did VHS became the norm and Betamax die away?

OCDC said:

did VHS became the norm and Betamax die away?

Bugger, I was just about to do that!

sibeen said:

OCDC said:

did VHS became the norm and Betamax die away?

Bugger, I was just about to do that!

Too slow in your old age.

I was packing my pipe and rocking back in my chair. You caught me by surprise.

wiki the fount of all knowledge…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war

bump

VHS was cheaper

Recording time. Originally Beta only had enough tape to record for 1 hour, VHS for 2. For recording TV programs like football games 1 hour was too short.

party_pants said:

Recording time. Originally Beta only had enough tape to record for 1 hour, VHS for 2. For recording TV programs like football games 1 hour was too short.

and for recording films and stuff, 1 hour was too short.

“The whole product” model also provided a convincing explanation of why VHS had thrashed Betamax. VHS offered a bigger choice of hardware at lower cost, the tapes were cheaper and more easily available, there were a lot more movies to rent, and so on. All of this matched my own experience.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2003/jan/25/comment.comment

It’s probably only true it did of the consumer market.

VHS were simple to work on, checking for a dirty video head or heads was simple as back of the fingernail on the running tape (most times, and access was generally good), setting tracking poles was a simple procedure, and aligning the control/audio head was simple.

Here’s some pictures of the first video machine I learnt on, which I bought for $50, out of the junk pile at work had been written off, back in about 1985. Took mudmap home and resurrected it. Turned out was a leaky transistor under the tuner there somewhere as recall.

A fine machine.

http://www.oldvcr.tv/collection/index.html?Mode=View&Brand=National&Model=NV-8610

As well, Betamax was Sony’s property, and only Sony’s.

Sony was confident that people would realise that their system was better than VHS, and flock to buy their product – no need to share the profits by licensing the technology to others.

Also, JVC did a lot of back-room dealing to ensure that a lot of big companies went down their VHS path, and opted for a no-license open-source arrangement on their technology. Thus, anyone who had the capacity started making VHS machines – no need to try to negotiate with Sony.

The market was flooded with cheap VHS machines, and people bought accordingly.

Clearly Apple had a marketing ploy, otherwise the less expensive and less exclusive IBM’s with Windows software would have made Apple as redundant as Betamax.

does the moon look bigger on the horizon?
trollolololol

party_pants said:

Recording time. Originally Beta only had enough tape to record for 1 hour, VHS for 2. For recording TV programs like football games 1 hour was too short.

I call shenanigans. I had several movies on Beta tapes as a kid, plus my mum taped shows longer than an hour on Beta tapes too.

Phil:

Originally, VHS recorded two hours of programming in SP at 1.31 ips, 0.656 ips for four-hour recording (LP or long play), and 0.437 ips for six-hour recording (EP or extended play.) Betamax’s smaller sized cassette limited the size of the reel of tape, and could not compete with VHS’ two-hours capability by extending the tape length. Instead, Sony had to slow the tape down to 0.787 ips (Beta II) in order to achieve two hours of recording in the same cassette size. This brought Betamax’s once superior video quality down to below VHS when comparing two-hour recording.

So theoretically Beta could record more than an hour, just in lesser quality.

>So theoretically Beta could record more than an hour, just in lesser quality.

And then your picture quality deteriorates with worn (and dirty) heads anyway, and record-playback it is magnified……maybe VHS in a way may have been more tolerant of (slightly) dirty heads. Few times at work we messed around with replacing (swapping from other drums) video heads in drum assemblies, but that was rare, we’d install new upper drum assemblies.

We had a few tail-ender betamax units when started, but they were out of fashion, video stores dropped them some years later. The few I worked on didn’t enjoy the experience at all, could have more been lack of familiarity.

Later worked for Radio Rentals about the time lot of the older all-gear-motor-driven (no belts) VHS SP/LP AWAs as recall were retired, so grabbed few of them, some of them were coming in with intermittent problems from something resembling liquid nails type glue turned dark brown on PC boards that’d go electrically leaky. Then of a later model there was mode-switch and associated loading gear replacements (alignment and grease), shit of a job many done in the field on people’s kitchen tables, always in a big hurry.

Think maybe the ease with which heads could be cleaned (by an owner), and maybe tapes could be more easily gotten out of (earlier) VHS units that lost takeup or otherwise failed may have had a bit to do with VHS being more popular. VHS used less tape drum rap as recall, so maybe too it was less of a distaster to the tape when things went bad.

Dunno.