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Betamax more like Omega

Image result for betamax logoBetamax, the official device of  “is that a VHS?” question. The Betamax format is one of the earliest form of box office movies in the home. It was introduced in the United States by Sony in 1975, two years before JVC’s iconic VHS format. The “superior” Betamax always lagged behind VHS in terms of sales until Sony threw the towel in 1988. Yet there is not much of a difference between these two formats that would put one with a larger advantage than the other.

Related imageThe Betamax format is almost impossible to tell without mentioning the so called “Format Wars” that was between VHS and Betamax. It consisted, as you may have guessed, of the two format duking it out for dominance in the living room. What further helped encourage this was the backing of retail stores, manufacturers, etc picking sides to see who would win and become the default format people would use, I am sure you already know who won. What ultimately came down to that lead VHS to win was cost. JVC would allow other companies make VHS players lowering cost and VHS cassettes were just much less expensive than Betamax even though Betamax machines and cassettes were of higher quality. This lead them to be used more for professional use in camcorders and such.


Betamax works very similar to VHS (for an in depth view on how video cassette tape work please read my blog I Still Remember). The tape cassettes themselves are smaller than VHS and had a much bigger read head allowing more information to be read and thus a bit higher quality image. The down side was that this meant run times on Betamax was 60-minutes in the early years compared to VHS 2-hours tapes.
Image result for betamax

Betamax was just too similar to VHS to justify the extra cost. The slightly better video and audio did not encourage buyers to shell out the extra money and lead the support to die down. This caused Betamax market share to down from 25% in 1981 to 7% in 1986. The irony that would come is that Sony themselves would produced VHS players in the late 1980s, ending the Great Format War.


FUN FACT: The name Betamax has a double meaning. Beta is the Japanese word in which signals are recorded on the tape and the tape inserted in the machine looks like the Greek letter Beta (lowercase). The last part max just means maximum.




source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax#End_of_production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYQt0xi9PRM

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 22, 2018 at 5:38 PM

    Betamax seems pretty cool, but I can see why it “failed” in the market. Personally I’ll take more watch time over better looking visuals. Also, how much more expensive was it to make a Betamax tape compared to a VHS cassette?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJanuary 22, 2018 at 6:17 PM

    I'd really like to watch something on Betamax, just to have that experience. And to see if it is all thaaaat different from a VHS. I'd also like to learn more about these format wars.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 22, 2018 at 7:52 PM

    Before reading this I had no idea there was such thing as a Betamax, but it is apparent why it lost the fight against the VHS format, but it does make me want to look into the Betamax more into depth.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJanuary 22, 2018 at 8:08 PM

    The Betamax seems like a really great piece of early technology that just made its day-view at the wrong time. It's quite interesting to see how devestating of a collapse the market for these devices occurred in such a short period of time, revealing that competition played a huge role in the success of all big name companies.

    ReplyDelete

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