How Sony's Betamax lost to JVC's VHS Cassette Recorder

[@missyevitt8150]

When I was a kid in the mid eighties my parents had a beta-max. I hated going to the movie rental store and not being able to get the movie I wanted because everything was mostly on VHS. When we were on vacation someone broke into our home and stole the beta-max. I was so happy when my dad bought a VHS. My grandmother would tape movies off of HBO and send them to us.

[@F4Wildcat]

"GIMME YOUR WALLET -could you PLEASE take my betamax aswel?

[@RadicalCaveman]

A burglar? Well, at least you're not an encyclopedia salesman.

[@jefferyclark2340]

I have a 1996 RCA VHS player.

[@chrisofstars]

After some time you couldn't record off of HBO tho because to fight piracy they came up with copy guard. When you would play back your copy it would just be scrambled. I remember my dad would talk about this and thinking he was like some sort of fountain of technological knowledge lol, my dad liked tech.

[@brianmckenzie6046]

Oh you sadist

[@The8BitGuy]

I think it also had a lot to do with patents. Many manufacturers could produce VHS compatible decks, but only Sony could make betamax. And Sony was always more expensive. So, sort of how firewire lost out to USB for similar reasons.

[@jameslaidler4259]

Yes, Sony only licensed the technology to a precious few others for manufacturing decks and cassettes. it's also similar to the D-VHS system. 1080i picture, though we already had DVDs and it was good enough and smaller. people had had it with tapes back then.

[@12voltvids]

+The 8-Bit Guy Check your notes. Sony also invented VHS, but never brought it to market because the picture quality was not good enough. So they went back to the drawing board an adapted the 3/4" Umatic machine to take 1/2" tape and the Betamax was born. Sony stupidly sold the patent to JVC and JVC brought it to market. I have several old Betamax recorders in my old collection including the old SL7200 Beta1 recorder. The one that has no clock. There were 2 timer clocks available, a mechanical and digital LED clock. I have the LED time clock for it. The mechanical timer is a rarity as the digital one followed within a few months. My first machine was an RCA VCt201, and that was a 2 speed machine that would record 4 hours of pathetic quality.

[@videodistro]

+12voltvids wrong. JVC developed VHS, not Sony. 8bit guy is correct in all respects.

[@12voltvids]

+videodistro Incorrect. Sony developed VHS first and NEVER marketed it. They found the format DID NOT produce what they considered acceptable quality.They didn't name the format VHS as they never released that format. They went back, and worked on scaling down the existing 3/4 format into a half inch format U format they named Betamax..It is all out there if you search for it.Here is a little quote""In September 1976, JVC announced the VHS-format VCR to compete head to head against Betamax. With this announcement, the VCR format battle began. The JVC product boasted two hours of recording time twice that of Betamax. The year before the Betamax release, Sony had approached Matsushita and JVC, its two partners for the U Format, about unifying product specifications. At that time, Sony had disclosed information regarding the Betamax specifications and technology to the two companies. In response, Matsushita and JVC delayed any decisions about unifying standards for a year. After Sony announced the advent of the video age and followed this with an aggressive sales drive, JVC began its own highly effective advertising campaign. Sony took a closer look at the VHS format and everyone was aghast. The technology and know-how that Sony had willingly disclosed when it proposed the unification of the U and Beta formats was incorporated in the VHS format. Although Sony had freely given the two companies access to its basic, patented technology, it was impossible for Sony to hide its shock and surprise."Make NO mistake Sony developed the VHS standard, and Sony even went as far as saying that when they brought their first VHS machines to market. They couldn't make that claim in their adverts, and sales material if it wasn't true because they would have been sued. But they didn't have to worry about that because they were the original inventor. JVC was just a bunch of crooks.

[@Ricktpt1]

+videodistro Nope. Sony came up with a system so similar there's not much to distinguish it from the JVC patent. They just didn't put it into production or patent it and JVC took the initiative. If you notice, he doesn't say "invented", he says "maker" of VHS. A subtle difference in historical retrospect, but I'm sure it bothered the Hell out of Sony when they had to pay royalties to JVC for a widget they'd thought up and left on the drawing boards. But over time, I've grown tired of Sony's arrogance. They have often had "good gear", and been entirely too proud of it in terms of retail ask. They've been the architects of their own demise. And I'll miss them when they're gone. Every television I've owned since 1988 is a Sony. I think if Samsung gets its audio quality together, that's where I'm headed next.

[@sonnypruitt6639]

Please be kind, and rewind.

[@JaxMerrick]

I still have Blockbuster cassettes of the original Star Wars trilogy with that very sticker over the clear portions of the plastic. Kind of stupid to have a large, opaque sticker over the are where you look to see if a video needed rewinding...

[@franklhota5019]

I thought it was funny that when you rented a video game from Blockbuster, they would put it in a box marked "Be Kind, Rewind". Hey, if the last renter didn't rewind the game, do I start with the final boss battle?

[@Nipah.Auauau]

Reminds me of renting old Nintendo 64 games from Blockbusters. The Nintendo 64 cartridge would save data directly onto itself instead of on the console/a memory card, so you would rent Ocarina of Time and find random people's save files on there. Helped me a lot when Majora's Mask came out and I was too stupid to figure out how to access the Astral Observatory.

[@julosx]

Do you mean Michel Gondry's movie (_Be Kind, Rewind_) ?

[@tjocus43]

Remember the VHS tape rewinders that came out, all it did was rewind the tape to save wear and tear on your vcr, seems like another lifetime now, lol

[@chadharmon7563]

Anyone else remember the remote with a 50ft cord that plugged into the vcr?

[@fidelcatsro6948]

by the time i learned to meow it was IR wireless remote..

[@glenm99]

50 foot? Ours wasn't even 10. We made my little brother sit on the floor because it didn't reach to the couch.

[@beachlife2968]

@@glenm99 Haha

[@chrismofer]

my dad handed me down a mute button my grandpa had made for their TV in the 60s, it's a little black bakelite box with a mercury switch inside and on/off labels on it's sides. it had a cord going to a 3.5mm jack, I never saw the TV but he had modified it to have a plug that sent the audio signal or power for the amps or something thru the cord to the box sitting on the couch, when u flip the box over it mutes it. my family has been avoiding TV commercials since then lmao

[@akoww1000]

We didn't have that on ours but in the last 80s I was working for a Cable company doing installs and was hooking up a cable box to the line and found a little box with a switch that had played and pauses on it. the old lady forget where she put that and was so happy she could pause her movies with out getting up lol

[@Jin-Ro]

Legend has it that my dad is still trying to set the timer.

[@raysville7256]

Me too!

[@bradavon]

Ha ha. They were so complicated by modern standards.

[@itsawonderfulknife7031]

@Tela Mamo Not as much of an idiot as you replying to a tongue in cheek remark. 😂

[@guntherultraboltnovacrunch5248]

@Tela Mamo You're a twit.

[@adamr9720]

@Tela Mamo Really? No one likes your kind of comments on the internet. Go away and play with your toys elsewhere. You do not have the mental capacity to understand wit, basic comedy and sense of humor.

[@tcpnetworks]

Betamax lost out because of licensing. The machine was a closed, proprietary system that cost much more to buy licenses for. The VHS system was the first system that allowed manufacturers cheap buy-in on patents and cheap on-going (per device) costs, that maintained the standard. The engineering? These two machines didn't define their respective destinies. There were many iterations after these machine that did that. These machines were first-shots of a video format war that was about Sony attempting to lock-out a market (their suggestion that the machine should be the national standard of Japan) and to extract very expensive manufacturing deals. JVC needed manufacturing capacity, and used FRAND to do that. Within 3 years, Akai, Matsushita, JVC, Sharp, RCA, Rank, were all making machines at full capacity, driving down costs further. So this wasn't so much an engineering battle. It was a licensing, manufacturing capacity war. Also - The duplication machines were a factor. The Pornography industry in the US saw these machines as a revenue source. Porn distributors wanted to buy Sony Beta, but Sony wouldn't sell the duplication machines. Panasonic did... If you want to sell lots of something - give it to the porn industry.. Good enough was just that...

[@denisl2760]

Sounds like ios vs android, too bad there weren't so many hipsters around back then or betamax would've won.

[@louistournas120]

Same thing happened with Apple vs IBM. The IBM BIOS was reverse engineered by compaq and then licensed to everyone. The IBM pc market was flooded with cheaper clones. The PC won the war against apple and all other little systems.

[@DoomFinger511]

It was little more then that for the computers. Gaming was a big factor. Apple use to be the machine you would play games on but they tried to be more "professional" while windows came out with "direct" which allowed programmers to harness the power of the individual components in the machine (like the video and sound card). This led to more companies making games for PC and now the PC had it's original professional market and also took in the gaming market. This is what tipped the scale in the PC favor.

[@louistournas120]

DoomFinger511 The DirectX thing came late into the game. There were plenty of DOS games. I think Windows 3.1 never had DirectX. It became a need with Win 95 because MS wanted to get rid of DOS mode. OpenGL was also released by MS but performed poorly (opengl32.dll did the software rendering). SGI disliked it and coded opengl.dll which had software optimizations. Then video card makers wrote proper drivers (included OpenGL) and the performance difference between opengl.dll and opengl32.dll became moot. Both could talk to the real opengl driver of the card.

[@IIGrayfoxII]

In a nutshell Betamax is like Apple and VHS is like android

[@joshgiesbrecht]

You're able to explain extremely complicated mechanisms as simple as the ABC's. I love it. You're a good layman's teacher

[@SirCrest]

I was kind of disappointed you didn't go into more details about how they work, but still nice to see a new video.

[@TheisAnd]

Yeah, I think that these fantastic engineer guy videos inspire the viewer to make interest in and look up more information about these historical events and not least the mechanisms behind - opposed to going into detail which could be a long video if everyday consumers (as me) were to understand it all. An introduction. Perhaps mr. Hammack should consider a second channel for in depth explanations? :)

[@outttatheway]

Theis Andersen He's released a few books that do just that. In depth explanations www.engineerguy.com/elements/index.htm

[@engineerguyvideo]

We've been thinking about making a second videos that discusses the mechanisms ... the machine are fascinating ....

[@ELuna3693]

His description was "Just Good Enough"

[@nagel1822]

***** It would be great if you would do that!

[@aaronlowe3156]

"The winner is usually the one that's just good enough" Wow that's a really good way of thinking of it.

[@RottenMuLoT]

As well as depressing.

[@richardcrook2112]

It's got more like that unfortunately, regarding everything.

[@syncmonism]

VHS was better though, it had a huge capacity advantage and the difference in quality was irrelevant, given that quality was variable and you would sacrifice so much playback time to choose the highest quality option.

[@andyl8055]

Two hour versus one hour tapes. In my book at least, that says everything I need to know when making my decision.

[@tkobvious]

I remember renting beta max as a little kid. And felt the same way. But what movies were an hour or less??? Shortest movies are maybe 1 hr. 15 mins.

[@venuspluto67]

For the consumer, the big deal difference would probably be that you could record whole movies with the VHS. If I were buying a video recorder back in 1983, it would be this factor that would determine which one I would purchase.

[@AJR-zg2py]

Absolutely the biggest factor. If 80-90% of the movies are 2 hours or less, the VHS only needs one tape. That's all I need to hear to be convinced. And over time the storage increased - I remember Gladiator (a 2h45m movie) fitting on a single cassette. VHS for its storage wins without debate.

[@artsmith103]

You could slow the tape from standard 2hr to lower quality 6hr.

[@MorrisonProductions]

@@AJR-zg2py I used to have a bunch of David Lean movies on VHS. Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago, and one other that was like a worse version of Dr Zhivago. All averaging 3.5 hours PLUS adverts beforehand.

[@danek_hren]

@@artsmith103 but who needs that when 240 min tapes were available?

[@RealHomeRecording]

@@danek_hren those 240 minute tapes were prone to getting chewed up.

[@martinitime1975]

Don't forget about porn. Sony didn't want their product being used to sell adult videos.

[@adamp9270]

I was sitting here thinking the same thing.

[@spoony8232]

They saw the light when Blu-ray came out.

[@EDHBlvd]

martinitime1975 ya this video totally missed one of the biggest reasons why VHS won out. Porn industry.

[@dickJohnsonpeter]

All porn then and now is on betamax. Those redtube videos you always watch? Betamax. Recorded off a tv with a PXL 2000 and then recorded with a phone and uploaded.

[@AERIEDM]

King Alfred Wow. Even the HD clips? What about pornhub? Are those all betamax too? I'm learning a lot. Thanks.

[@efp722]

I could listen to this guy read a phone book and still be entertained

[@jotcw81]

Check out his newest vid he reads the phone book of whole Manhattan!

[@zynhumara7006]

Lol

[@brianmckenzie6046]

so could I

[@gcaitube1]

what's a 'phone book' ? 😂

[@jspriver]

It’s like a warm blanket

[@mitherbee]

I still have a working Betamax!

[@robertthomas5906]

LOL... Do you party like it's 1999?

[@mitherbee]

@@robertthomas5906 You have no idea how appropriate that is Robert, my roomie is a Prince Nut and at one time had painted the dining room purple and made it into a Prince shrine which highlighted my BETA copy of Purple Rain! LOL!

[@jimsquire9048]

Me too, and 4 or 5 VCR's. lol

[@fidelcatsro6948]

DIP in clear resin and preserve it for the next generation to come in 2000yrs to see!!

[@rixvspinner]

so do I but it's not a Beta Hifi machine.

[@X2FileWrightonite]

The fact he used a Star Trek cassette in the demo - PERFECT !

[@edwardsmith3700]

I think Star Trek II was the first $20 or maybe it was the first $40 VHS Tape sold. and Star Trek IV was the first $20 tape sold. Most were like $50 to $70 back then.

[@rdhorsey9081]

The real reason that the Betamax lost was that Sony insisted on keeping their technology patents for themselves, and just a few other Sony "sister" companies. JVC sold their VHS techno license to any company that wanted it, so every cheapo electronics company made a VHS machine: everyone from Lloyds to Realistic, to Sears! Beta was truly better, but the machines cost more and were harder to find due to the limited number of companies making them. VHS machines, under hundreds of different brand names, flooded the market with inexpensive product and won out, even though (in the beginning) they were inferior to Beta. Even Sony ended making VHS machines.

[@ohger1]

Sears had a Beta... Hitachi had a Beta.. Toshiba had a Beta.. Beta lost out because of the one hour play time and RCA jumping on the VHS band wagon. Beta was better, but not a lot better.

[@pp3k3jamail]

Dude the guy told you why the betamax Lost. We don't need your so-called know-it-all ass given reasons why the betamax didn't succeed. The guy in the video told us why the betamax didn't succeed.

[@mickcarson8504]

I remember Realistic. Where are they today? Is Toshiba and Hitachi still going? I miss all these great companies.

[@video99couk]

Not really true that. In 1983 the best selling video recorder of any format in the UK was the Sanyo VTC5000 Beta model, outselling all VHS models. It was followed by another huge hit, the VTC5150. I bought the latter in 1984 for £239.99, a bargain price for a brand new machine in 1984. Toshiba also built Beta machines, also sold as Bush. In the early days, there were not actually that many VHS brand names either, I can recall: JVC/Ferguson (same machines), Panasonic, Hitachi and Sharp. At this time Philips/Grundig/B&O were selling V2000. All the own-brand junk and cheapo brands came along later in the 1980s.

[@ErikVanGoch]

Exactly what i read in a hifi magazine in the mid 80ties. The same article claimed VHS was actually an invention of Sony itself but since they aspired a better quality (and were convinced they would win the fight once their new aim called betamax was on the marked) they sold VHS to JVC who smartly gave away the technology almost for free to other brands. Never found any other sources confirming the claim that Sony invented VHS and sold it to JVC. In the Netherlands the rental video marked soon choose VHS (betamax rentals were harder and harder to get) and as usual the porn industry played a vital role in favor of VHS (more then 50% of all video's sold and rented in those early years were said to be porn and Sony choose not to be involved in porn). You'll be amazed how much porn influenced developments. When DVD came out it fought a similar battle with an alternative system as Betamax and VHS did. I can't even remember how that alternative system was called that almost beat DVD but DVD won the battle for no other reason then that the porn industry choose DVD over it's concurrent. Porn was also the first to explore 06 numbers.

[@IAmNotAFunguy]

The Supreme Court case that legalized the Betamax VCR was thanks in part to Mister Rogers who actually testified before the court saying he did not mind the use of it to timeshift his show, but also spoke out on behalf of the TV industry in general saying that it was time for TV to stop programming people's schedules.

[@reelblack]

Great video. I always thought the two factors were that JVC licences its patents to other suppliers, allowing more companies to make machines (and lowering the price) and 2) the fact that you could record up to 8 hours at SLP speed on a T-160 cassette was a major selling point for VHS. Beta only had 2 recording speeds initially and maxed out at 4 hours, if I remember correctly.

[@RobotPorter]

As you point out, licensing is the real thing that gave VHS the edge.

[@scottfranco1962]

There was no real reason that Betamax recording times could not be extended as was VHS. By the time machines came out with extended recording times, the betamax was already in trouble.

[@seabulls69]

@@scottfranco1962 Except that the cassette was smaller.

[@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823]

Yeah, but Beta was still a lot cleaner. You could get a nice, clean pause out of it, which VHS never had.

[@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823]

@StringerNews1 The VHS was never as great of quality as Beta. LaserDisc was better than either, tho.

[@Barry7777777]

Beta machines were also more time consuming to align mechanically. With a VHS machine you could often get by with a minor adjustment of the right hand guide post when the tracking drifted too far off the center detent, whereas you pretty much had to do a complete realignment on a Beta machine which usually required the service manual, torque gauges and special alignment tapes. You could usually tweak up a VHS machine using nothing but a good quality movie, then the machine would work just fine although admittedly a bit out of factory spec. Beta had pretty much dropped out of the market by the time VCR's got really cheap, using a single motor and a bunch of plastic gears to assign the motor to the various functions, so any Beta machine you find will be high quality. For the record, I'm a huge Sony fan - their stuff is really built to last and their circuit designs are excellent as well. However, I don't care for dedicated audio equipment made by Sony - it just doesn't seem to sound as good or handle signal overloading as gracefully as gear from other manufacturers.

[@ajs41]

Here in England it's always known as Betamax. Never heard it called Beta before.

[@darryldearing5537]

@@ajs41 You must be very isolated then! I was a TV/Video repair man and always referred to them as Beta videos. Betamax was rarely cited.

[@appalachiangunman9589]

My mom and dad had a Magnavox VCR made in Japan. It lasted for probably about 12 years, and we didn’t have internet for most if not all of those years so it got used a lot. Our cable was ran into the VCR, most people ran theirs to the TV. We had a remote that worked both, but the TV channel stayed on either two or three.

[@G56AG]

I was there when the VHS first came out, I sold the first VHS recorder in my local market, the battle boiled down to this, under agreement with JVC, RCA came to retail market first in the US. The Sony didn't even have a clock, you could buy a analog clock timer separately, and analog clocks are inaccurate, just like an alarm clock, set if for a time and it might come on + or - 5 minutes, a problem when you could only record for one hour, and it could only record one show. If I remember right the very first model had a digital timer and only recorded one time, but within a few months the RCA came with 4 programs, you could record 4 hours and automatically 4 different programs on different channels, all for $999, as I recall the Sony with the optional analog timer was $1500. Within 6 months RCA/JVC brought out a 6 hour tape, about a year later Sony finally came out with 2 hour recording time. The RCA/JVC was substantially cheaper and recorded several times longer, the writing was on the wall. As I recall JVC brought their own brand to the US market 6 months or a year after the RCA came out. RCA and JVC had a long standing relationship, JVC was originally Japan Victor Corp, loosely affiliated with RCA Victor, the older JVC products even had the old RCA trademark of Nipper the dog staring into the Victrola, listening to "His Master's Voice".

[@mfaizsyahmi]

+G56AG More convincing an argument than porn alone. I guess simple minds need simpler explanations.

[@michaelproctor8100]

In the end it is the consumer who decides who wins a format war, just look at what happened with blu-ray and hd dvd.

[@stephanierando3477]

We had a RCA with four hour capacity. When we bought it most movies were super expensive but the record abilities made the purchase worth the money. Blank tapes in those days were about $20 dollars opposed to a movie at 60. Within a year prices on movies themselves dropped significantly but blanks were always the cheapest.

[@og1ie]

I have thought about this subject. I used to think big money was being exchanged between unknown people and the VHS was shoved down the throats of the consumer. Your explanation is much more viable. Thanks for commenting.

[@randallking1]

Does anyone else notice the huge editing error here? While talking about fixed head video recorders, the shot is FILM projector.

[@engineerguyvideo]

We know, we know. When we were making the video we could not find any shots of a reel-to-reel video tape record with the proper license.

[@ComputerLearning0]

***** We knew what you meant though :)

[@3Cr15w311]

+engineerguy The larger reel-to-reelvideo tape recorders used a similar technique to record high density information on the tape. 1 inch Type B and C types used reel to reel used helical scan (although in different ways), and the old 2 inch quad reel to reel machines used transverse scan (recording vertically on the tape in stripes as the tape went by). The smallness of U-matic, Beta, and U-Matic was due to compromises in video luminance bandwidth that was recorded plus a big compromise in how color was seaparated out and heterodyned down to a low frequency. Remember how colors bled all over the place on these types of machines that used "color-under"? The larger machines like 2 inch quad and the 1 inch formats recorded the whole composite signal with the color intact using FM instead of just recording the lumimance that way and separating the color out. Also, home machines using this technique could get a viewable picture without the use of a time-base corrector, and expensive piece of equipment back in the day.

[@dewiz9596]

As I recall, “instant replay” for NHL hockey was done by recording on one machine, stringing the videotape across a room to a second player machine. . . One instant replay per event. . .

[@thegrimyeaper]

The "just good enough" conclusion is so depressing.

[@RonJohn63]

Very few people have enough money to by a Cadillac or Lexus (or Betamax). That's why we buy Chevies and Camries (and VHS): they're Good Enough.

[@Browningate]

...and now we still have to deal with the substandard consequences of that, all these years later.

[@southlondon86]

Browningate How?

[@Browningate]

@southlondon Because so many players and cassettes are still in use today with the modern equipment that really shows the limitations of those "good enough" compromises. There is nothing we can do to get more quality out of those recordings because it is the workings of the medium itself that limits what we can get out of it. They're forever stuck being a smudgy, sub-480i mess.

[@sfs2040]

Browningate QQ. Do you really think Beta would look any better compared to the HD stuff we get nowadays? Get real.

[@kierank1982]

Great video! Trying to teach this to modern media students is taxing as they have always been digital consumers. I can't wait to show them this! Thanks for making it!

[@johnmonkus4600]

When you look inside a VHS and compare it to the mechanism of a Beta machine, it's easy to see that the simplicity of a VHS versus the complex Beta won out. Once HQ VHS came out, it was no contest. The utter simplicity of late versions of VHS mechanisms is truly amazing.

[@etmax1]

Hi Bill, I was actually actively involved in video recording technology at the time and there was another big plus with Betamax in that you could fast forward without retracting the tape into the cassette. Beta was a derivative of the Sony U-Matic tape system used professionally by mobile studios and was much gentler on the tape. Sony also invented the M loading system used in VHS and sold it to JVC. The biggest killer for Beta was that JVC signed up some 10 or 12 companies with "their" system compared to only 2 (Sanyo & Toshiba, Sanyo had a VHS license as well) because Sony was so convinced of their market pull and superiority of the system that a Beta license was more "painful" to acquire. Then they (Beta camp) had trouble getting enough machines out the door and I heard from a number of people that they all wanted a recorder for something big on TV (can't remember if it was the Olympics or the world cup) and there was something like a 3-month delay for Beta compared with walk out the door with a VHS, so many of them opted for VHS. The exception to this was In Australia where Sanyo managed to flood the market early on but shops were spreading a lie about how VHS was better. Anyhow, the greater market penetration of VHS drove the rental market which then was the last nail in the coffin. That clunky eject mechanism you showed was a model related thing rather than VHS/Beta related, Sony always liked smooth eject and did it on most of their Philips cassette players as well. Sony made Early Toshiba units so they had it but Sanyo did there own and it clunky like the VHS. This caused negligible wear BTW.

[@danek_hren]

Lol, if Sony invented M-Loading system, why didn't they used it? Because they are stupid. The longest version of beta cassette was L-830, while VHS had E-240 (a whopping 4 hours on SP speed!). Now, with SLP, you will get 12 hours. With beta... Only about 5 hours. Short recording time, unreliability of the mechanism, overprice and stupid decisions is what made Betamax a loser. Not surprised it failed.

[@etmax1]

@@danek_hren Beta failed because Sony only got 3 licensees due to asking too much and or making too many restrictions. Beta actually had better picture quality, and was kinder on tapes. What also caused their demise was in the US video hire stores were starting up and because the VHS market was larger the titles came out on VHS first. This then started a downward spiral on sales. BTW, in Australia Beta was far more popular during the early year(s) holding some 80% of sales.

[@johanlaurasia]

One thing to note. News organizations did adopt the BETA format, and news cameras and news organizations were standardized to BETA due to the higher image quality, and, over time, other drawbacks were reduced. These days, it's all digital I believe.

[@3Cr15w311]

+John Laury Betacam is what many TV stations switched to from 3/4 U-Matic (the workhorse of the news-gathering industry for a while, and what Beta was a smaller version of). Betacam and Betacam SP were different from Beta.

[@voyeur65]

One of the guys from work used to take home used betacam tapes and use them in his Betamax machine...wouldn’t recommend that with the SP or Digibeta tapes though.

[@Petertronic]

Clever marketing will beat technical quality every time. Look at Apple.

[@nareshwildbones]

I dont have any apple products, but they definitely have quality

[@OldbeanO]

@@nareshwildbones Obviously you haven't had the misfortune of experiencing the weak, perishable build quality of their products..

[@pbase36]

@@OldbeanO and which product is that, exactly? Still using my 2012 power Mac and my 1st gen iPod still works.

[@TheCentralScrutinizerAgain]

and playstation

[@TheCentralScrutinizerAgain]

@@nareshwildbones but weak Tech/Cost ratio for the tech actually received in hand.

[@Mbartel500]

The biggest reason for the Betamax failure, was Sony refused to license it's technology to other companies. JVC licensed it's format to other companies, which spurred competition, rapid development, and lower prices. Sony wanted to keep it's technology proprietary, and paid the price.

[@AiOinc1]

Fun fact, Betamax was named as such because the tape path through an operating machine resembled the Greek symbol. The same was for Sony's previous U-Matic format, the tape formed a vague U shape when the machine was in use.

[@amorasaki]

I was really surprised when my local video store was shown at 3:06. I'm actually not even sure if it's still in business.

[@engineerguyvideo]

Why should you be surprised? That's my local video store also.

[@rosssharma542]

+amorasaki How could they possibly fail when the have the phrase "That's rentertainment" in the window

[@stonent]

+engineerguy I'm surprised you have a local video store.

[@vector6977]

+stonent Still have a Family Video in my town.

[@kjamison5951]

Oh, folks still work there... it’s an Arby’s now.

[@97channel]

Aye carumba! I never thought I'd see the day where a single wooden table would survive carrying two 1970's video recorders! Not even Popeye could lift two of them together, after a heavy session on the ol' spinach!

[@jobaecker9752]

Back around 1980, I was employed by one of the first video rental places in town; Most of the titles were BetaMax, but VHS was right on its heels. The biggest issue at that time was the fact that the players were so expensive, and most people didn't own one. Because of that, our store also rented out the players, and because this wasn't cheap, the cassette rentals were done in groups of 5. It was extremely common to see guys rent a player and 10, 15 cassette tapes every weekend - mainly porn. Later on, women and even seniors came in to rent those tapes... We then started a branch store --a rental counter inside of an Audio retailer named "Sound of Music" - which later became Best Buy. They were very quick to phase out the porn cassettes and shortly thereafter got out of the rental business entirely.

[@COSMACELF1802]

You missed one of the most amusing facts. Sony developed VHS and Betamax. They sold off VHS (the inferior technology) to JVC and kept the Betamax for themselves. JVC then immediately made it sort of open source and a lot of other manufacturers started producing VHS recorders. It was a war of popularity. Sony did not make this mistake again when Blue Ray went up against HD DVD.

[@BensSightSoundandAuto]

JVC fully developed the VHS. However, in the late 60s, Sony, JVC and Matsushita did collaborate to develop the U-Matic, but that's an unrelated format and technology.

[@johnsavard7583]

I figured that there were two reasons why VHS won. For home recording, the common T-120 tape size could record more at SLP than L-750 could record at Beta III. For prerecorded movies, since a movie is two hours long, while VHS could use SP and didn't need LP, Beta had to go to Beta II. So, although Beta was a higher-quality format, pre-recorded movies were actually poorer in quality in Beta.

[@danek_hren]

Or been split in multiple cassettes?

[@rouser301]

My decision came town the price of blank tapes which were about $29.95 VHS vs 35.99 for Betas and the most important factor... VHSs recorded 2 hours and Betas only half that.

[@pianopappy]

Me too! Although, I got two Ampex blank T-120's for $25 each in 1980. Neither one of them held up, however. Also, my JVC VHS machine, which cost me about $1200, stopped recording at the six-hour speed and took six months to be repaired. Not until the "hi-fi" machines came along could I make decent recordings at the six-hour speed. I still have about 350 cassettes of off-the-air recordings. Last year, I started uploading some material recorded in the eighties to KZbin.

[@HeyJD123]

You talk so smoothly. There's no mistakes or blemishes in your speaking. I envy that.

[@ftlgo238]

Miracles of multiple takes.

[@TouchingClothProd]

Per the Urban Dictionary: betamaxed --- When a technology is overtaken in the market by inferior but better marketed competition.

[@jamesshunt5123]

Must apply to virtually every Apple product then. A lot of good products were Betamaxed by Apple. The first Ipod mp3 players had dreadful sound quality but they dominated the market.

[@fartsnstuf]

@@jamesshunt5123 or you could in theory, not get up in arms about it

[@jamesricker3997]

VHS did have a few advantages One of the big ones was the length of programs it could record

[@TheCentralScrutinizerAgain]

should be replaced by playstationed

[@TheCentralScrutinizerAgain]

@@jamesshunt5123 indeed. The Mediocre Tech/High Cost ratio continues.

[@Sargebri]

in 1985 when my parents bought our first VCR the saleslady at Sears tried to sell us a Beta recorder but we went with the cheaper VHS recorder. Turned out we made the right choice due to the fact that within a couple of years Beta became pretty much obsolete. BTW, this was the first format war I can remember. Of course, in later years we would see the war between PC and Mac as well as HD DVD and Blu Ray.

[@Adidasfighter2006]

Betamax has two Things who was good: 1. The Tape was around the Drum and so you can go faster from Play to Forward or Reverse and then to Play return....2. You can copy most VHS Tapes who has a Copyright from Studios on this....

[@Gunzee]

I remember my cousin telling me when I was young 'if you ever see a VCR with piano keys buy it'. Exactly like the two machines you have, according to him the very early machines 'piano key' had no copy protection. Also have to hand it to Sony they do innovate. They must have released so many formats; minidisk, blueray, Betamax and I'm sure there are a few more. I think they were also responsible for portable tape players. What they done in the console market was amazing. The PlayStation was originally just a cd add on for the snes I bet Nintendo are still kicking themselves for backing out. If they stuck with Sony who knows Sega might still be around, Microsoft may have stayed out of the console market. Who knows but one thing is for sure, I'm glad they did. The ps1 is probably the best console ever released, it's library is huge and for any fan of j-rpg's the ps1 console is one you should have. I sure like going off topic! Thanks for the clip.

[@akaishi1583]

Yes, Sony did create the first portable cassette player, called the Walkman. They did not create Blu-Ray though, that was made by a group of companies, that did include Sony, however. You could say the PS3 really made it popular though.

[@ComputerLearning0]

My first VCR was one of those big, heavy machines with the pop-up tape deck. Mine was a Panasonic and although big & heavy, it was one great machine in it's day. I bought it used from a co-worker for $200. I also bought a newer, smaller machine of the period and would use the large VCR to copy legit movies because it didn't have that damned copy protection thingy and it worked great for that purpose. I sold it a couple years later for exactly what I paid for it ($200). By then there were new VCR's being marketed that would defeat current copy protection methods.

[@chris2442uk]

Gunzee None of the video recorders had copy protection. The way manufacturers stopped their tapes from being copied was by encoding their tapes with a signal that confused the auto-brightness which is incorporated into all video recorders

[@mtp1964]

+chris2442uk Exactly right. Macrovision was introduced in 1983 (I think)and manufacturers had to, by law, make new machines so that the copy protected content would confuse the AGC of the recorder causing the brightness of the recording to go up and down and even confuse the motor servos . Macrovision essentially inserted fake video lines inside the vertical blanking section to mess with the AGC. Pre 1983 VCR's didn't process the AGC in the same way so they were immune to Macrovision.

[@mtp1964]

+Gunzee Sony innovates (at least used to) to try and corner a market and force consumers to buy their proprietary products. They weren't too successful. I'm not giving you BluRay as that was a combined effort by various manufacturers. You forgot the memorystick.

[@powertube5671]

Great video, Bill. My first video tape machine was Betamax. I eventually switched to VHS because 1) Beta could only record, at most, two hours. VHS could record SIX. I also could see that most people were buying VHS and I could not notice much difference between Beta and VHS. The same thing happened with CDs over LPs, although vinyl has made a comeback. CDs could be played in your car, at work and tracks could be selected. DVDs took over VHS and now both video and audio are played on compressed MP4 and MP3 files. Less quality, but more convenience. The difference is not important to most people.

[@No-mq5lw]

Yes I'm late, but LPs were succeeded by cassette then CD. Though LP has come back for mostly the wrong reasons, as modern music production has made the end result more sterile, so making an LP and listening to that version forces some some of that warmth back in because of the limitations of LP. Most DVDs can do about as good as VHS, without some of the analog interference issues VHS suffers from. And both MP3 and 4 can do basically anything given enough bandwidth and storage. Many early MP3s were forced to cut the bit rate down to get things fitting on early flash based MP3 players.

[@jamesricker3997]

VHS won because it could store a greater length of video, enough for an entire movie. Which made it more profitable for studios to sell movies on VHS tapes than Beta

[@ThecrosseyedTexan]

I read an article many years back that said the adult film industry also had a lot to do with this but I guess that also ties in with the movie rental aspect

[@davej474]

I love the way you displayed a shiny Betamax player and a beat up VHS player as reinforcement :)

[@pokiplus9672]

Years ago I bought a Betamax, good product, top of the line. Experts said it was better than a VHS.

[@TheBurntLemon]

Turned out to be a complete waste of time and money

[@pavelmichalek7302]

Let it go!

[@maxwelltlmm4583]

@@TheBurntLemon Absurd opinion,intolerant guy.

[@700gsteak]

This video left out the issue with tape breakages. To increase the length of beta tapes the tape has to be made thinner. Beta tapes also had more turns wound inside the case. Both these things made beta tapes more prone to breakages than vhs.

[@MrWarmo]

Plus, dont forget the different modes for VHS (LP + SP) for quality vs recording time

[@boston7704]

Unless you had a very good TV, good source material, and a clean device the difference between Beta and VHS was not material. We used to do comparisons in the 1980s in a video store and *never* had anyone see the difference.

[@bloqk16]

I recall when VHS went to HQ circuitry, by the mid-1980s, that a good VHS VCR, when recording a TV show, had playback that was every bit as good looking as viewing the TV show in real-time; as that was on a 25 inch TV.

[@BensSightSoundandAuto]

Correct, the fact remains that there was so many variables that on the whole, the difference in quality was negligible.

[@JanBee1122]

And what about the laser disk? I never understood what that was even all about. Was it some sort of pre-cursor to DVD? All I remember was anyone who had one of those machines was probably well off and rentals for them were virtually non-existent.

[@notsure1277]

The LaserDisk was superior in terms of image and audio quality, but it was the size of an old 33 1/3-rpm record. Not easy to manipulate. Tapes were made obsolete when CD/DVD/BRD discs were small enough to hold in a person's hand.

[@nmgt1048]

I have repaired, or at least tried to, fix both VHS and Beta machines for many years. I found that replacing a bad video head on a Beta machine was far more difficult-a lot of fussing around, could never get it right- yet I replaced the heads on many VHS machines with no trouble at all. As for image quality, I bought a Panasonic VHS eighteen years ago, and the quality was-and is- good even at the slower speeds. I made a lot of tapes with it, especially since I got cable in 1999. I now dubbed many of these videos on to DVD in the last few years.

[@CharleyDeppner]

There's a lot of "conflicted noise" about Sony originally forbidding pornographic content in the Betamax license, which could fall under your assertion "relationships" forged by JVC. There is a lot of inconsistency as to whether this is true or not (or to what degree), but it is oft-cited as to how Betamax failed. Another thing not cited is Betamax originally supported "Hi-fi Stereo"- a feature which came later as a premium to VHS.

[@CharleyDeppner]

***** Yes. My earliest use of VHS (circa 1983-84) was renting and copying VHS tapes with my neighbor. Later on, I used VHS timers and the audio inputs to record "scheduled" radio programs, e.g. Howard Stern and others, I could listen to at my leisure. (I still consider the advantage of this from time-to-time and am considering re-investing into "VCR for Radio.") I also used the extended play functionality to record "mix audio tapes" of music that could run for up to 6 hours. I was quick to notice the 1/2" video tape had superior sound quality to cassettes. (Even when writable CD's came along, this was somewhat easier to manage and initially preferable, until .mp3 CD's.)

[@living_the_mac_and_cheese_life]

I still remember my dad wanting beta and my mom wanted vhs. We went with vhs and luckily had tons of tapes to choose from.

[@mp4podcastDOTcom]

You made a lot of good points. But from my understanding Sony only let two other companies make Beta Max machines. I believe Sanyo and Toshiba. I could be wrong. JVC let anyone make a VHS VCR as long as you paid for the license. The only thing I did not like about JVC is that they removed the four hour recording mode called LP and only had SP and EP also EP is the same as SLP. But JVC would play back VHS tapes in LP but you get a black screen when you fast forward.

[@sik59rt]

Yup, you are correct

[@Urbicide]

Yes, it boiled down to a question of numbers. Sony limited the number of manufactures licensed to build Beta machines, whereas Japan Victor Corporation let anyone & their uncle build VHS machines for a small royalty. Ironically, Sony developed both tape formats, & then sold the rights to the lesser quality VHS system to JVC, since the Beta system offered better video quality and a better tape transport system. After a couple of years, there were a heck of a lot more VHS machines in homes than were Beta. Rental stores ( you could not really buy pre-recorded movies back then) went from carrying movie titles in both formats to eventually just carrying them only in VHS. I remember families having huge libraries of home made tapes. It's hard to believe, but folks used to put their VCRs in the shop years ago to have the tape heads professionally cleaned & serviced. Eventually the machines got so cheap (in quality too) that you just threw them away & bought a new disposable player if you had issues with your old one.

[@52goodguy]

Zenith marketed sony made beta vcrs for several years. NEC had beta vcrs for a time too.

[@ComputerLearning0]

Man this sure brings back a lot of memories. I remember the original VCR recording settings, *SP-LP-EP* (EP was sometimes labelled *ELP*). I always preferred recording in *SP* because it provided the best quality but took longer to skip through commercials. Cheaper VCR's did indeed go to a black screen when fast-forward searching. Back in the mid 90's I bought the absolute best Sony VCR featuring a flying erase head, a feature only found on the most expensive VCR's, which was great for video editing. Cost me $500 at the time but was well worth it. Sony also had some low-end cheap, shitty VCR's too.

[@raltommo]

mp4podcastDOTcom I live in France and I distinctly remember my father buying a special VHS cassette to clean our machine. You would put it inside and play it and it would do the trick. When was a kid I always wondered how that worked. In fact ... I still do. I just hope my memory isn't playing tricks on me and maybe I'm mixing different memories together I don't know.

[@phillipwilloughby5013]

I bought my last VCR in 2001. I never bought a DVD recorder because cable and satellite companies had introduced their digital recorders. The latest DVR I got in 2013 can record four programmes at the same time while watching a fifth. Now the newest DVR can record six programmes at the same while watching a seventh, and now you can watch your recordings anywhere on your device when it's connected to Internet.

[@davebeedon3424]

The guy running the Technology Connections channel says that another reason VHS recorders were initially more popular was that they better supported the idea of time-shifting (watching TV shows when you wanted, not when they were broadcast). Time-shifting was aided by two things: recording time and ease of programming. VHS cassettes were larger that Betamax cassettes, meaning they could hold more tape, which translated into longer recording times. VHS recorders had versatile timers that made it possible to program the recording of several TV shows (with complex schedules) in advance. Sony lagged badly in these areas.

[@Ivo--]

Everybody always seems to forget about poor old video 2000.

[@jetboy8404]

+spankmeister I had a Phillips Video 2000 - excellent recorder. I believe they were purely European so destined to fail in a Global market.

[@dharkbizkit]

+spankmeister yup, true. sometimes i think that phillips is cursed. they invented so much good stuff that never caught on. if i were them, id given up

[@GBOAC]

Ever heard about the CD or the compact cassette? Both (partly) invented by Philips.

[@DarrenCoull]

Yep, I second that, our household had purely V2000 (first a Grundig 2x4 Super, until it literally wore out, then a Philips VR2020 as the format was dying out) - we didn't go VHS until NICAM Stereo and Dolby Pro Logic was a thing. Even then, the top-of-the-range VHS recorder I got still couldn't picture search without some noise bars. V2000 could do it perfect. Shame Europe was only place it really was moderately popular, until the steamroller of VHS killed it off about the same time as Betamax (in the UK at least)

[@Dont_stay_long_k077]

Sorry bud I didn't see your post, I've just mentioned that , it was a disaster lol

[@kevin7rxxx346]

“People thought it would come down to pixel rate or refresh rate, and they're pretty much the same. What it came down to was a combination between gamers and porn. Now, whichever format porno backs is usually the one that becomes the uh most successful. But, you know, Sony, every PlayStation 3 has a Blu-ray in it.” Kevin, Tropic Thunder

[@TheCentralScrutinizerAgain]

and expect heavier controls on that in s0ny`s latest generations of tech, through the censoring at source that they do now.

[@bobedot]

"And with some minor tweaks SONY Betamax became SONY Betacam. The broadcast television standard tape format for over 20 years." Not so. Betacam is a very different format from Betamax. Betamax is a consumer quality composite video format whereas Betacam is a higher quality component format that records luminance Y and chrominance R-Y/B-Y on alternating tracks. Forgive my techno-gibberish, but this is a very basic difference.

[@JoeFoerster]

The rule of "just good enough" applies to a lot of things. Look at Windows versions from the start up to today compared to "other" OS's.

[@dscotia]

The Media (TV) used the Sony U-Matic system and from that Betamax (Betacord from Sanyo, under licence). Later the industry, as you said introduced Betacam followed by Digital Beta (also commonly known as DigiBeta) lasted till 2015/16. It was an exciting time, especially the dawn of Digital.

[@MostlyCastles]

We had a Betamax machine when I was a kid. It was a huge disappointment when our local video rental stores, one by one, dumped Betamax for VHS. We got a VHS machine when we had to but the picture and sound quality always irritated me. Happily, we can now stream 4K which is a huge improvement. Nice film by the way. A trip down memory lane.

[@mrvampire7577]

Missing some important non-engineering information in this video. The Sony/JVC was a case study way back when I was studying in 1990. Sony wanted to keep exclusive rights to produce its machines and tapes so did not allow any other company to manufacture under their patent. JVC took the opposite strategy, they opened their patent to anyone willing to pay them royalties and they offered it at a cheap rate. This did 2 things for VHS: it flooded the market and lowered the price though manufacturers competition, which effectively pushed Betamax out of the market.

[@arjayla]

And The Award for Best VCR of the 80s goe's to... :Drum roll: V2000 !

[@shawbros]

"Goes" does not need an apostrophe.

[@peteralexben]

yes the phillips vcc with autoreturn and digital recording was the top tape video recorder ever made

[@mememe84]

I wonder what happened to all the machines that mass recorded VHS. There was a time where VHS seemed like it will be with humanity forever

[@louistournas120]

I have a few. People throw them away.

[@mememe84]

show me a picture

[@MIKE1236936]

I have a couple of machines,too,but I have no idea why.

[@scottplumer3668]

One point that bears mentioning is that Beta survived for quite a while as a professional format as Betacam SP. It was used mostly by TV stations and TV commercials, but it survived long after Beta was forgotten in the consumer market. Once things started going digital, DigiBeta came around around, which was digital video stored on tape, but it failed to make much of a dent. Things then moved to solid state (i.e., SD and compact flash cards) rather quickly after that, which is where they are today, though some outfits use the Sony digital Professional Disc, which goes with its XDCam system. We use both where I work.

[@RealHomeRecording]

"it failed to make much of a dent" Like heck it didn't! Digital Betacam was the high end format of choice for many production companies. Released in the year 1993, it had a good lifespan. High definition video production is the main reason it went out of style.

[@just_passing_through]

“Betacam” and “Betamax” are not the same. The physical tapes are the same but the technical specs are entirely different. Tapes recorded in one can physically fit in the other, but neither can be played in the other. Betacam could only record 20 minutes of footage on a tape that would hold 2 hours on a Betamax machine - Hence the broadcast quality. The only similarity between the two is the physical tape.

[@Scangull]

I had a Sony Betamax SLHF 950. It was a beauitiful semi-professional machine and the picture quality was indistinguishable from the original broadcast picture. If you wanted to you could freeze-frame and still have a perfect picture unlike with VHS which was virtually unviewable. If I remember correctly you could also "jog" backwards or forwards one frame at a time which would have been essential for editing purposes. But it came a a price: I paid £750 for mine back in 1985 and that was discounted down from around £1,000. Sad that such excellence was beaten by tha junk that was "just good enough" - VHS.

[@godfreyberry1599]

Sony ended up making excellent VHS machines. If you can't beat them - join them.

[@jayrenner7565]

As a guy that used to work on both systems, VHS machines were so much easier to align and keep working. Betamax sucked when it came to tape loading and tape transport around the head. Two pins (VHS) versus 5 (Beta). We technicians helped to kill Beta as much as anything else did.

[@BensSightSoundandAuto]

Yep, the Sony transport just had too much to go wrong. Build quality was offset by the relative complexity

[@Yarah777]

My very first VCR was that Sony BetaMax and it was awesome. It was $1600.00 and the only place where I could buy movies was from Hollywood Video in California. That was a long time ago and the first movie that I bought was "Enter The Dragon" Bruce Lee movie.

[@jeffwalker9122]

I can remember on special occasions my parents renting a VHS for a weekend. We would watch new releases such as Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, and the Breakfast Club! Good times!

[@spazkong]

Always wondered about this. Thanks for sharing. I remember in 1980, my father and I went to Argos (a catalogue shop in the UK) and purchased two blank VHS cassettes which cost £20 for both. That was more than half a week's wages for the average worker! A pint of beer in a public house was around 47p (I grew up in a pub you see). A pint of pub beer in the UK now is around £4. That would make one single video cassette around £100 today which, by my maths means beer has never been so affordable. I'll drink to that!

[@bloqk16]

That's good you pointed out that early ownership of VHS or Beta really upped the expense when it came to blank tapes. The early era of VHS tapes in the US were expensive, at around $10 ~ $15 (US) each. I recall when I got hooked on recording TV shows by the late 1980s and building a video library, that standard or high-grade VHS tapes could be gotten as low as $2 ~ $3 (US) each when the big-box retailers had ad promotion sales of them in multi-packs, generally three or four cassettes per pack.

[@BifMcAwesome]

The weight factor was also important when video stores would rent the machines out to customers who did not own a videotape player, which were relatively expensive when they first hit the market.

[@jamesfrench7299]

We knew an Italian Australian family in Sydney who bought an entire Sony entertainment system that included a hifi sound system, a monitor and Beta VCR all connected and have great memories watching television and movies there. I remember noticing how well the vcr operated when rewinding and fast forwarding compared to the VHS machines. It was clearly a cute above, but I still loved our first VHS machine we got afterwards in 1988, despite the less elegant noises it made. :)

[@KRW628]

I've still got my beta recorder; boxed up in the garage. Haven't seen it in 20 years.

[@diamonddave2622]

how do you know its still there then?

[@KRW628]

Strange you should say that Dave, As far as I can tell, the MFs who broke into my garage a month ago only stole my lawn mower, ,my snow blower, my hedger trimmer, leaf blower and weed wacker. I think my Beta is still in there somewhere.

[@KRW628]

thanks for the heads-up, and say hello to Quark for me.

[@KRW628]

resisting her is futile

[@harmknol5841]

Michael Powell Hoi .Then i do let you know i bought and got a lot of recorders Betamax .2000 and VHS for museum purpose.The problem is i only and still pay storage rent for 9 years.The city hall people and 3rd mayor dont care [e-mail]

[@rkgaustin]

"Perfection is the enemy of good enough" -Old Russian proverb

[@darthgamer6080]

Russia in WWII in a nutshell.

[@brianbassett4379]

"Perfect is the enemy of good... or more literally, "the best is the enemy of the good," Not "good enough", ya knob.

[@TheNYgolfer]

@RKG Austin - That's exactly why Russia lost the race to the moon.

[@TheUltimateBlooper]

@@TheNYgolfer Yet did everything else first...

[@joentexas]

When the adult entertainment industry adopted the VHS format, the Beta-Max format died. It was the adult entertainment industry that was the first profitable business on the internet.

[@yuppiehi]

This is an example of "If you repeat a falsehood enough times, it eventually becomes fact."

[@bloqk16]

Some side-notes about the VHS rental market of the 1980s into the 1990s: The studios that produced the theatrical movies that ended up on VHS purposely marked up the selling price of such tapes to around $90 (US) per title; and when adjusted for inflation, the cost would run near $190 as of the Winter of 2021. Some of the reasons were to promote the rentals of the movies for the retail rental places to profit from; as, what was termed the _sell-through_ price of the VHS movie title would be so cost-prohibitive that it would strongly encourage the rental of the VHS movies. Another probable reason for the high-cost of the VHS movie for _sell-through_ was the time and expense of duplication, as the analog method of video duplication meant that the tapes had to be individually transferred from a master to the copies that went to retailers. Places that did the tape duplication would consist of walls with rows of machines, each one making a duplicate copy from a tape master. It was a slow and tedious process; making it expensive to manufacture. VHS movie rentals were fraught with problems, such as rental tapes that were worn-out or were previously played on a machine with dirty-heads; which mucked up the playback quality of the tape with future customers that rented the tapes. Another problem issue also arose with the VHS rentals, in that those customers with a larcenous bent would disassemble the cassette, remove the tape content of the movie, then replace the tape with some blank tape or junk recording. So when the rental VHS tape was returned, the outside packaging of the VHS cassette would show the rented movie title, but the tape itself would be a different content; while the thieving customer had possession of the movie tape that was installed in another cassette. I heard that such a devious tactic was particularly popular with the X-rated/porn movie rentals market. By the mid-1990s the studios did lower the _sell-through_ price of the theatrical movies on VHS, but they were still listing for around $20 ~ $30 (US). Which makes the movies on DVDs and Blu-Rays real bargains; especially so since the digital discs have video extras to supplement the movie.

[@MotoFeeder]

I grew up in my grandfather's Radio Shack store. I watched the battle first hand. What we saw at the time was the victory of "open source" over "proprietary". Only Sony made their cassettes and players; they allowed nobody else to do so. VHS licensed their technology to anybody who wanted to make it, both cassette and player manufacturers. It was a beautiful lesson in economics. It created massive competition among the various VHS manufacturers to continually innovate and refine their products, the first major consequence of which was lower and lower prices year over year. Yes they made deals with major rental companies as explained here, but that was just the final nail in the coffin. Rental companies like Block Buster wanted more VHS on their shelves because of customer demand for VHS.

[@SonnyGTA]

I remember when my video store hung a little handmade sign that said VHS ONLY.

[@yoyo5069]

Commie

[@HennerZeller]

And the best yet were Video 2000 with 2x4h cassettes and image quality better than the Betamax. Yet it suffered the same fate as people went for the crappy minimal viable product VHS.

[@okaro6595]

+Henner Zeller I never understood the double sided cassette for video. Who watches first four hours on one side and then four hours on the other side? When Video 2000 came the game was already over.

[@TheLuizSouza]

IIRC, Video 2000 was never marketed in the US, so that might explain why it didn't catch on worldwide.

[@AgnostosGnostos]

JVC let many clones of VHS video players to exist and lower the price. Sony was very strict with clones like Apple was. The first video cassette players of late 70's were toys of the high class . Only the clones of JVC lowered the price during early 80's for the middle class and by mid 80's anyone could afford a VHS recorder. Beta had superior quality but that didn't matter. Video rental clubs had restricted store space and wanted to sell many titles to a large number of customers. So having both video cassette types restricted the titles in half and why please equally the 1/5 of costumers instead of the 4/5 who owned cheaper VHS players. The Philips DCC cassette and sony mini disk had superior quality of MP3 but that didn't matter. MP3 was cheaper and most times free. Blu Ray has much higher quality than any streaming service. It hasn't prevail because it's more expensive than legal web streaming. My conclusion is that what it counts is decent quality as cheap as possible.

[@atzuras]

Beta format was not 'better'. The origiinal Sony Beta VCR machine was usually a better and more expensive product because of the high quality standards at Sony but the format was not better at any level. It was the worst due to limited recording time and any possible 'better quality' was lost at the Beta-2 format which basically was mirroring VHS quality and recording tme. So no wonder that Beta was promoted as "better" by many retailers... it just had no actual benefit to justify a higher cost and smaller market other than being "better .. you know.. because technical reasons"

[@jshepard152]

The one hour recording limit on Beta seems like a huge limitation.

[@kruks]

@kevin lawrence - RCA came out with a four hour recording time VCR in 1977, before Sony finally compromised on a longer recording time. For a product that sells itself on time-shifting, it's hard to deny that VHS had a native advantage out the gate. Betamax also never had as long a recording time as VHS. It was physically impossible for it to: The cartridge was smaller.

[@foughtthelol]

My teacher told me betamax lost because there was no porn for it.

[@dextertreehorn]

+Eien no Yami So i heard the story too.

[@RonJohn63]

That's the "rental market" angle.

[@foughtthelol]

RonJohn63 What does that mean?

[@RonJohn63]

***** Porn was a big part of the rental market.

[@knarFkcalB]

It's little known that there actually was a Beta format machine designed especially for porn. It had chroma circuits designed to enhance flesh tones, and somewhat higher resolution. Though it never really caught on, some of us old timers still remember it - the infamous Master Betamax.

[@barriewilliams4526]

Sad, I had them both & found the Betamax to be far superior 🙂

[@danek_hren]

No, beta was trash

[@abdulmokta48]

Sony well made and premium. Jvc was cheap and standard quality.

[@edwardsmith3700]

JVC's were not cheap. When Full HQ circuits came out , Video and Video Review Magazines proved that JVC made machines in Japan had the best S/N Ratios of any machines on the consumer market. And that continued with Super VHS. When JVC moved production outside of Japan. These new machines took a 2-3 db point dive. Making it more in the Panasonic range of numbers. Resolution also dipped from 250-260 lines to 240. JVC also had a built-in repair to their machines from Japan. The transport system of the tape would wear out for a $250 repair bill. So, the machines were top dollar and then had a $250 repair bill after the one year warranty ran out. I had several JVC machines from Japan in the 80's.

[@T33K3SS3LCH3N]

Having grown up with heaps of video cassettes, I'm astonished at how robust they were. Me and my siblings were anything but gentle with them, yet there were almost no physical failures.

[@bloqk16]

Not only were the tape cassettes durable, but they were forgiving if there were flaws or dropouts with the recordings; as such imperfections didn't stop the recording to continue playing. Compare that to DVD/Blu-Ray where a minor flaw on the digital playing surface would render the recording unplayable.

[@danek_hren]

@@bloqk16 About failures in video signal. I don't know exactly why but my Panasonic NV-SR55 unit when recording on PAL it sometimes has a bit unstable picture and loses color. It has 2 heads. I don't know if this phenomenon is caused by cheap cassette or maybe heads need cleaning but you got the point. Also, I think that it was THE CHEAPEST VCP that was somewhere and my cheap-lovely father bought it. It has only one timer: how long to record for. With 30 minutes intervals. Yeah. Much, MUCH worse than RCA VDT-600 from 1975-76! Technology here is degrading!

[@ferox965]

I was a kid when the rental boom of the early 80s happened. I knew a few people who had beta, but most people definitely had VHS. Also, I still remember the small video stores...at the time, they'd all have a tiny beta section and VHS dominated.

[@akoww1000]

My step-dad won a Betamax at his companies Christmas party in the late 70s. He couldn't find any place "near by" that had a wide selection of movies, but could get tapes to record tv shows. It was neat for it's time. I got a few Betamax tapes for my birthday so I could record stuff like Saturday morning cartoons to watch during the week. Yes that was a big deal then lol

[@siler7]

Company's. Nearby, without quotation marks. He. Its. , .

[@ComputerGeek1100]

Can you do one about how HD-DVD lost to Blu-Ray?

[@jasondashney]

PS3. It had a built in bluray player whereas people would have to buy an HD-DVD player. Sony owns a studio and sold 3 jillion PS3's before people really had a chance to get on the HD-DVD train. It's an early market penetration story.

[@tonyford4170]

I had a Betamax in the early 1980's, It was great quality, and I had access to rental tapes rhrough work.

[@nephetula]

When both were available, I bought the VHS because it had 3 speeds, and offered 6 hours of recording time, vs. only 1 speed and two hours recording time for the Beta. Having the ability to record 3 full-length movies on a single tape made it a no-brainer, especially when the blank tapes were $6 - $8 each. The picture quality difference between the two was not enough to offset the price and recording time disadvantages. Most times, "good enough" is all you need.

[@tommythomason6187]

He speaks so clearly and not too fast. This is a welcome relief for someone like me, who has a severe hearing problem.

[@m623]

Brilliant thank you ...I remember my brother buying a Sony and could we find Betamax tape rental ...never

[@donkeypoo99]

something about the way the betamax ejects is so appealing to me. I watched that part over and over about 30 times, for some reason I can't get enough of it

[@DrunkenGuitarGuy]

ocd much?

[@Christopher_Gibbons]

Actually Hollywood backed both formats. Just as they did with blueray and hd-dvd. In both cases the tie was broken by the one industry that unanimously supported only one over the other. Porn. Yep the porn industry dominates all digital media changes. Nothing takes off until you can use it to watch someone take it all off.

[@2Spookeh4Me]

***** ......... wow.

[@okaro6595]

+Christopher Gibbons Originally they wanted to kill both formats.

[@chemystify]

While the three factors you state are the main ones, there is a fourth (which is related to the cost issue you mentioned): "JVC, which designed the VHS technology, licensed it to any manufacturer that was interested. The manufacturers then competed against each other for sales, resulting in lower prices to the consumer. Sony was the only manufacturer of Betamax initially, and so was not pressured to reduce prices." [source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war]

[@mickesmanymovies]

I had a JVC almost like that one... Probably a few years newer, but I distinctly remember the harsh pop up of that hatch. At the end of that vhs-player's life span the lid on the hatch - the actual top cover - had come lose from the mechanism. So every time I pushed to open it I needed to remember to keep a finger on the lid - when I forgot to do that the lid just catapulted right out into the room! It still amazes me from time to time, that I once put worn out VHS tapes with illegally copied horrible quality movies in that machine, which was hooked up to a 15in black-and-white lump of a television (both machines together probably weighing in at somewhere between 60-80lbs)....and today I open up Netflix on my comparatively miniscule phone and cast a high quality image film straight onto my 65in flatscreen tv... Technology moves so fast it boggles the mind!!

[@sirBrouwer]

The joke is we had a cassette player built in to a Sony tv that was only for VHS

[@shrekogreton6405]

I'd love to see HD-DVD vs. Bluray and why Bluray won.

[@shrekogreton6405]

***** it's still around while HD-DVD is gone entirely. And cinephiles still buy blu ray for best quality and extra features. Download is the way it's going to be for everything eventually though.

[@stonent]

+Tyler coombs The PS3 with Blu-Ray certainly helped. The Xbox 360 had an external HD-DVD drive option but probably would have helped if it was standard. I think Blu-Ray was more of an open standard and ran on Java where as I think the HD-DVD format was using some Microsoft technologies inside it.

[@firstnamelastname3323]

+Tyler coombs That's what I initially though. However, with so many people using those services in lieu of cable, telecoms who own entertainment distributors are placing caps on bandwidth. Even telecoms who don't own entertainment seem to be placing caps as consumers are increasing their use at an exponential growth rate. I like to think this may open up a market again for rented recorded media.

[@CoWinkKeyDinkInc]

+Tyler coombs Buying a movie on DVD or Blu-Ray is still substantially cheaper than buying them digitally. It would take a long time until digital replaces all movie formats entirely.

[@eddiemadera3042]

+Shrek Ogreton blu ray holds alot more in the disc more than dvd

[@michaelbyrneskiai]

they left out the fact betamax wanted nothing to do with the porn industry where VHS had no problem with it.

[@chartle1]

I thought is was more that the porn industry picked VHS.

[@michaelbyrneskiai]

+Cliff Hartle porn industry like any other industry would have done business with anybody willing to sell their product it was betamax who decided not to work with pornography VHS was more than willing to do business

[@eddievhfan1984]

That's part of it. It all stemmed from how Sony wanted more licensing control over Betamax tapes and VCRs, more akin to the licensing agreement for video games Nintendo would make standard. This meant a lot more licensing fees and limitations from Sony. OTOH, JVC and their partners did not require as much fees and licensed to everyone who was interested. This meant that VHS machines and tapes rapidly dropped in cost, while Betamax took ages to do the same thing. And when you wanna roll out teh pr0nz to the rest of the public, it's preferable to go with the medium most people are likely to own with the least expensive production cost. Hence, VHS. I'm sure you could find some on Betamax, but the true porn for cinephiles is found on LD. ;)

[@outerlimitsurvey]

This was likely a factor but not the main reason. Sony did discourage porn on Betamax. Price was the main issue. The price of VHS VCRs came down in price more quickly than Betamax. $300 was the price point where a lot of people decided getting a VCR was worth it. When VHS hit that sweet spot it quickly buried Betamax.

[@waynefoutz]

It's my recollection that the VHS has 3 different recording speeds that let you trade quality for extra recording space. You could set it at the slowest speed, and put 3 full length movies on one VHS tape. The BetaMax did not let you do this. That is from what I remember why VHS won out. The tapes were somewhat expensive, and because we were all using CRT televisions at the time, the quality lost wasn't that much of a concern.

[@robertsaca3512]

My Sony betax machine is still going strong in 2024. No VHS would last that long. Also, the audio quality of BetaCam was far, far superior.