Before you comment that "Beta didn't fail! It lived on for many many years in the professional world, with TV studios using Beta into the 2000s!" please note: *This is not Betamax.* Betacam is the format that was used in the professional market, and although it used the same basic cassettes and recorder design, it used component and later digital signals that were entirely unrelated to and incompatible with consumer Beta. Since Betacam is not and never was intended to be a consumer product, it's not mentioned in this discussion on the videotape format war.
It actually becomes tricky to figure out when exactly Betamax really "died" because commercial tapes and recorders were manufactured for years even after Sony effectively admitted defeat and manufactured their first VHS recorder. Apparently the last commercially released pre-recorded betamax cassette was Mission: Impossible, as late as 1996, and I think the machines were made as late as 2000 in Japan. But going back the other way, the _distribution_ of the commercial tapes changed, leaving the realm of retail and into mail order, but I guess the common cutoff point people like to use is 1989 when they stopped selling the devices in the States.
What about Super Betamax? Wasn't that the equivalent of S-vhs which got some use by people who wanted to record tv in a better consumer format? I know someone who has recorded practically every University of Michigan football game on beta tapes until 2004 when he switched to a newer digital format. I assume at some point he switched to Super Beta.
You're wrong, you should have bought a Sony anything online. Don't you remember the years when Sony televisions were the best picture quality you could buy? Or was your signal so horrible nobody cared? Bandwith almost zero? America did that. Two lines a frame, flickering like hell and Never The Same Color format. For real. So stop whining about Sony.
Betamax died. The broadcast standard was BetaCAM (completely different & incompatible format). Super VHS and Digital VHS was also used by NBC and its associated channels. Both Betacam and VHS were replaced by tapeless standards in the early 2000s.
We had Video 2000s in our family, i still have it plus a whole bunch of other V2000 machines. They were great but got squeezed out by incompetent marketing etc. I we also had the wonderful laser disk players, i threw those away 15 years ago...darn i wish i didn't but just didn't have room for more techno junk. I still have a Cossor reel to reel tape machine from the early 1960s handed down from the family!
He used the airport parking directions from 'Airplane!' in his video about the ring sounds of the Western Electric 500 in movies and TV shows. He must be a fan!
Not sure if it's already been said here but originally VHS was an acronym for Vertical Helical Scan (a reference to the recording system used) but was later changed to the more consumer-friendly Video Home System.
That..makes sense actually, considering the acronym "Video Home System" does feel a bit clunky. "Backronyms" like this are surprisingly common. Didn't make the connection for VHS before though!
That's a myth. Someone made it up out of whole cloth and it got repeated by a lot of different websites, and never with any valid citation. Also, it's nonsensical, i.e., what is "vertical" supposed to be in reference to? Helical scan is a thing (invented by Ampex in the mid 1950s and used in all successful videotape systems), but "vertical helical scan" is not a thing. VHS (and Betamax, U-Matic, etc.) uses slant azimuth recording; there's nothing vertical about it. Recording vertical tracks would be a terrible idea for videotape systems because it would need guard bands between each track/stripe to prevent crosstalk, which would drastically decrease recording time for a given length of tape and a given linear tape speed. In JVC's 1971 document titled "VHS Development Matrix," "VHS" stood for "Video Home System," and that was 2 years before they had a working prototype and 5 years before VHS was released to the public.
Honestly, I think anyone who would spend $1000+ on a VCR is not the same person who would not know how to set the clock. The age of electronics being so cheap that a Luddite would buy one was yet to come.
There was a store called Betaville in my home town when I was in highschool. As the name suggests, it was a video store that rented movies only in the Beta format. It lasted surprisingly long. Didn't go out of business until the late 90's. Cannot remember what year, but I know it was after 1995.
Most video shops , and libraries , carried both formats until the advent of satellite TV with its proliferation of movie channels , and then the advent of DVD players and recorders killed off the rental market
Was that really 16:28? It felt more like five minutes. It's nice to see someone presenting tech history who's clearly done research and speaks confidently. I hope you continue to release many more of these videos and that your channel gets more exposure. Thanks again!
She probably recorded them on six-hour slow tape too. I can watch my old tv tapes on LP or SP, but the SLP/EP tapes are awful and I’m only keeping the ones with rare stuff on them.
IGnatius T Foobar Oh god, my mum is like that. To this day, she can’t tell the different in quality between a VHS and a modern HD digital recording. She also can’t see shadows though, so she’s generally not very good at seeing things.
It reminds me of people who buy these cheap record players then tell me how clear the music plays, never understanding you need hi end equipment for anywhere near CD quality sound.
Just to throw this out there: Akai made their own VHS with their own video processing, and the picture was roughly equal to the Beta. You never saw a crisper yet smoother picture on any VHS. Old timer service guys know the machine (I can't recall the model but remember the machine well). We kept two of them for dubbing videos for customers.
My mom's first VHS player was a top loading beast like that one. I remember using it as a kid to watch bootleg tapes of Disney movies that wouldn't be officially released until the 90s as well as tapes of The Muppet Show recorded from the original airing. Those were the days.
At the beginning of Beta, the 60 min tape was called a “K-60” and a 30 min “K-30” came with the machine. There was only one record/playback speed, so the number represented the number of minutes the tape would run. When the SL-8200 came our with the second slower speed, they called the speeds BI and BII, and renamed the cassettes L-250 and L-500. Eventually the L-750 and L-830 came later along with odd lengths that were created for duplication houses, L-125, L-375. Sony released the SL-8600 next, and decided to abandon BI, and it would record and playback BII only, so if you had tapes recorded on older machines in BI, too bad, you couldn’t play them. I had an SL-7200 and SL-8200, and I wouldn’t “upgrade” to the SL-8600 for that reason. Next was the SL-5400, SL-5600 and SL-5800 and Sony brought back BI speed but playback only and it was a switch you had to use on the back of the machine. They gave it the BI play capability, but it was like they didn’t want anybody to know about it, but at least make the videophiles happy. Sony made many strange decisions beyond the whole 1 hour/2 hour mess with their Beta machines.
HALF THE FORMAT WARS would disappear if Sony didn’t exist. Everyone would use VHS or VHS-C for recording/camcorders (not betamax or Video8). CD-R or DVD-R for digital (no minidisc or umd). And so on .
@@electrictroy2010 well... About CD, I think, you're not fully right, as it was product from Sony + Philips. Sure, maybe Philips will alone make it, but...
I remember when I could rent either betamax or vhs tapes at my local grocery store in the 80s. Betamax had their own section that got smaller and smaller as time went by and as vhs took over for good. I was so happy my dad made the right choice in getting a vhs machine.
If you weren't alive back in those days you can't imagine the feeling of POWER it gave you, to be able to record TV shows that you weren't at home or awake to watch!
My mother was an early adopter of vhs recording. When we first got TiVo, explained that grappling with the utterly inscrutable recording controls of the vhs were so difficult that she would lie awake at night, unable to sleep because she couldn't stop worrying if the damn thing was actually recording anything or if she would check the tape only to find endless footage of late night infomercials
Bought my first VCR in December 1977. It was a VHS Magnavox. This had the SP and LP modes the SLP came later. I had it for two years and traded it for a 1918 Luger pistol. That pistol is worth a lot more then that VCR is now.
@@timfondiggle2582 You are certainly entitled to your opinion..... but not entitled to force your beliefs and opinions on others. You are free to not own or possess a firearm and I won't force my beliefs on you and try to force you to carry a firearm.
When I was a kid, my old man had two VCR's and he used to rent movies and record them, so I had this catalog of cartoons at my disposal. He really is the best dad I could have asked for, man. As for Sony, its pride was indeed its downfall. Cheers!
I kept my family's first VCR well after it pretty much was dead just because it didn't have the copy protection on it. For the last couple years, I had to keep the cover off, or at least unscrewed so I could easily take it off, and manually rotate the gears to eject the tape. A friend of mine who knew how to kinda/sorta fix things breathed a little more life into it, but that only lasted like 4-5 months before it was back to doing it by hand.
When I was a kid my dad borrowed the neighbour vcr and would pirate tapes - my brother turned the tv over one Saturday morning when dad was out working and left a video duplicating - yep he was pirating porno movies 😅
You have to remember just how expensive video recorders were back in prehistoric times. $400 for a VCR was a lot of money back then. So making a choice between an item that was $600 vs a $400 item went to the $400 item most of the time.
I own a HD DVD player. I thought if Microsoft adopted it, it was going to be the norm. Wrong! I'm going to keep it as new maybe my grandkids can cash in on it.
@MsMadLemon You could have spoke with any TV Technician and discovered the answer to your question. Did you never consider asking. You only discover answers when you ask questions. So always be asking questions about everything you don't know about, and surround yourself with people who know MORE than you. Let them teach you and be teachable. Then teach it to your children.
Beta's cassette was aesthetically more pleasing & had a slightly longer time, this could be extended on the Sony C7 by using a Betastack which held 4 tapes which changed when the one in the machine came to the end. I managed to stack 10 by allowing the ejected ones to drop onto the floor. Over 30 hours almost continuous recording!
I'm not sure where you're getting the slightly longer time thing. There were various casettes released for both over the years that increased recording time (and also machines that could record and play back at higher or lower speed), so I'm guessing the Beta tapes you were using had a longer time than an older VHS tape, but VHS had a longer recording time by default. Beta cassetes do look better though.
As a VHS owner from the start, I have to admit Beta video quality was better. However, tape based recording systems are something I would prefer to forget.
I remember just marvelling that the TV didn't even need to be turned on to record things. It just seemed like magic. And I remember "tracking", that band of sandy glimmer at the bottom of the picture that could never quite be adjusted away.
That Gran Turismo 3 reference was probably more descriptive for me than you thought it would be. Had to smash that x button down hard or you'd only go partial throttle. I would honestly like to see you do a video on how the progressive buttons work. I've found out that all buttons, including the D pad so it too.
The original consumer Betamax (SL-7200) could only record for one hour on the standard L-500 cassette (Beta I). The first VHS VCRs had a standard recording time of 2 hours and an LP recording time of 4 hours on a standard T-120 cassette. The SL-7200 needed a mechanical timer accessory to set a timed recording while the early VHS machines (RCA VBT-200) had a built in digital clock / timer for timed recording. These two features alone gave the VHS machines a big head start in the VCR war. I started repairing VCRs in 1978 and was an authorized RCA repair station for them. Tooling up for VHS and Beta VCR repair was very expensive at the time. I still have tools, jigs and fixtures for it as well as service manuals dating back to 1977 collecting dust.
Yeah I agree, I just found this guys channel a few days ago and instantly subbed, it's a gem. I think it's going to blow up fast really well done vids, likeable guy
Yeah. I have found that channels like this ALWAYS start to somehow get subscribers because they are good. But you're right. Great videos. Needs more views.
I just found an SL-5800 for $10 in a thrift store and it looks overwhelmingly similar to the Sl-5400, so this video served as a nice overview of the unit! The only differences I can spot are underneath the two hidden panels for the tuner and clock/timer. Seems yours has more LEDs and switches for the channels instead of buttons. Now only one problem... where in the world am I gonna find a freakin Betamax tape lmao. Was hoping there might be one mixed in amongst all the VHS in the thrift store but no such luck. Hopefully I can see how the machine runs soon.
It's simple. Beta was a bit too expensive, but their quality in recording was better, the problem was that it only recorded an hour on a tape, and that was after they increased it when JVC's VHS was coming out. Vhs was lower quality recording, but it could record two full hours and it was cheaper. The video still looked fine, especially to people who grew up on over-the-air broadcasts which were notoriously iffy in quality. Cheaper and more bang for the buck always wins over prettier with slightly better quality.
Vhs won because it could do more of what the customers wanted to do Beta added features that wore nice failed at the most important task record the tv shows the customers wanted to watch
Thanks for pointing out, HepChaos, that over-the-air broadcasts were of low quality, making Beta's better quality image irrelevant, to most consumers. I remember, that Beta and VHS both looked the same to me, when recording off-the-air, or from open-source instructional tapes that were deteriorated from many playbacks. Back then, I wondered, perhaps, only video connoisseurs could see the subtle difference? ......Therefore... today I wonder... Was Beta preferred by pirates? ...who were duplicating video tapes, rented from video stores? For personal use... or resale? One copy, pirated to Beta, could be used to make hundreds of original-looking copies, either to Beta or VHS. Can anyone chime in, on that? ......On the issue of US consumers wanting a recording length of 4 to 6 hours, for football... did the Japanese at Sony even know what football was? Or did they just make a survey of the maximum duration of US series episodes, news specials, dramatic plays, and operas? (LOL! There were a few operas broadcast, on US educational public networks.)
What about the cam corders? If VHS came on the scene and flooded the market before Beta even had a model ready for production the the consumer would have the perceived notion that beta is a loser "so we better go with the VHS" mentality. Marketing strategy wins every time, regardless of performance.
@ summit is (a) The highest level or degree attainable (b) The highest stage of development (c) A meeting of heads of governments (d) The highest point (of a mountain) So tell us how that word ' summit ' fits into the context of your comment? Buy yourself a dictionary and study the meaning of words you wish to use.
In the UK, I was selling Betamax, VHS and Video 2000 machines back in 1980, side by side in the same electrical shop. Video 2000 was the best but nobody wanted it, Betamax was better than VHS pound for pound picture quality wise and the entry level was cheaper than VHS. We sold more Betamax machines than VHS. The killer for Betamax ultimately was software of course; coupled with that flat spin product formats enter as soon as the public start to perceive them as _dying_ in relation to competing format(s). Nobody was remotely bothered about the cosmetic stuff you mention, different times. One factor which was beginning to matter to people back then, however, was toploader vs frontloader and both formats fielded examples of both; a practical, space-saving feature but still not actually a deal breaker for most people particularly as the cheaper ones tended to be toploaders.
Tallshrew Fishing. Exactly wasn't it the Phillips 2000 that never took off? Also i bought a Betamax in 83/84 for around £250 in England when the cheapest VHS was around £350. So as you say they were cheaper by quite a margin at the time.
@@eddiehockley4144 Yes, we were selling the cheapest Betamax machine at about £190 in 1980/81 and the cheapest VHS (which was not as good) was noticeably more. Worth remembering lots of people in _proper_ jobs were earning £60 to £100 per week back then, so none were cheap.
@@TallshrewFishing That is a pretty low wage. My dad worked a warehouse job in California in the early 1980s and made around 45,000USD a year with medical insurance that covered a 750,000USD medical bill my brother had for being put in intensive care after kidney failure. I miss those days of good paying blue collar jobs that you could raise a family on.
@@RyviusRan Average UK annual wage in 1980 was £6000 or £115/week and the average is always high as it is skewed by massively high earners with most people earning less than the average.
first i had heard of betamax was from an episode of cowboy bebop where faye recieves a mysterious tape in the mail and everyone assumed it was vhs until the antique store owner pointed out it wasnt and thats why it would not fit in a vhs player, so they had to go to a museum on the near abandoned earth to retrieve the only known functional betamax, only for the recording to turn out to be nothing more than a "hello future me" type of home recording.
Thank you for this. Very interesting (answered questions I've always had), excellently done, and perfectly paced. Good idea, too, to split it in half. 30 min episodes sometimes take some maneuvering to fit in (meaning sometimes they never do) whereas 15-16 min ones can be watched, say, during a meal.
RUclips can remember for you where you stopped watching, and will continue from there when you watch it again. That works across devices, too, if you use the same Google account for both. I don't think it is a widely used feature, but it seems made for just such occasions.
Straight up, anyone who used both formats in the 1980s and even 1990s, knows Beta smoked VHS in every way _except_ recording time. Picture quality was deplorable on VHS in SLP (6 HR) recording mode, and colors very washed out compared with Beta III (4.5 HR) mode, which almost looked as good as VHS SP (2HR) mode. Also, as mentioned, the tape transport mechanism is very lazy on VHS, but almost instant response for all tape functions on Beta. I had both types of machines in the 1980s, and used the Beta almost exclusively to record from television because the quality was so much better in long record time mode. Still have all the Beta and VHS tapes, and the various VCRs, and they still work, unlike today's junk which will fall apart after one year.
My dad did much of the same, he once more backed the losing format with MiniDisc. I loved this format as it was a much neater size to handle and store compared to CD's, and was great for recording stuff off the radio, for example.
Mate this from a country on NTSC (Never The Same Color) 520 lines of transmission??.. Shit in - shit out....ahahah!..The Brits were on PAL system with 625 lines........so at least the Play- back was of a satisfying quality....on Either Beta or VHS
Back in the 80's-90's I used LP and EP most of the time to save money on tapes, and it was very watchable on the 19 inch CRT TV's (RCA and Philips) I had back then. I didn't realize how bad the quality was until I got a 55 inch Vizio flatscreen and started watching some old tapes.
this is what's called "survivor bias" - only the machines that were built to last have survived until now, and so there is always the perception that "modern things die fast, old things last forever". people were saying the same thing in the 70s about products from the 30s and 40s.
LakeNipissing True. Also, 1. The comparison he makes between SP & BII is not a fair one b/c he's comparing an 80's Betamax to a modern VHS vcr. In the 80's VHS was not as good as it later became. 2. In the mid 80's movie studios started putting an anti-copy code on pre-recorded tapes. The code only worked on VHS as Betamax could still copy ANY movie regardless of the copy protection scheme! If more movie buffs had known this, Beta may have sold better.
Great video! In the mid 90's I picked up a early 80's Panasonic VHS top-loader at a thrift store for 5 dollars in the mid 90's. The ladies there just wanted it out the door. After a good cleaning it worked just fine and my grandmother used it for a few years after. I wish I had hung onto it after she passed away, but I had too many newer decks.
@@Paperclown I remember the library in my city did lend out VHS tapes. This was in the late 1980s, and the videos were usually boring stuff like documentaries and children's videos. If you wanted popular movies, video rental stores had those.
In '85, during my stint in Germany, my first VCR was a Beta machine with a corded remote. It was brought home to the States with me, however, I didn't have it long. Since then, I've always had a VHS in either a player/recorder or just a VCP only. In today's period, I own a combo DVD/VHS unit because I have yet to fully give up all of my tape movies. Watching your presentation of their histories in this installment brought back memories of yesteryear. Thanks.
ItzCaseyKC, were you stationed in Germany? I was in the Army in 1985 and also bought a Beta VCR that year. While stationed at Ft Richardson, Alaska the old Betamax kept me entertained the whole 3 years I was there!
@@scottschimming2040 I was in southern Germany up one of the hills from Stuttgart from Jan. 1, 1984 to around July 22, 1985. The base no longer exists because the civilians bulldozed many of the buildings and made the area a nice looking place for the German population. I was at Nellingen Kasern btw.
I like your references to Airplane! I have a question. "What is it?" It's a an interrogative statement used to test knowledge, but that's not important right now! How about a video of SD card vs Memory Stick?
One thing that nobody brings when explains why beta fails is the 1981's Jane Fonda's Workout Tape, which was released for VHS only. At the time, every housewife wants a VCR because of that specific tape.
I was born in 1998 so by that time stand-alone VCRs were no longer available in most plases my parents owned a VHS/DVD combo unit for as as long as I can remember.
That might explain why VHS caught on in North America but in South America and Europe (where Soccer matches are the populist sport) a 2 hour cassette should easily be enough (2 x 45 mins plus a 15 minute halftime break) or 3 hours for things like world cup games (2 x 45 minutes plus 15 minute break plus 30 minutes if extra time is played plus 10 more minutes if it goes to a penalty shootout = 2 hours 35 minutes). As Sony had the L750 3 hour tape on the market by around 1980 there must be more to this so is now to watch part 2.
And I remember when my dad and I squeezed 8 hours into a VHS. Had to have all 3 Star Wars movies in one VHS for the 6 year old, so he didn't break the store-bought tapes. We even got a bit of Star Wars Droids in the end of it.
Machine Code: Totally Agree...my parents went out of the way and kept paying the premium for Beta purchases/rentals,etc......video quality was always better.....VHS players then (even the good ones) had issues. We then we went Laser-Disk and then DVDs. But then oh....Laser was awesome...remember seeing Terminator (collectors/directors cut edition,whatever)....that was crazy then of all the features it had compared to early DVD. Parents still have their Betamax....far as I know,they still work....and that corny simulated wood reminds one of the 1970s/1980s.
@Thomas Ward Todays electronics don't last because they are engineered not to. This ensures people will buy new products, and this ensures manufacture continuity and more profit. Also Manufacturers kept spare parts fro as long as was necessary by law to provide warranty. Once that legal requirement for warranty expired parts were dumped at the local land-fill ..... when users required repairs or service for their machine, the manufacturer said .. 'Sorry, parts are no longer available. It falls into the scam category where people paid a great deal of their income into purchasing equipment. only to be abandoned by the manufacturer... Thus it happened that enterprising companies in Russia, Sweden, The Netherlands and Italy were making substitute components, that kept the machines serviceable and owners of these machines happy. It is remains a reality that there is very little loyalty to a client base by manufacturers, and what is more important fro them is to produce cheap disposable products. And It is unlikely that anyone today would pay five times their weekly income for a Television. So prices have dropped to very affordable and manageable levels . and the quality is commensurate with that, 4 years life-span is about the average. Gone are the days when people kept their TV for 20 years and other devices for 10 years or more. People now want the latest design to impress people they dislike, and buy with money they don't have to stay in perpetual debt.
@@andrew_koala2974 I agree 100%, which is why I just purchased a new Speed Queen washing machine, they are built to last 25 years, just like in the old days.
I disagree with this to an extent. Like most technology, it depends on who manufactures it. My time with VHS was awful as I pretty much went through players like they were disposable. They were forever breaking down. My DVD player though, I have had for god knows how many years. Probably somewhere between 12 to 15 years at least. VHS players were notorious for wearing out their heads. I would also go as far as to say that my recent history with TVs has been positive as well, as even after selling them when I wanted to upgrade, I sold them to friends or family and they are still going strong. The problem now though is tech is outdated almost as soon as it is released. They do not need to build limited life spans into them as tech advancements are what now cause people to buy new equipment.
Your kidding ! .. both were not very reliable ,with loads of mechanical parts to go wrong and tape that had a limited lifespan and problems with jamming .
Format wars aside- it's great to see how both these machines still work (and all the bulbs as well by the look of it). Of course I'm assuming here that Technology Connections didn't have to do some repair.
VHS's were cheaper People buy cheaper product Rental places notice VHS's have more customers Rental places order more VHS copies than Beta People to go rental places and see all the movies in VHS People buy VHS players. VHS wins.
I'm not sure that Beta was generally more expensive. Also, the original intention of video cassette recorders was to record TV shows that could not be watched when they were broadcast, not to play pre-recorded material. Pre-recorded video did not yet exist.
To be honest there are still advantages to tape formats. It wouldn't surprise me if something like this made a come-back someday. I mean if you combine this tech with a hard drive and buffering, and improvements in drive tech, you could have HD recordings that find the exact start/stop moment, and select which programs to save to a tape from a queue. You could have PERFECT archival recordings in HD. For someone like me such a system would actually be extremely useful. I don't have time to screw around with TV. TV Hard Drives fill up too fast. I would love to have a system that finds what I want, lets me watch/preview it to see if I want to see it once or save it forever, then lets me transfer it to tapes for permanent cheap storage (maybe at night while I sleep).
"GIMME THAT TAPE!!!" LOL!!!! I love your channel so much! Do you have a Patreon? ......The one person that clicked dislike is the one person who thinks still Betamax is still going to make a comeback....
Soitisisit still do. Remember the Sony memory stick for digital cameras, the floppy disc digital camera and the mini disc. Neither will many young people today.
@@stephanburgess654 or the memory stick for PS VITA...it basically lost them billions because some cretin exec thought "they will pay for it!". Well the PS VITA was a flop even though it is the best portable console for RPG enthusiasts. Ok the memory stick wasnt really the main reason,I exaggerated on that.
@@stephanburgess654 yeah... dont get me wrong I very much respect them. In fact I am what you might call a "fanboy" of Sony's ;) cant wait for the PS5! Cheers
UMD, proprietary memory stick, and the bloated, hard to program for and costly PS3 where they arrogantly claimed you will WANT to get a second job to be able to buy this thing. All this from their most (only) profitable division. Thank God Mark Cerny took over since PS4 and that imperial Japanese mindset is no longet at the helm.
I have a suggestion for a video similar to this. Could you do a video explaining why VCR and cassette units can sometimes “chew up” or “eat” tapes? This has been a problem for decades with this, and I think it would be neat to see a video explaining why this happens and a more in-depth explanation of the damage it does to the tape afterward. I love the way you explain things, and since this concept is intriguing to me, seeing you talk about it would be nice. Thank you.
Well, the tape goes behind a lot of things during the loading process. If there's something wrong with the machine, it will eject the tape without doing a reverse loading first (that's mostly a rubber belt issue).
When Betamax came out in Europe in early 1978 the PAL tapes recorded 2 hours on L500 and 3 1/4 hours on L750. What’s more the tapes were cheaper than VHS so the format lasted a bit longer over here
You need to make another video about VHS linear stereo, Beta-Hi-Fi And some of the other moves that were made in that war. For instance the slow motion Beta as well as the VHS machines abandoning there crude "M-Wrap" design the prevented the tape from being moved fast while loaded onto the heads. Beta used the Omega Wrap from the start which allowed these features. Later VHS copied Beta's method for Hi-Fi by encoding the audio on the rotating head rather than the stationary head that could only produce mediocre audio. then there was the "clear frame" stop action that was first from Sony, then VHS. Sadly, although the Beta format had a better picture and quality features, the recording time trumped everything else. I still have two working Beta machines as well as two VHS machines. Don't use them much since DVD and Blu-ray though.
VHS Hifi is technically superior, and PAL Beta Hifi uses the VHS method with separate heads as apposed to the NTSC machines, it wasn't possible to use the NTSC method with PAL signals. From the European perspective Video2000 was far superior to both VHS and Betamax and there were plans to introduce Video2000 Hifi which would have sidestepped many of the issues with the four head system. In another reality the sensible choice of Video2000 would have been adopted as the global format of choice. Its hard to see any logic as to why VHS and Betamax were so popular compared to V2000.
I bought an RCA VBT200, the first commercially viable VHS recorder, in December 1977. I chose it over a Beta for one simple reason -- time. The VHS machine recorded up to 4 hours on a T-120 tape while the Beta only did 3 hours (back then players had two speeds; in VHS it was SP and LP. VHS later added SLP/EP for 6 hours and eventually dropped the middle speed altogether). One of the things I wanted to do with my machine was recored the TV broadcast of football games I attended in person. That definitely required more than 3 hours. I'm confident that this extra hour was the main reason VHS "won" over Beta. I've been telling people that for years, and I'm frankly surprised this video comes to the same conclusion.
Beta tapes were thinner than VHS because of their smaller cases and had a much greater tendency to break. I never owned any, but I sold them when I worked retail and many were returned for that reason.
I think it probably failed because they made It so hard to transfer from computer to mini disc. It was really locked down so people got ultra fast cd burners and burnt a cd of their favourite music in two minutes
MiniDisc competed against stand-alone CD recorders and hard-drive recording / editing using software like Sound Forge 2-track recording and CD drives in a computer. MiniDisc was proprietary Sony and employed MP3-style data compression, whereas the free market could produce any variation of the hard drive / CD devices that didn't record with compression, so was "purer" than MiniDisc. Proprietary formats have to provide something above-and-beyond what the free market produces in order to pull ahead. And, MiniDisc adopters had to buy MiniDiscs at the local Best Buy, whereas spindles of CDs could be purchased for bottom-dollar promotional pricing.
@@VoxLesPaul The problem was that Sony MiniDisc initially used a proprietary codec :- ATRAC. As you say, it was an MP3-style , not actual MP3 (correctly MPEG-1 audio layer 3). History shows proprietary is rarely successful in technology. What made it worse other manufacturers put their own twist on the ATRAC codec. As field recorders the little Walkman style machines were great, something you could not do at the time with any CD recorders, but that codec killed itself off outside of Japan.
My parents got our first VCR when we moved to Texas and I was ten. My grandparents (read grandmother) decided that they needed one and as a result all three of her grown children got one too. By this point it had a remote control, the unit was silver with a black LCD display and it was considerably more advanced than these earlier units. I think the cable ran through it to the TV, so we used it as a tuner as our TV was one of the last ones made without a remote (which meant we lay on the floor in front of it and change the channels with our toes. Worked like a charm actually). The VCR was Japanese, I can't remember the brand, and it lasted a long, long time. It got near-constant use, particularly as my guilty pleasure a few years later and into high school was Days Of Our Lives, which ran sand through the hourglass five days a week. And yes, my metalhead friends knew, but they thought it was too weird/pathetic to make fun of. My parents still have a combo VHS/DVD unit because they still have family moments tucked away on VHS tapes, but it sees very little action now. It amazes me that in my lifetime I've gone from my daily soap opera on a standard recording (for the picture) to the DVR and 1080 flat screen TV with a Blu-ray player for high res movies that get piped in from online. Thirty five years and it's like stuff from another planet that is taken for granted. To my teenage daughter, a VCR is like the hand crank phonograph my grandparents owned. A working antique.
9262XYZ Just because I said I clicked on the video quickly doesn't mean that I'm gay. We don't need eight year olds like you posting idiotic and salty comments on RUclips.
9262XYZ How does being gay have anything to do with posting a "meme". Obviously, you are a kid as well, calling me gay and saying I watch gay porn, trying to be all edgy. P.S. I'm not gay.
Okay, you're not gay. Sorry for being "salty", Mr Meme Lord. Here are some more cool memes you can try in the future: "Give me a thumbs up for my birthday!" "17 people had a Betamax!". "FIRST!!!" TRULY HILARIOUS STUFF (for unintelligent children)!!!
So you're saying that you an adult that goes around telling random people that they are gay, because of one comment that they posted. Do something better with your life.
I brought my VHS player in 1993 when the price had come way down and had it until around 2012 when I got a DVD player . I rented movies and got tapes from public library . Watching movies at home is great.
I'm beginning to think we were out of our minds at the time for buying them at that price. If we were smart, we would have perhaps hired them instead, after allowing for repairs out of our pocket, mostly caused by years of tape jamming.
3:20 - Push-button (Varactor) tuning was the bee's knees back in 1979. I purchased a Quasar VH-5100QW, similar to that RCA machine. ($900.00 at Brands Mart, Cambridge MA on Oct 31, 1979) The BIG feature was that one could program it to change the channel when recording! VCR's up to then had DIAL tuners!
Before you comment that "Beta didn't fail! It lived on for many many years in the professional world, with TV studios using Beta into the 2000s!" please note: *This is not Betamax.* Betacam is the format that was used in the professional market, and although it used the same basic cassettes and recorder design, it used component and later digital signals that were entirely unrelated to and incompatible with consumer Beta. Since Betacam is not and never was intended to be a consumer product, it's not mentioned in this discussion on the videotape format war.
It actually becomes tricky to figure out when exactly Betamax really "died" because commercial tapes and recorders were manufactured for years even after Sony effectively admitted defeat and manufactured their first VHS recorder. Apparently the last commercially released pre-recorded betamax cassette was Mission: Impossible, as late as 1996, and I think the machines were made as late as 2000 in Japan. But going back the other way, the _distribution_ of the commercial tapes changed, leaving the realm of retail and into mail order, but I guess the common cutoff point people like to use is 1989 when they stopped selling the devices in the States.
Tetsuron I like VHS better
you could do a series about how history repeats itself. Betamx vs VHS is beat for beat a repetition of Edision cylinder vs Berliner Disc.
What about Super Betamax? Wasn't that the equivalent of S-vhs which got some use by people who wanted to record tv in a better consumer format? I know someone who has recorded practically every University of Michigan football game on beta tapes until 2004 when he switched to a newer digital format. I assume at some point he switched to Super Beta.
isn't one of the myths why VHS prevailed, is because porn industry adopted it
"Okay we're gonna need to pause here." Alas, a missed chance to put a distortion effect on the still image like when you hit the ol' pause button.
I think he used a 4 head vcr (or one with a digital frame buffer)
He used a dvd player
What caused the distortion when pausing and fast forwarding?
"... made in Japan for Sony, by Sony, and sold as a Sony. Glad we got that out of the way."
...and that's when I subscribed.
When you did all the work in a group project
You're wrong, you should have bought a Sony anything online. Don't you remember the years when Sony televisions were the best picture quality you could buy? Or was your signal so horrible nobody cared? Bandwith almost zero? America did that. Two lines a frame, flickering like hell and Never The Same Color format. For real. So stop whining about Sony.
@gutzy19 CKG I had a Walkman, until somebody helped me to get rid of old hobby stuff. What?! My original Walkman gone?! Why! Very nostalgic...
Beta became broadcast standard VHS was disregarded.
Betamax died. The broadcast standard was BetaCAM (completely different & incompatible format). Super VHS and Digital VHS was also used by NBC and its associated channels.
Both Betacam and VHS were replaced by tapeless standards in the early 2000s.
For those curious, Techmoan did a fantastic video all about the Video 2000: "The format that came third in a two horse race"
Heading right over there, thanks for the tip
We had Video 2000s in our family, i still have it plus a whole bunch of other V2000 machines. They were great but got squeezed out by incompetent marketing etc. I we also had the wonderful laser disk players, i threw those away 15 years ago...darn i wish i didn't but just didn't have room for more techno junk. I still have a Cossor reel to reel tape machine from the early 1960s handed down from the family!
@@dandare6865 you made me sad, as I have no these. They're probably cool.
@@danek_hren At last count i had 10 of them, but i think only 2 work now. They would be great for spare parts tho.
Unfortunately they were even less reliable than an Austin Allegro .
well i can see why it failed, it wasnt called alpha max
This deserves so much more than 18 likes
@@cooperschwartz318now it’s 20
it didn't fail any more than VHS did , both formats are now relegated to history .
Airplane! And Fawlty Towers! Excellent choices, sir.
He used the airport parking directions from 'Airplane!' in his video about the ring sounds of the Western Electric 500 in movies and TV shows. He must be a fan!
Bad News. The fog is getting thicker.
looks like I picked the wrong week to not make comments on youtube
charlesml3 and Leon’s getting larger!
The tower? The tower? Rapunzel Rapunzel.
That VHS machine is the very one my parents got when I was a kid. Around $900!
The beast still works fine though.
Is it rare? I can't find anyone selling them
Not sure if it's already been said here but originally VHS was an acronym for Vertical Helical Scan (a reference to the recording system used) but was later changed to the more consumer-friendly Video Home System.
That..makes sense actually, considering the acronym "Video Home System" does feel a bit clunky. "Backronyms" like this are surprisingly common.
Didn't make the connection for VHS before though!
That's a myth. Someone made it up out of whole cloth and it got repeated by a lot of different websites, and never with any valid citation. Also, it's nonsensical, i.e., what is "vertical" supposed to be in reference to? Helical scan is a thing (invented by Ampex in the mid 1950s and used in all successful videotape systems), but "vertical helical scan" is not a thing.
VHS (and Betamax, U-Matic, etc.) uses slant azimuth recording; there's nothing vertical about it. Recording vertical tracks would be a terrible idea for videotape systems because it would need guard bands between each track/stripe to prevent crosstalk, which would drastically decrease recording time for a given length of tape and a given linear tape speed.
In JVC's 1971 document titled "VHS Development Matrix," "VHS" stood for "Video Home System," and that was 2 years before they had a working prototype and 5 years before VHS was released to the public.
You should have left 12:00 flashing just to be accurate.
For true accuracy It needs a lace doily on top and a low quality cheap looking clear vinyl dust cover that is turning yellow.
Honestly, I think anyone who would spend $1000+ on a VCR is not the same person who would not know how to set the clock. The age of electronics being so cheap that a Luddite would buy one was yet to come.
There was a store called Betaville in my home town when I was in highschool. As the name suggests, it was a video store that rented movies only in the Beta format. It lasted surprisingly long. Didn't go out of business until the late 90's. Cannot remember what year, but I know it was after 1995.
i bet the clerks got a lot of "betaville. population: you" jokes thrown at them
Most video shops , and libraries , carried both formats until the advent of satellite TV with its proliferation of movie channels , and then the advent of DVD players and recorders killed off the rental market
Was that really 16:28? It felt more like five minutes. It's nice to see someone presenting tech history who's clearly done research and speaks confidently. I hope you continue to release many more of these videos and that your channel gets more exposure. Thanks again!
My mother used the VCR to record her crappy soap opera. Picture quality had ZERO relevance to her.
She probably recorded them on six-hour slow tape too. I can watch my old tv tapes on LP or SP, but the SLP/EP tapes are awful and I’m only keeping the ones with rare stuff on them.
same for my mother! when the tape started to skip/jump i bought her another 8hr tape and proceeded on
IGnatius T Foobar Oh god, my mum is like that. To this day, she can’t tell the different in quality between a VHS and a modern HD digital recording. She also can’t see shadows though, so she’s generally not very good at seeing things.
Sounds like she just needed to know WHAT happened so she wasn't "out of the loop."
It reminds me of people who buy these cheap record players then tell me how clear the music plays, never understanding you need hi end equipment for anywhere near CD quality sound.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit beta!!
@@leemehdinur3766 Do you like Gladiator movies, Lee [on Betamax]?
Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
Surely, you can't be serious!
"I am serious, and dont call me Shirley." ..@@Popdaddy88
Just to throw this out there: Akai made their own VHS with their own video processing, and the picture was roughly equal to the Beta. You never saw a crisper yet smoother picture on any VHS. Old timer service guys know the machine (I can't recall the model but remember the machine well). We kept two of them for dubbing videos for customers.
My mom's first VHS player was a top loading beast like that one. I remember using it as a kid to watch bootleg tapes of Disney movies that wouldn't be officially released until the 90s as well as tapes of The Muppet Show recorded from the original airing. Those were the days.
At the beginning of Beta, the 60 min tape was called a “K-60” and a 30 min “K-30” came with the machine. There was only one record/playback speed, so the number represented the number of minutes the tape would run. When the SL-8200 came our with the second slower speed, they called the speeds BI and BII, and renamed the cassettes L-250 and L-500. Eventually the L-750 and L-830 came later along with odd lengths that were created for duplication houses, L-125, L-375.
Sony released the SL-8600 next, and decided to abandon BI, and it would record and playback BII only, so if you had tapes recorded on older machines in BI, too bad, you couldn’t play them. I had an SL-7200 and SL-8200, and I wouldn’t “upgrade” to the SL-8600 for that reason. Next was the SL-5400, SL-5600 and SL-5800 and Sony brought back BI speed but playback only and it was a switch you had to use on the back of the machine. They gave it the BI play capability, but it was like they didn’t want anybody to know about it, but at least make the videophiles happy.
Sony made many strange decisions beyond the whole 1 hour/2 hour mess with their Beta machines.
HALF THE FORMAT WARS would disappear if Sony didn’t exist. Everyone would use VHS or VHS-C for recording/camcorders (not betamax or Video8).
CD-R or DVD-R for digital (no minidisc or umd). And so on
.
@@electrictroy2010 well... About CD, I think, you're not fully right, as it was product from Sony + Philips. Sure, maybe Philips will alone make it, but...
Must be a US only thing , an L750 always ran for 3-1/4 hours since day one .
I remember when I could rent either betamax or vhs tapes at my local grocery store in the 80s. Betamax had their own section that got smaller and smaller as time went by and as vhs took over for good. I was so happy my dad made the right choice in getting a vhs machine.
10:58 Can we talk about how perfectly those tapes aligned with each other with that throw?
I think he paused the footage on a frame where they were most aligned, but I could be wrong
If you weren't alive back in those days you can't imagine the feeling of POWER it gave you, to be able to record TV shows that you weren't at home or awake to watch!
My mother was an early adopter of vhs recording. When we first got TiVo, explained that grappling with the utterly inscrutable recording controls of the vhs were so difficult that she would lie awake at night, unable to sleep because she couldn't stop worrying if the damn thing was actually recording anything or if she would check the tape only to find endless footage of late night infomercials
Snake from The Simpsons (Itchy & Scrathy the Movie): "Oh, no! Beta!"
This is my new favourite RUclips channel. I've heard this story before, but not in quite the same amount of depth. Can't wait for part 2!
If you like this you will like *8-bit Guy* and *Techmoan* videos too!
We have now trinity force on youtube. Techmoan + 8-bit guy and Technology connections!
Thanks for mentioning LGR. I will check it!
Bought my first VCR in December 1977. It was a VHS Magnavox. This had the SP and LP modes the SLP came later. I had it for two years and traded it for a 1918 Luger pistol. That pistol is worth a lot more then that VCR is now.
Guns are bad and theres never a reason for anyone to own one ever
weird flex but ok
@@timfondiggle2582 You are certainly entitled to your opinion..... but not entitled to force your beliefs and opinions on others. You are free to not own or possess a firearm and I won't force my beliefs on you and try to force you to carry a firearm.
Can't watch shows on the gun. But you can't shoot a home invader with a VHS.
LOL
When I was a kid, my old man had two VCR's and he used to rent movies and record them, so I had this catalog of cartoons at my disposal. He really is the best dad I could have asked for, man. As for Sony, its pride was indeed its downfall. Cheers!
👱🏻♀️ U OLD
I kept my family's first VCR well after it pretty much was dead just because it didn't have the copy protection on it. For the last couple years, I had to keep the cover off, or at least unscrewed so I could easily take it off, and manually rotate the gears to eject the tape. A friend of mine who knew how to kinda/sorta fix things breathed a little more life into it, but that only lasted like 4-5 months before it was back to doing it by hand.
When I was a kid my dad borrowed the neighbour vcr and would pirate tapes - my brother turned the tv over one Saturday morning when dad was out working and left a video duplicating - yep he was pirating porno movies 😅
NTSC = Never The Same Color
Greetings from Germany :D
listen, pal
Haha! I love it!
Greetings from America, sir!
@@Zawmbbeh haha
Hey, we had color and we liked it! People maybe green... but we liked it!
desinfector I never understood why people hated NTSC.
You have to remember just how expensive video recorders were back in prehistoric times. $400 for a VCR was a lot of money back then. So making a choice between an item that was $600 vs a $400 item went to the $400 item most of the time.
I own a HD DVD player. I thought if Microsoft adopted it, it was going to be the norm. Wrong! I'm going to keep it as new maybe my grandkids can cash in on it.
"Gimme the Tape!" On a serious note, this was well researched and presented. Thank you for creating this.
Great video, I was always curious about the differences between VHS and Betamax.
Looking forward to part 2!
@MsMadLemon
You could have spoke with any TV Technician and discovered the answer to your question.
Did you never consider asking.
You only discover answers when you ask questions.
So always be asking questions about everything you don't know about, and surround yourself with people who know MORE than you.
Let them teach you and be teachable.
Then teach it to your children.
@@andrew_koala2974 I hate to say it, but you're sort of mansplaining here.
Beta's cassette was aesthetically more pleasing & had a slightly longer time, this could be extended on the Sony C7 by using a Betastack which held 4 tapes which changed when the one in the machine came to the end. I managed to stack 10 by allowing the ejected ones to drop onto the floor. Over 30 hours almost continuous recording!
I'm not sure where you're getting the slightly longer time thing. There were various casettes released for both over the years that increased recording time (and also machines that could record and play back at higher or lower speed), so I'm guessing the Beta tapes you were using had a longer time than an older VHS tape, but VHS had a longer recording time by default.
Beta cassetes do look better though.
Why would you need to record for 30 hours?
@@zzzaphod8507have you seen RUclips videos nowadays
that "neat trick" is useful for skipping ads, though.
As a VHS owner from the start, I have to admit Beta video quality was better. However, tape based recording systems are something I would prefer to forget.
Be kind, please rewind!
LOL! Yeah, remember when they used to have a "rewind" fee?
HA! Remember the tape rewinding machines shaped like cars? I had one!
Haha I always used to forget and take it back late. Dump it on the counter and don't go back for a while and use my mates account
The DVDs at Blockbuster had those labels on the cases.
Paul Barlow neat. Ours was Radio shack branded which makes it doubly ironic!
I remember just marvelling that the TV didn't even need to be turned on to record things. It just seemed like magic. And I remember "tracking", that band of sandy glimmer at the bottom of the picture that could never quite be adjusted away.
1980 I bought a Sony BetaMax (side loading) . I had gotten a HUGE bonus that year and bought this thing (and also learned to fly !). Good times.
"Where did YOU learn to fly?"
(I wonder if anyone will get this pointless reference)
@@nthgth WHERE DID YOU LEARN TO BE AN ASSHOLE?! 😂
@@drsudo5135 hahaha 🍻 cheers!
How big of an investment was a VCR back then?
That Gran Turismo 3 reference was probably more descriptive for me than you thought it would be. Had to smash that x button down hard or you'd only go partial throttle. I would honestly like to see you do a video on how the progressive buttons work. I've found out that all buttons, including the D pad so it too.
I remember being so disappointed that analog face buttons didn't catch on for consoles.
Analog triggers pretty much make up for it though.
The original consumer Betamax (SL-7200) could only record for one hour on the standard L-500 cassette (Beta I). The first VHS VCRs had a standard recording time of 2 hours and an LP recording time of 4 hours on a standard T-120 cassette. The SL-7200 needed a mechanical timer accessory to set a timed recording while the early VHS machines (RCA VBT-200) had a built in digital clock / timer for timed recording. These two features alone gave the VHS machines a big head start in the VCR war. I started repairing VCRs in 1978 and was an authorized RCA repair station for them. Tooling up for VHS and Beta VCR repair was very expensive at the time. I still have tools, jigs and fixtures for it as well as service manuals dating back to 1977 collecting dust.
ILL GIVE 500 DOLLARS IF YOU CAN FIX MY VHS PLAYER
thanks now i remember the long process of trying to tune
tv channels on a vhs machine
In the PAL system, VHS cassettes were branded as E-30(30 mins); E-60(60 mins); E-120(2 hours); E180(3 hours) and E240(4 hours).
As well as E-195, E300 and a bunch of other "off" lengths.
on long play you double the length
Similar to music cassettes. 30, 60, 90, 120.
@@Atombender i had a ten minute cassette that i bought from Tandy Electronics (radioshack in USA and Canada) and used them as cassingles
and the E300 but in long play E30=60 E60=120 E180=240 and E240=480 and E300=600
"I'd give anything to watch my reruns of Night Court one more time..."
One of the terrestrial TV channels is actually running night court again. I think it is antenna TV.
Stuart Garlick They’re available on DVD and streaming services.
Don't worry Mr. Plinkett, we'll get that VCR of yours fixed sooner or later.
Cue me wondering if my parents' old Beta player still works.
Bring back wood grain electronics now!
And wood grain station wagons too; they are the tits!
Genuine simulated wood.
God, I miss RadioShack, God !
Trump should write up an executive order making it illegal to produce electronics products that aren't covered in genuine simulated wood grain. MAGA!
use hemp
I haven't heard your sarcasm on this level before. clicked like before the 1st 5 mins were over
your channel deserves more views
pladampa3 true
Yeah I agree, I just found this guys channel a few days ago and instantly subbed, it's a gem. I think it's going to blow up fast really well done vids, likeable guy
So have i that means youtube is pushing this channel out. Really good content.
It'll get there, especially if he keeps making great videos.
Yeah. I have found that channels like this ALWAYS start to somehow get subscribers because they are good. But you're right. Great videos. Needs more views.
I just found an SL-5800 for $10 in a thrift store and it looks overwhelmingly similar to the Sl-5400, so this video served as a nice overview of the unit! The only differences I can spot are underneath the two hidden panels for the tuner and clock/timer. Seems yours has more LEDs and switches for the channels instead of buttons. Now only one problem... where in the world am I gonna find a freakin Betamax tape lmao. Was hoping there might be one mixed in amongst all the VHS in the thrift store but no such luck. Hopefully I can see how the machine runs soon.
It's simple. Beta was a bit too expensive, but their quality in recording was better, the problem was that it only recorded an hour on a tape, and that was after they increased it when JVC's VHS was coming out.
Vhs was lower quality recording, but it could record two full hours and it was cheaper. The video still looked fine, especially to people who grew up on over-the-air broadcasts which were notoriously iffy in quality.
Cheaper and more bang for the buck always wins over prettier with slightly better quality.
Absolutely amazing that you could summarize this 2-part, 30+ minute rambling series of videos into a few concise sentences. A-fucking-mazing.
Vhs won because it could do more of what the customers wanted to do
Beta added features that wore nice failed at the most important task record the tv shows the customers wanted to watch
Thanks for pointing out, HepChaos, that over-the-air broadcasts were of low quality, making Beta's better quality image irrelevant, to most consumers. I remember, that Beta and VHS both looked the same to me, when recording off-the-air, or from open-source instructional tapes that were deteriorated from many playbacks. Back then, I wondered, perhaps, only video connoisseurs could see the subtle difference?
......Therefore... today I wonder... Was Beta preferred by pirates? ...who were duplicating video tapes, rented from video stores? For personal use... or resale? One copy, pirated to Beta, could be used to make hundreds of original-looking copies, either to Beta or VHS. Can anyone chime in, on that?
......On the issue of US consumers wanting a recording length of 4 to 6 hours, for football... did the Japanese at Sony even know what football was? Or did they just make a survey of the maximum duration of US series episodes, news specials, dramatic plays, and operas? (LOL! There were a few operas broadcast, on US educational public networks.)
and the Porns..... dont forget the Porns...
What about the cam corders? If VHS came on the scene and flooded the market before Beta even had a model ready for production the the consumer would have the perceived notion that beta is a loser "so we better go with the VHS" mentality.
Marketing strategy wins every time, regardless of performance.
I was told to come here to summit a complaint about the phrase "Now here's where things start to get interesting".
Submit to the summit sounds like a good name for an alternative band
@
summit is
(a) The highest level or degree attainable
(b) The highest stage of development
(c) A meeting of heads of governments
(d) The highest point (of a mountain)
So tell us how that word ' summit ' fits into the context of your comment?
Buy yourself a dictionary and study the meaning of words you wish to use.
In the UK, I was selling Betamax, VHS and Video 2000 machines back in 1980, side by side in the same electrical shop. Video 2000 was the best but nobody wanted it, Betamax was better than VHS pound for pound picture quality wise and the entry level was cheaper than VHS. We sold more Betamax machines than VHS. The killer for Betamax ultimately was software of course; coupled with that flat spin product formats enter as soon as the public start to perceive them as _dying_ in relation to competing format(s). Nobody was remotely bothered about the cosmetic stuff you mention, different times. One factor which was beginning to matter to people back then, however, was toploader vs frontloader and both formats fielded examples of both; a practical, space-saving feature but still not actually a deal breaker for most people particularly as the cheaper ones tended to be toploaders.
Totally agree though I guess you mean softcore as much as software 8-)=
Tallshrew Fishing. Exactly wasn't it the Phillips 2000 that never took off? Also i bought a Betamax in 83/84 for around £250 in England when the cheapest VHS was around £350. So as you say they were cheaper by quite a margin at the time.
@@eddiehockley4144 Yes, we were selling the cheapest Betamax machine at about £190 in 1980/81 and the cheapest VHS (which was not as good) was noticeably more. Worth remembering lots of people in _proper_ jobs were earning £60 to £100 per week back then, so none were cheap.
@@TallshrewFishing That is a pretty low wage. My dad worked a warehouse job in California in the early 1980s and made around 45,000USD a year with medical insurance that covered a 750,000USD medical bill my brother had for being put in intensive care after kidney failure.
I miss those days of good paying blue collar jobs that you could raise a family on.
@@RyviusRan Average UK annual wage in 1980 was £6000 or £115/week and the average is always high as it is skewed by massively high earners with most people earning less than the average.
When I was super young, my dad bought that exact VCR. I remember him saying it cost a months salary but it was worth it!
I still use my VHS player to watch old movies! I must be one of the few left with a VHS library!
We had ours digitised about 10 years ago.
I still use my Super VHS to record HDTV off the air. The final result looks like DVD quality
I'm sure there's someone out there dubbing Disturbed onto an Edison phonographic cylindre. 😁
first i had heard of betamax was from an episode of cowboy bebop where faye recieves a mysterious tape in the mail and everyone assumed it was vhs until the antique store owner pointed out it wasnt and thats why it would not fit in a vhs player, so they had to go to a museum on the near abandoned earth to retrieve the only known functional betamax, only for the recording to turn out to be nothing more than a "hello future me" type of home recording.
Thank you for this. Very interesting (answered questions I've always had), excellently done, and perfectly paced. Good idea, too, to split it in half. 30 min episodes sometimes take some maneuvering to fit in (meaning sometimes they never do) whereas 15-16 min ones can be watched, say, during a meal.
RUclips can remember for you where you stopped watching, and will continue from there when you watch it again. That works across devices, too, if you use the same Google account for both.
I don't think it is a widely used feature, but it seems made for just such occasions.
Jorge Garcia Just do what most guys do: Tie up the bathroom, sitting on throne with laptop/iPad, while rest of family is forced to wait. Jim
Straight up, anyone who used both formats in the 1980s and even 1990s, knows Beta smoked VHS in every way _except_ recording time. Picture quality was deplorable on VHS in SLP (6 HR) recording mode, and colors very washed out compared with Beta III (4.5 HR) mode, which almost looked as good as VHS SP (2HR) mode. Also, as mentioned, the tape transport mechanism is very lazy on VHS, but almost instant response for all tape functions on Beta. I had both types of machines in the 1980s, and used the Beta almost exclusively to record from television because the quality was so much better in long record time mode. Still have all the Beta and VHS tapes, and the various VCRs, and they still work, unlike today's junk which will fall apart after one year.
My dad did much of the same, he once more backed the losing format with MiniDisc. I loved this format as it was a much neater size to handle and store compared to CD's, and was great for recording stuff off the radio, for example.
Mate this from a country on NTSC (Never The Same Color) 520 lines of transmission??..
Shit in - shit out....ahahah!..The Brits were on PAL system with 625 lines........so at least the Play- back was of a satisfying quality....on Either Beta or VHS
Back in the 80's-90's I used LP and EP most of the time to save money on tapes, and it was very watchable on the 19 inch CRT TV's (RCA and Philips) I had back then. I didn't realize how bad the quality was until I got a 55 inch Vizio flatscreen and started watching some old tapes.
this is what's called "survivor bias" - only the machines that were built to last have survived until now, and so there is always the perception that "modern things die fast, old things last forever". people were saying the same thing in the 70s about products from the 30s and 40s.
LakeNipissing True.
Also,
1. The comparison he makes between SP & BII is not a fair one b/c he's comparing an 80's Betamax to a modern VHS vcr. In the 80's VHS was not as good as it later became.
2. In the mid 80's movie studios started putting an anti-copy code on pre-recorded tapes. The code only worked on VHS as Betamax could still copy ANY movie regardless of the copy protection scheme!
If more movie buffs had known this, Beta may have sold better.
Great video! In the mid 90's I picked up a early 80's Panasonic VHS top-loader at a thrift store for 5 dollars in the mid 90's. The ladies there just wanted it out the door. After a good cleaning it worked just fine and my grandmother used it for a few years after. I wish I had hung onto it after she passed away, but I had too many newer decks.
Once they introduced copy protection, you would have to play a VHS through a Beta and record onto another VHS to copy tapes.
That 70's Show, Red Forman: "We have a Betamax, we're better than normal people."
The Simpsons, Snake: "Oh no! Beta"
GIMMEATAPE! WHAM!
Holy crap, my sides!
I bought an RCA VCR in 1980. It was 650.00 two paychecks exactly. What sealed the deal was the public library was lending only VHS tapes.
And now you can find them at yard sales for $1
@@allenatkins2263
And when you find them at said yard sale, you get ALL of them for one dollar.
You got a good deal on that then because the VHS JVS HRS-6700 I bought in 1979 cost $1300. It might have been near or at the top of the line though.
An RCA VCR in 1980 would have been a relabeled Hitachi.
@@Paperclown I remember the library in my city did lend out VHS tapes. This was in the late 1980s, and the videos were usually boring stuff like documentaries and children's videos. If you wanted popular movies, video rental stores had those.
Airplane! Great 1980 film! I Love it!
Funny how it is just on TV here.
i have the dvd box set of the Airplane movies, 2 of the greatest comedies ever made
"Ever seen a grown man naked?"
I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley. 😂
"I picked the wrong time to quit smoking"
In '85, during my stint in Germany, my first VCR was a Beta machine with a corded remote. It was brought home to the States with me, however, I didn't have it long. Since then, I've always had a VHS in either a player/recorder or just a VCP only. In today's period, I own a combo DVD/VHS unit because I have yet to fully give up all of my tape movies. Watching your presentation of their histories in this installment brought back memories of yesteryear. Thanks.
ItzCaseyKC, were you stationed in Germany? I was in the Army in 1985 and also bought a Beta VCR that year. While stationed at Ft Richardson, Alaska the old Betamax kept me entertained the whole 3 years I was there!
@@scottschimming2040 I was in southern Germany up one of the hills from Stuttgart from Jan. 1, 1984 to around July 22, 1985. The base no longer exists because the civilians bulldozed many of the buildings and made the area a nice looking place for the German population. I was at Nellingen Kasern btw.
I like your references to Airplane! I have a question. "What is it?" It's a an interrogative statement used to test knowledge, but that's not important right now! How about a video of SD card vs Memory Stick?
One thing that nobody brings when explains why beta fails is the 1981's Jane Fonda's Workout Tape, which was released for VHS only. At the time, every housewife wants a VCR because of that specific tape.
Not to mention every teenage boy.
My mate's sister had Duran Duran Betamax tape of "Girls on film". He is still a Dear friend to this day,
Masturbation heaven my friends.
Can we talk about this workout video?
ruclips.net/video/lSA-1tZZTPM/видео.html
I fapped to that once or twice
I still remember the day my Dad brought home a Betamax Recorder.... along with a copy of Enter the Dragon. Back of the net! 😋
HOLY SHIT what a chad!!!!!
I remember all the hype, my aunt, in the late '70's, was so proud of their new Betamax. hahaha
I was born in 1998 so by that time stand-alone VCRs were no longer available in most plases my parents owned a VHS/DVD combo unit for as as long as I can remember.
That might explain why VHS caught on in North America but in South America and Europe (where Soccer matches are the populist sport) a 2 hour cassette should easily be enough (2 x 45 mins plus a 15 minute halftime break) or 3 hours for things like world cup games (2 x 45 minutes plus 15 minute break plus 30 minutes if extra time is played plus 10 more minutes if it goes to a penalty shootout = 2 hours 35 minutes). As Sony had the L750 3 hour tape on the market by around 1980 there must be more to this so is now to watch part 2.
And I remember when my dad and I squeezed 8 hours into a VHS.
Had to have all 3 Star Wars movies in one VHS for the 6 year old, so he didn't break the store-bought tapes.
We even got a bit of Star Wars Droids in the end of it.
Beta recording quality was ALWAYS much better than VHS....I know....I was there.
I was there too, had both, and I disagree with your subjective assessment.
So was I! We even had a Beta video cam. Yup, Beta all the way...
Machine Code:
Totally Agree...my parents went out of the way and kept paying the premium for Beta purchases/rentals,etc......video quality was always better.....VHS players then (even the good ones) had issues. We then we went Laser-Disk and then DVDs.
But then oh....Laser was awesome...remember seeing Terminator (collectors/directors cut edition,whatever)....that was crazy then of all the features it had compared to early DVD. Parents still have their Betamax....far as I know,they still work....and that corny simulated wood reminds one of the 1970s/1980s.
Video 2000 had the best picture quality.
But only PAL versions so sadly only Europe knows them.
I was there too.
Notice something, both of these units are still fully functional. Todays electronics won't last 10 years.
@Thomas Ward
Todays electronics don't last because they are engineered not to.
This ensures people will buy new products, and this ensures manufacture continuity and more profit.
Also Manufacturers kept spare parts fro as long as was necessary by law to provide warranty.
Once that legal requirement for warranty expired parts were dumped at the local land-fill ..... when users required repairs or service for their machine, the manufacturer said .. 'Sorry, parts are no longer available.
It falls into the scam category where people paid a great deal of their income into purchasing equipment. only to be abandoned by the manufacturer... Thus it happened that enterprising companies in Russia, Sweden, The Netherlands and Italy were making substitute components, that kept the machines serviceable and owners of these machines happy.
It is remains a reality that there is very little loyalty to a client base by manufacturers, and what is more important fro them is to produce cheap disposable products.
And It is unlikely that anyone today would pay five times their weekly income for a Television.
So prices have dropped to very affordable and manageable levels . and the quality is commensurate with that, 4 years life-span is about the average.
Gone are the days when people kept their TV for 20 years and other devices for 10 years or more.
People now want the latest design to impress people they dislike, and buy with money they don't have to stay in perpetual debt.
@@andrew_koala2974 I agree 100%, which is why I just purchased a new Speed Queen washing machine, they are built to last 25 years, just like in the old days.
I know. All new appliances don't work but about two to three years, then you need a new machine. Not good, at all.
I disagree with this to an extent. Like most technology, it depends on who manufactures it.
My time with VHS was awful as I pretty much went through players like they were disposable. They were forever breaking down.
My DVD player though, I have had for god knows how many years. Probably somewhere between 12 to 15 years at least.
VHS players were notorious for wearing out their heads.
I would also go as far as to say that my recent history with TVs has been positive as well, as even after selling them when I wanted to upgrade, I sold them to friends or family and they are still going strong. The problem now though is tech is outdated almost as soon as it is released.
They do not need to build limited life spans into them as tech advancements are what now cause people to buy new equipment.
Your kidding ! .. both were not very reliable ,with loads of mechanical parts to go wrong and tape that had a limited lifespan and problems with jamming .
Format wars aside- it's great to see how both these machines still work (and all the bulbs as well by the look of it). Of course I'm assuming here that Technology Connections didn't have to do some repair.
I remember this video format war! In RUclips years, I'm dead.
VHS's were cheaper
People buy cheaper product
Rental places notice VHS's have more customers
Rental places order more VHS copies than Beta
People to go rental places and see all the movies in VHS
People buy VHS players.
VHS wins.
great point!
I was around when both systems came out and Beta had the better quality by far
Zero Cool no it didn't.Common myth perptuated by porn industry to appear as progressive
Not "by far".
More like "by a hair".
I'm not sure that Beta was generally more expensive. Also, the original intention of video cassette recorders was to record TV shows that could not be watched when they were broadcast, not to play pre-recorded material. Pre-recorded video did not yet exist.
I AM SO LOOKING FORWARD TO PART TWO!!!
I enjoy your dry sense of humor.
To be honest there are still advantages to tape formats. It wouldn't surprise me if something like this made a come-back someday.
I mean if you combine this tech with a hard drive and buffering, and improvements in drive tech, you could have HD recordings that find the exact start/stop moment, and select which programs to save to a tape from a queue. You could have PERFECT archival recordings in HD.
For someone like me such a system would actually be extremely useful. I don't have time to screw around with TV. TV Hard Drives fill up too fast. I would love to have a system that finds what I want, lets me watch/preview it to see if I want to see it once or save it forever, then lets me transfer it to tapes for permanent cheap storage (maybe at night while I sleep).
5:15 Jeez there's a childhood flashback!
"GIMME THAT TAPE!!!" LOL!!!! I love your channel so much! Do you have a Patreon? ......The one person that clicked dislike is the one person who thinks still Betamax is still going to make a comeback....
Damn! A nice set of retro top loaders! Where did you find these (and what did you have to do to get them working? - that's an episode in itself!)
[LGR]Hmmm, woodgrain...[/LGR] @.@
Bastet Furry exactly what I was thinking when I saw a woodgrain clock.
"Sony seemed to think *they* could decide what their customers wanted." Ah, how times have changed... oh wait.
Soitisisit still do. Remember the Sony memory stick for digital cameras, the floppy disc digital camera and the mini disc. Neither will many young people today.
@@stephanburgess654 or the memory stick for PS VITA...it basically lost them billions because some cretin exec thought "they will pay for it!". Well the PS VITA was a flop even though it is the best portable console for RPG enthusiasts. Ok the memory stick wasnt really the main reason,I exaggerated on that.
Tomi Sony had a lot to learn back then. They were not the be all and end all they thought.
@@stephanburgess654 yeah... dont get me wrong I very much respect them. In fact I am what you might call a "fanboy" of Sony's ;) cant wait for the PS5! Cheers
UMD, proprietary memory stick, and the bloated, hard to program for and costly PS3 where they arrogantly claimed you will WANT to get a second job to be able to buy this thing.
All this from their most (only) profitable division.
Thank God Mark Cerny took over since PS4 and that imperial Japanese mindset is no longet at the helm.
I have a suggestion for a video similar to this. Could you do a video explaining why VCR and cassette units can sometimes “chew up” or “eat” tapes? This has been a problem for decades with this, and I think it would be neat to see a video explaining why this happens and a more in-depth explanation of the damage it does to the tape afterward.
I love the way you explain things, and since this concept is intriguing to me, seeing you talk about it would be nice. Thank you.
Well, the tape goes behind a lot of things during the loading process. If there's something wrong with the machine, it will eject the tape without doing a reverse loading first (that's mostly a rubber belt issue).
When Betamax came out in Europe in early 1978 the PAL tapes recorded 2 hours on L500 and 3 1/4 hours on L750. What’s more the tapes were cheaper than VHS so the format lasted a bit longer over here
This is so well presented. I find it quite therapeutic. Oh yeah, most interesting too!
You need to make another video about VHS linear stereo, Beta-Hi-Fi And some of the other moves that were made in that war. For instance the slow motion Beta as well as the VHS machines abandoning there crude "M-Wrap" design the prevented the tape from being moved fast while loaded onto the heads. Beta used the Omega Wrap from the start which allowed these features. Later VHS copied Beta's method for Hi-Fi by encoding the audio on the rotating head rather than the stationary head that could only produce mediocre audio. then there was the "clear frame" stop action that was first from Sony, then VHS.
Sadly, although the Beta format had a better picture and quality features, the recording time trumped everything else. I still have two working Beta machines as well as two VHS machines. Don't use them much since DVD and Blu-ray though.
VHS Hifi is technically superior, and PAL Beta Hifi uses the VHS method with separate heads as apposed to the NTSC machines, it wasn't possible to use the NTSC method with PAL signals.
From the European perspective Video2000 was far superior to both VHS and Betamax and there were plans to introduce Video2000 Hifi which would have sidestepped many of the issues with the four head system.
In another reality the sensible choice of Video2000 would have been adopted as the global format of choice. Its hard to see any logic as to why VHS and Betamax were so popular compared to V2000.
I bought an RCA VBT200, the first commercially viable VHS recorder, in December 1977. I chose it over a Beta for one simple reason -- time. The VHS machine recorded up to 4 hours on a T-120 tape while the Beta only did 3 hours (back then players had two speeds; in VHS it was SP and LP. VHS later added SLP/EP for 6 hours and eventually dropped the middle speed altogether). One of the things I wanted to do with my machine was recored the TV broadcast of football games I attended in person. That definitely required more than 3 hours. I'm confident that this extra hour was the main reason VHS "won" over Beta. I've been telling people that for years, and I'm frankly surprised this video comes to the same conclusion.
Beta tapes were thinner than VHS because of their smaller cases and had a much greater tendency to break. I never owned any, but I sold them when I worked retail and many were returned for that reason.
I had forgotten what a pain in the ass television used to be. The internet sure is great - I cannot remember the last time I was bored.
We still have Sling TV, and that means we still have television.
We also have HDTV coming through an antenna, but a lot of people just don’t bother. They are 100% internet
Great work! Can you also tell us about Sony's MiniDisc? This also failed and was better (imho) as Cassettes. Why did it fail, it was so much better...
I think it probably failed because they made It so hard to transfer from computer to mini disc. It was really locked down so people got ultra fast cd burners and burnt a cd of their favourite music in two minutes
MiniDisc cametomarket at a time when solid state storage of digital files was rising.
i have a sony minidisc walkman player/recorder...i love it and use it all the time. i bought it to archive my lp collection.
MiniDisc competed against stand-alone CD recorders and hard-drive recording / editing using software like Sound Forge 2-track recording and CD drives in a computer. MiniDisc was proprietary Sony and employed MP3-style data compression, whereas the free market could produce any variation of the hard drive / CD devices that didn't record with compression, so was "purer" than MiniDisc. Proprietary formats have to provide something above-and-beyond what the free market produces in order to pull ahead. And, MiniDisc adopters had to buy MiniDiscs at the local Best Buy, whereas spindles of CDs could be purchased for bottom-dollar promotional pricing.
@@VoxLesPaul The problem was that Sony MiniDisc initially used a proprietary codec :- ATRAC. As you say, it was an MP3-style , not actual MP3 (correctly MPEG-1 audio layer 3). History shows proprietary is rarely successful in technology. What made it worse other manufacturers put their own twist on the ATRAC codec. As field recorders the little Walkman style machines were great, something you could not do at the time with any CD recorders, but that codec killed itself off outside of Japan.
14 channel tuners? In the 1970s? That’s the definition of optimism right there.
@300DBenz we had a Betamax rental store that lasted about 18months called Betavision.
Airplane!
Certainly in the Top 5 greatest movies ever made! Surely, you couldn't have picked a better tape 😂😂
He could have picked "Naked Gun," and don't call me Shirley.
My first VHS tape was an EMI and cost £10 in 1980!
I still have it and it still plays in my Panasonic DMR-EZ49VEB-K DVD/VCR VHS Combi Recorder.
My parents got our first VCR when we moved to Texas and I was ten. My grandparents (read grandmother) decided that they needed one and as a result all three of her grown children got one too. By this point it had a remote control, the unit was silver with a black LCD display and it was considerably more advanced than these earlier units. I think the cable ran through it to the TV, so we used it as a tuner as our TV was one of the last ones made without a remote (which meant we lay on the floor in front of it and change the channels with our toes. Worked like a charm actually). The VCR was Japanese, I can't remember the brand, and it lasted a long, long time. It got near-constant use, particularly as my guilty pleasure a few years later and into high school was Days Of Our Lives, which ran sand through the hourglass five days a week. And yes, my metalhead friends knew, but they thought it was too weird/pathetic to make fun of. My parents still have a combo VHS/DVD unit because they still have family moments tucked away on VHS tapes, but it sees very little action now. It amazes me that in my lifetime I've gone from my daily soap opera on a standard recording (for the picture) to the DVR and 1080 flat screen TV with a Blu-ray player for high res movies that get piped in from online. Thirty five years and it's like stuff from another planet that is taken for granted. To my teenage daughter, a VCR is like the hand crank phonograph my grandparents owned. A working antique.
Never clicked on a video faster
9262XYZ Just because I said I clicked on the video quickly doesn't mean that I'm gay. We don't need eight year olds like you posting idiotic and salty comments on RUclips.
9262XYZ How does being gay have anything to do with posting a "meme". Obviously, you are a kid as well, calling me gay and saying I watch gay porn, trying to be all edgy.
P.S. I'm not gay.
Okay, you're not gay. Sorry for being "salty", Mr Meme Lord. Here are some more cool memes you can try in the future: "Give me a thumbs up for my birthday!" "17 people had a Betamax!". "FIRST!!!"
TRULY HILARIOUS STUFF (for unintelligent children)!!!
9262xyz....I like your style.
So you're saying that you an adult that goes around telling random people that they are gay, because of one comment that they posted. Do something better with your life.
Hey Alec, Techmoan cited this video on his video about Philips V2000. :)
Prepare for 'Techmoan brought me here' comments. ^^
Techmoan bought me beer
Me too
You are the Doug Demuro of video players.
I brought my VHS player in 1993 when the price had come way down and had it until around 2012 when I got a DVD player .
I rented movies and got tapes from public library . Watching movies at home is great.
Please tell me you’re going to do a video series on the HDDVD and BluRay wars? I’m geeking out over your references and knowledge.
i remember this machines cost $3000 when they came out.
I'm beginning to think we were out of our minds at the time for buying them at that price. If we were smart, we would have perhaps hired them instead, after allowing for repairs out of our pocket, mostly caused by years of tape jamming.
Inflation circa 2021 (+9%) sets the cost at around 21 thousand dollars.
I don't think I really appreciated how big those two machines were until 15:55. O.O
how do you not have more subscribers I love your videos
I think this playlist is the first T.C. I ever watched, ages ago. Got me into this channel.
3:20 - Push-button (Varactor) tuning was the bee's knees back in 1979. I purchased a Quasar VH-5100QW, similar to that RCA machine. ($900.00 at Brands Mart, Cambridge MA on Oct 31, 1979) The BIG feature was that one could program it to change the channel when recording! VCR's up to then had DIAL tuners!