Ed-Beta Quality Better That DVD Quality!

[Marvingj]

Hey Guys! Just Finish reading some old Video Books. Its amazing that 20 years ago that Beta had a tape call ED-Beta with over 500! horizontal resolution with had superior quality, that probably would had crush DVD with the right development. Has anyone seen what Ed-Beta look like back then & is it true that it was far ahead of its time. Any comments.

[wulf109]

ED-beta used a pure metal tape cassette and was a consumer version of the betaSP system used around the world by TV stations for their live coverage. 500 lines yes,but what source except live generates 500 lines.
Today we have DVD at 500 lines and satellite TV?

[Marvingj]

ED-Beta was a metal particle tape, probably the best analog consumer format extant. With over 500 lines of resolution it can match or surpass DVD... at least in luminance performance. This is a 20 year old tape format. Those were the days!

[Capmaster]

Wasn't it analog though, and susceptible to s/n ratio?

[Madz]

Not only have I seen an ED-Beta, I own one. They were introduced in 1988, but, sadly, were too late to save Beta's marketshare. It sure does require a metal-grade tape and can, definately, hit ~500 lines in ßII (a bit less in ßIII mode) and are the only beta decks w/ S-Video jacks. So I've gone and duped some DVD's (my own!) to EDB and couldn't tell much of a difference between it and the source. Of course, EDB tapes are next-to-impossible to find these days but BetaSP Pro tapes are of similar formulation and can be used as substitutes. Just my 2¢:

[Marvingj]

Does it also have CD quality stereo?

[Jester700]

No, it has Beta Hi-Fi (equivalent to VHS Hi-Fi). Not the 16 bit PCM that D8 & DV have.

Note that though the luminance resolution is better than DV/DVD (on new recordings, anyway), it still suffers from the greater noise & color bleed that other analog formats do vs. DV.

[Marvingj]

A friend told me that ED-Beta was able to stand six generation of copies without visible loss?

[Bullworth]

How can I forget? Before moving to the states I had only used beta. When I came here and saw that all you could find was VHS I was rather disappointed, especially when I saw the picture quality. A brand-new VHS tape was still noticeable different from good ol' beta. It's a shame that Sony had to get greedy and screw things up from the get-go or else Beta would've been the dominant analog recording format.

[Jester700]

A friend told me that ED-Beta was able to stand six generation of copies without visible loss?

I find that hard to believe. I bet it gets pretty noisy after that many generations!

[Tom81]

ED Beta (which I still use) does hold up better than svhs in multiple generations, but there is still a noticeable loss, after 6 generations the loss would be substantial compared to the original.
Even Super Beta, I would consider had a better image than svsh...ED Beta was ahead of its time, although it was never really promoted after the first year of introduction, Sony spent the promo money on Hi8.

[Marvingj]

Ed-Beta had 500 lines of Resolution, Now thats Broadcast Quality Overload! Especially in a analog format! WOW!

[DavesArchives]

I have a handful of Beta ED tapes that I have transferred. The quality is better than anything I've seen from analog tape. Some of my footage, to my eye, surpasses the quality of DVD. It's amazing that Beta ED was available in the 80s.

I was lucky enough to find Beta ED tapes with off-air recordings on them. Here's an upload of mine that should give you an idea of broadcast home recordings on Beta ED Considering this footage is heavily compressed by YouTube, I think it's still quite good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0r76YB7-YU

[lingyi]

As a former Betaphile, I owned two ED-Beta machines, both EDV-7500 as well as the SL-HF2100 (the 15th Anniversary Beta, which also had s-video in and out as well as able to record in BIs-Highband).

ED-Beta was arguably the best non-professional (prosumer), but resolution isn't the only quality factor. The highest quality ED-Beta tape I had was the demo ones that came with the machine, and while they where really beautiful, they were nowhere near DVD quality in terms of noise and color. BTW, I owned a PVM-2530, a professional presentation monitor, though sadly uncalibrated.

The highest quality media I had were Laserdiscs (the only ED-Beta Camcorder cost either 5 or 10K!) and while the ED-Beta copy was good, it was still noticeably lower quality than the original. Even high quality cable recordings were really good, but again, not exactly the same.

The major advantage the ED-Beta had was that to my eyes, it gave the best quality playback of non-ED Beta tapes.

[DB83]

I still find it incredulous that someone needs to dig up a 16 year old thread !!!!!!!!