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It was! I loved Beta, but had to give it up when VHS won the marketing competition.
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Betamax had clearer pic mostly than vhs but the picture on my Phillips machine was even better!!
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Posted: |
May 19, 2016 - 4:41 PM
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By: |
Rameau
(Member)
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Oh I loved my Sony C5 recorder, & Betamax was better. It seemed like a miracle at the time, record movies off air & build your own film collection, of course I ended up with VHS, never liked it. In a way, Beta ended up being the most successful format ever in the professional field: Beta, Beta SP & Digi-Beta, I was using that only four year ago. And people still say, I taped that, when they've recorded something onto Tivo or whatever, I found myself saying it the other day.
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Posted: |
May 19, 2016 - 5:20 PM
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By: |
Dana Wilcox
(Member)
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Oh I loved my Sony C5 recorder, & Betamax was better. It seemed like a miracle at the time, record movies off air & build your own film collection, of course I ended up with VHS, never liked it. In a way, Beta ended up being the most successful format ever in the professional field: Beta, Beta SP & Digi-Beta, I was using that only four year ago. And people still say, I taped that, when they've recorded something onto Tivo or whatever, I found myself saying it the other day.
My wife and I always say we "taped" stuff we record on the DVR... My first VCR was a Beta and I loved it. Proof that marketing trumps practicality every time. The fact that the Beta format lived on in professional applications for years after the demise of the home market is proof enough of its technical superiority.
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Posted: |
May 19, 2016 - 9:59 PM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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I had a large collection of Betamax tapes, mostly movies on TV. I bought it because
Gone with the Wind was going to be broadcast on TV for the first time.
It took 4/ 60 min. tapes. The first tapes recorded for only an hour!
Do you remember how much it cost?
My memory of when Betamax was first introduced was that it was built into a console with a large screen TV, large screen in those days (mid-seventies) being a 25" CRT. I think it cost somewhere around $2,000. As I was only around fifteen at the time, I didn't have the money to even think about buying it -- and neither did my parents.
When I finally did have the money to buy a VCR, around 1980, I intended to get a Betamax, but when I went to the store and found out that the VHS could record not only two hours on a cassette, it also had a 4-hour mode, that was it -- I got the VHS recorder.
A four-hour mode meant that you could put two movies on one cassette -- and this was back in the days when a blank VHS tape was $15.00. I can remember finding VHS tapes for only $12 each and thought that was a bargin.
By the way, my first VHS VCR cost me $950. When I look back on that purchase -- I want to kick myself in the ass. But back then, I was young and obviously a little nuts.
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Posted: |
May 20, 2016 - 3:58 AM
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By: |
Rameau
(Member)
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That's funny, as in PAL, Betamax was longer than VHS, 10 minutes longer on a two hour & 15 on a three hour, very handy when trying to shoehorn in a couple of films on to a three hour tape (& at the start those tapes were bloody expensive). At the time I really thought that this is the best things can get...& then along came DVD, the answer to all our prayers...then came Blu-ray, which I wasn't having anything to do with as I was very happy with DVD, well now I'm all Blu-ray, which can look fantastic, but...it's 4K Blu-ray now, & people on other sites (Blu-ray.com) post that they won't buy a film unless it's 4K!
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Posted: |
May 20, 2016 - 4:13 AM
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By: |
Metryq
(Member)
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Dana Wilcox wrote: The fact that the Beta format lived on in professional applications for years after the demise of the home market is proof enough of its technical superiority.
Betamax (home use) and Betacam (professional) were two totally different formats. They used cassettes that were physically the same size, and both used a U-wrap, but transport and scan speeds were different, along with record frequencies, etc. The surviving Betacam was later augmented with advanced oxides and frequencies (Betacam-SP), and eventually became digital.
There was only a slight difference in the horizontal resolution between VHS and Betamax, so arguments of Betamax being "vastly superior!" are moot. I think VHS won the market from the "PR" angle. For example, which tape is longer: the L-500 (Betamax) or the T-60 (VHS)? Stuff as simple as that can affect the perceived complexity of a technology. And the average "man in the street" complained about the complexity of programming automated recording. (Day, time and channel—that's a lot of confusing information to expect someone to juggle! /s.)
The manufacturers and publishers also duked it out with Hi-Fi, movie titles, etc.—those are the things that win a format war.
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Posted: |
May 20, 2016 - 6:56 AM
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By: |
Rameau
(Member)
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Betamax (home use) and Betacam (professional) were two totally different formats. They used cassettes that were physically the same size, and both used a U-wrap, but transport and scan speeds were different, along with record frequencies, etc. The surviving Betacam was later augmented with advanced oxides and frequencies (Betacam-SP), and eventually became digital.
There was only a slight difference in the horizontal resolution between VHS and Betamax, so arguments of Betamax being "vastly superior!" are moot. I think VHS won the market from the "PR" angle. For example, which tape is longer: the L-500 (Betamax) or the T-60 (VHS)? Stuff as simple as that can affect the perceived complexity of a technology. And the average "man in the street" complained about the complexity of programming automated recording. (Day, time and channel—that's a lot of confusing information to expect someone to juggle! /s.)
The manufacturers and publishers also duked it out with Hi-Fi, movie titles, etc.—those are the things that win a format war.
Well of course they technically different, one was for home use & one was professional. Beta was superior (IMHO), I don't know about "vastly". I remember buying a VHS recorder & being very disappointed with the picture. There are all sorts of stories around as to how VHS came out on top. The legend is that VHS had all the porn, but I'm not sure about that. I think it was Sony, always too expensive, & I can only remember one other company making Beta machines (there must have been more), all the other companies were making VHS machines & selling then a lot cheaper. It was the same with Minidisc, a great audio recording format, but Sony priced it too high for it to catch on.
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My wife and I were early adopters back in '78 and threw our lot in with VHS--remember $1k recorders that weighed almost 30+ pounds and tapes that were considered a deal at $20.00?
Over many years, especially when stereo audio came into play, I realized that Beta had the edge.
The difference in picture quality between the higher Beta speed and the slower speed was not as great a sacrifice as VHS SP to LP and EP. Also Beta never suffered the compatibility problem from brand to brand with tracking both picture and Hi-Fi stereo sound--VHS Hi-Fi suffered "switching noise" or crackling noise when a tape recorded on one brand was played back on another, especially at EP speed. One could get a good picture but suffered the noise problem, or you had good sound but got tracking bars through the picture with VHS. I ultimately chose to record everything at SP and was soon overrun with tapes.
Nevertheless, we stuck with VHS (later graduating to Super VHS) because we had built up a large catalogue on the format. Of course, now that we have migrated to DVD-R we are trying to find out the best way to ecologically recycle all these damn VHS tapes.
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