Beta Verses VHS / World War 3

[dfisher]

It wasn't 1 hour of Beta & 2 hours of VHS that killed Beta. It was the amount of time at the slowest speed, 4 and a half hours for Beta & 6 hours for VHS. When people found out they could time shift programming when they weren't home they wanted the most time they could get, reguardless of the fact that they rarely used it, that was the big selling point. And yes, quality didn't count. Just the fact alone that they could even record a TV show was a big enough deal. And when the movie industry embraced the VHS format that was the final straw.
I personally have a Sony Super-Beta Hi-Fi deck, an S-VHS deck & a regular VHS deck & will say that the picture on the Super-Beta is a little bit better than the VHS, but the S-VHS is much better than the Beta, but DVD is much better than all.

[Nilfennasion]

The only reason the scales are starting to tip towards - is compatibility. More and more manufacturers are waking up to the fact that they need to support at least one flavour of both formats. It won't be long before even Toshiba are making their players compatible with everything besides -RAM.

[dfisher]

nilfennasion...I like your saying at the bottom of your post, but unfortunatly it's not true.

[Nilfennasion]

I felt that placing qualifications would have taken too much space. Since I learned why I should be suspicious about some of the independent distributors the plague the Region 4 market, it has proven extremely difficult to make me think about buying anything.

[Madz]

I would say this whole thing boils down to: quality-fans: Beta; average joe: VHS. Beta did set a number of firsts: first 4-head deck, first front-loader, first hifi. But VHS always caught up in the end. Also figure that back in the early 80's blank tapes were very expensive. More bang for the buck would come into play here for the "average joe." Buy a tape that records 6 or 8 hours vs. 3, 4½ or 5, I'm better off, yes? Back in those days it was an average of 3 movies recorded off HBO for VHS (T-120) vs. 2 for Beta (L-750), comparing the most common tape-length for each format. My 2¢! BTW: I've always fallen under the "quality-fan" minority, so I chose Beta at the time. :P

[budz]

Beta pretty much had only one brand of blank tape: Sony. And it was good.

Yes the Sony Beta tapes were good but there were other brands that made Beta tapes such as FUJI, TDK, & MAXELL. Of course towards the end of Beta's exsistence Sony did end up being the only one manufacturing them.

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[rixware]

Back in those days it was an average of 3 movies recorded off HBO for VHS (T-120) vs. 2 for Beta (L-750)

I had forgotten this! My roomates and I had both Beta and VHS, but I always ended up using VHS because you could get more on the tape. With the two kinds of tape selling for the exact same amount ($6.99 per tape on sale at Target circa 1983), I had to pick the one I could fit an extra movie onto. It was all about saving money back then.

I still have most of that collection, featuring such classics as "Summer Lovers," "Star 80" and "Johnny Dangerously" -- although I haven't watched any of those movies in a LONG time...

Thanks, Madz, for jogging my memory.

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[wulf109]

When beta and VHS were introduced American TV manufacturers had to decide which format to adopt. Americans would buy VCR's from names they recognized,RCA,GE,and Magnavox. This is what sealed beta's fate. All the American TV manufacturers adopted VHS,except Zenith. Why did they adopt VHS,the two hour recording time. RCA's engineering dept. wanted beta but marketing won out. Later the record length battle was the last nail in betas coffin.
Anybody remember the CED video disk,needle-vision.