible.

[@mfurmyr]

@@video99couk What people wanted was a way to see movies and record tv programs. Technical quality was not important. VHS won the battle when it came to renting movies.

[@PerMannerup]

The most robust videomachine I ever had was a Grundig Video-2000, it took a lot of beatings and moving around, so it wasn't all of them that were unreliable :-)

[@video99couk]

You were lucky with that. The Grundig ones had lots of problems with internal connectors disintegrating.

[@just_passing_through]

Domestic “Betamax” is absolutely not the same as professional “Betacam”. The formats are 100% incompatible.if you freer to VHS as “ordinary rubbish VHS”, you must, in all honesty refer to Betamax as “ordinary rubbish Betamax”, as the quality of Betamax II was worse than VHS. And Betamax brought also brought out a high band called SuperBeta. The original Betamax I was superior to VHS, but Sony ditched that for Betamax II when they realised the one hour recording time afforded by the higher speed Betamax I did not meet the expectations of the public. They then slowed down the playback speed to .8 feet per second, which was much slower than the 1.31 feet per second of the original VHS, giving worse performance than VHS for the sake of extended playback time. So the direct competitor to VHS was Betamax II, not the superior Betamax I that Sony retired. Also, Digital VHS used tapes with the same form factor as standard VHS, and the tapes were interchangeable, just like Sony’s offering. Betamax WAS the unmitigated disaster which you claim is wasn’t. Just because Sony repurposed the tapes, does not erase that fact.

[@video99couk]

Domestic Beta was not an unmitigated disaster even as a domestic format, millions of machines were sold. In the UK we only have one Beta tape speed: An L750 runs for 3 hours 15 minutes, and gives superior performance to VHS.

[@montana01971]

It was by no means a "disaster". Betamax sold very well into the 90s in Japan.

[@northernplacecorporation]

@@video99couk You were referring to Beta-III.

[@Bob.martens]

2000!

[@tsmith7146]

Whilst i enjoyed your video, i feel more objectivity is needed - you refer to "rubbish VHS" but this throwaway comment then serves to further perpetuate the myths about Betamax, as seen in some of the inaccurate comments people make here and in other videos. I make these comments as an adoptor of Betamax in the very early 1980s - i have never been a VHS "fan" and have never had an allegiance to either format. Yes - in the professional market, Betacam was obviously the winner. Ignoring the similarities in cassette size etc.. Betacam and Betamax are totally separate formats, especially in tape speed and (critically) the way colour information is recorded. Concentrating on the consumer market in the UK, VHS (SP) and Betamax (Beta2) both had 30 lines chroma and 240 lines luma resolution - any perceived superiority of Betamax picture quality in the late 70s/early 80s (as portayed by people such as Barry Fox) was minimal. I keep seeing people comment that Betamax had "far superior" picture quality to VHS - this is untrue. You single out VHS as having quality that is "shockingly poor" - this comment applies as much to low band Beta as well. All domestic analog video formats (including SuperBeta and EDBeta, as well as SVHS and Hi8) suffer from poor chroma resolution @ around 30 lines. If a higher write speed is used as evidence of slightly higher picture quality in Betamax, then conversely it must be remembered that lower tape speed in Betamax gave slightly lower linear track sound quality in Betamax compared to VHS - again, any differences were minimal. As time progressed, any differences in picture quality between low band VHS (SP) and Betamax (Beta2) were reduced even further. See Technology Connections video on comparisons on picture quality. For me, Betamax had disadvantages - reliability and head wear being the main ones generally known and that i also personally experienced. VHS's M loading tape mechanism is less complex than in Betamax, with less tape being spooled - i class this as an advantage in a domestic machine as simpler is better if similar results are then achieved. Overall, any video format with 30 lines of chroma resolution is a glorious irrelevance in 2024 but, looking back, the simpler and more resilient format (VHS) was the worthy winner of the domestic vcr format war - stressing the word domestic.

[@AttilaTheHun333333]

I’m pretty sure VHS made way more money overall in the formats whole lifespan, but nice video nonetheless.

[@rods6405]

No Way! this was actually explained in the video.

[@johnmiller0000]

Betamax has nothing to do with Betacam apart from "beta" and the physical tape format.

[@video99couk]

Well a few very small details such as the placement of linear audio tracks, but then I never make any claim that the formats are in any way compatible if you watch this through.

[@tambarskelfir]

format wars are boring, much ado about nothing tbh - which half-inch analogue tape was best? The one that you could use to produce material. That's it.

[@joelcarson9514]

Yeah, yeah, Beta Cam was much better than VHS, also MUCH better than Betamax, which was the consumer version from Sony. Betamax tapes wouldn't play in a BetaCam machine. And NOBODY is going to pay $40,000 in 1990's money to record "The Days of Our Lives" on $25.00 videotapes that you need to get the utmost performance out of A BetaCam unit. As far as Betmax vs. VHS, the same tape, the same spinning video heads (Oooh, Beta has a very slightly different stripe angle on the tape! Whoopee.) and the same electronics technology available to, oh, I don't know, EVERYBODY building either format machines for the mass consumer market, means that six hours of soap operas or sports recorded on one tape instead of just four hours per $2.00 tape meant essentially that NOBODY cared about the theoretically marginal better picture on Betamax. It's like the Apple Mac with a G3 processor on Craigslist that some MacFan thinks is still worth $300.00. Who cares? It's Dead Jim. And this is from a guy that records audio only to HiFi VHS just to fart around with. I know that, before long, all the VHS machines HiFi or otherwise will ALL be dead and non-functional. It'll be fun while it lasts, I guess. You can get some entertaining effects using the antenna out from a HiFi machine to the antenna in on a VHS mono deck, real analog grunge if done right. Extra points for going antenna out to a third mono deck, no VST plugins needed.

[@video99couk]

Lots of people did care about Beta's improved quality. Video enthusiasts loved them, particularly until S-VHS and Hi8 came along. But there weren't enough enthusiasts who cared.

[@rods6405]

@@video99couk Video enthusiasts yep its also meant your home movies looked so much better higher resolution colour and luminance I had a betamovie and I would play my home movies at work every one who had a vhs camera would comment that beta was heap better

[@MaximRecoil]

This video doesn't make any sense. "Beta vs. VHS"? VHS won, hands down. It wasn't even close. All of the other formats you mentioned with "Beta" in their name were completely different formats and are therefore irrelevant. Them sharing a basic tape cartridge design means nothing. What you've said in this video is no different than saying that, e.g., CD Video had long-term success or "had the last laugh" because of the success of DVD and Blu-ray. Never mind that they are completely different formats because apparently inert plastic is what matters, and they all used 12cm optical discs that are physically interchangeable with each other, just as e.g., Betamax tape cartridges and the small version of Betacam tape cartridges are physically interchangeable with each other. A video format is fundamentally defined by the characteristics of its signal and none of those later formats from Sony used the same signal as Betamax. Betamax is a specific implementation of "color under" and Betacam is a specific implementation of component video (YPbPr, AKA: Y, R-Y, B-Y), which is drastically different than (and drastically superior to) "color under." Ironically, Betamax's signal is in the same category as VHS's signal, whereas it's in a different category than Betacam's signal, since VHS is also an implementation of "color under." Having success in the professional market is better than nothing, but success in the consumer market is far more lucrative. Sony's only success in the home video market is Blu-ray, and even that is a relatively minor success, because to this day Blu-ray sales have never surpassed DVD sales (and at this point they are both dying due to the success of online video streaming services). VHS on the other hand was the dominant home video format for two full decades (1980s and 1990s), and parts of two other decades (1970s and 2000s), and it was at a time when there was no competition from online streaming. The last VHS machine was produced in 2016 by Funai, because even after DVD overtook VHS in the mid 2000s, there was still a substantial market for them for recording off TV, and VHS machines continued to be profitable for quite a few more years (mostly in the form of VHS/DVD combination machines).

[@video99couk]

Makes me wonder if you actually watched the video. I know full well the differences and similarities between domestic Beta and the Betacam formats. I clearly say "Beta derived" and "VHS derived". No, I wouldn't agree that the domestic market is all that matters. The professional equipment sold at massively better margins than domestic. You would have to sell an awful lot of £30 VHS machines to make the profit of a single £30k Digital Betacam recorder.

[@MaximRecoil]

​@@video99couk "Makes me wonder if you actually watched the video." That's a non sequitur. "I know full well the differences and similarities between domestic Beta and the Betacam formats." I know you do, but that doesn't make your video make sense. You know the differences yet you still try to retcon the professional market successes of different "Beta"-named formats onto the Betamax format that VHS thoroughly trounced, which, like I said, makes no sense whatsoever. Your video would make sense if it were about Sony vs. JVC in the broad category of video formats in general, but not as a video about "VHS vs Beta" as your title says. "I clearly say "Beta derived" and "VHS derived"." I know you did, and that doesn't help, since all of the successful formats that happen to have "Beta" in their name are only Betamax "derived" in the sense of sharing the same plastic shell for the magnetic tape, and that's a meaningless connection, just as various formats having a 12 cm optical disc in common is a meaningless connection. There are only two Beta-named formats which were derived from Betamax in any meaningful sense of the word: Super Beta and ED-Beta, and neither of those had much success in the marketplace. And the only VHS-named format that was derived from VHS in any meaningful sense of the word was S-VHS, and that didn't have much success either. "No, I wouldn't agree that the domestic market is all that matters." I didn't say that it's all that matters; I said that the consumer market is far more lucrative. "The professional equipment sold at massively better margins than domestic." Higher margins, sure, but not necessarily "massively," since they typically cost a lot more to manufacture than consumer VCRs did, but either way, consumer VCRs sold in massively greater numbers than professional VCRs. Just in the US alone during the 1980s, 1990s, and into the 2000s, practically everyone had a VHS VCR; they were as common in households as a TV or telephone. That amounts to hundreds of millions of them. On the other hand, the primary buyers of professional VCRs were TV stations, and there aren't anywhere near as many of those as there are households. There are far more households on my small-town street alone than there are TV stations in my entire state. "You would have to sell an awful lot of £30 VHS machines to make the profit of a single £30k Digital Betacam recorder." The cheapest VHS VCRs in the 1980s sold for about $200, and that was only in the second half of the 1980s. In the first half the cheapest ones were a lot more expensive, and in the 1970s they were even more expensive. Plus the higher end models were always drastically more expensive. My JVC HR-D566U had an MSRP of $900 when it was new in 1985 for example. In any case, we're talking about a market consisting of hundreds of millions of people vs a market that numbers in the thousands. For example, there are only about 1,750 TV stations in the US right now, and there are about 131 million households.

[@steveb1739]

Same reason Apple will go the way of Beta and Blackberry. They hold stuff too close to the chest, unlike Google / Android. Anyone can use it.

[@darkalligator]

Children explotation 😁

[@wolfymaceastern6072]

sorry are these children getting help

[@JacGoudsmit]

They ARE the help 😄

[@SaucyBegger25]

My grandad was tv engineer so we had big tvs in our house and we was given a grundig 2000. Same as yours. While it was a good player he had it back every week to fix it. I took the top off it once. I’ve never seen so many circuit boards in 1 video unit in my life. We had beta max for years. Was more reliable that vhs was that’s for sure

[@vivadjango]

Having grown up in the U.S. , the UK pronunciation of Beta hurts my head. Other than that, excellent video.

[@video99couk]

It's just the way we do it, I think it's correct in that it's the ancient Greek way of saying the letter.