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!
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 😅
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
UA-cam 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
"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....
@Andrew_koala 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 .
dunno, it's in the attic somewhere, I also have an original Atari (woody) VCS games console with about 12 games and such, they go for about 40quid maybe, I have a BBC master computer, and an Atari 800 with some carts, like pilot and I think basic, I wouldn't get rid of them, because their not worth much but they also represent some of my history, from when I was a kid.
@@BHALT0S Having an Atari VCS in your country I'm guessing isn't a common thing. England was all about the microcomputers especially the Spectrum. I'd love to import a Spectrum 128 +2, BBC, and Dragon 32. I collect old consoles and computers and have most from the 1970s to 1990s - Atari VCS, Intellivison, Colecovision, Megadrive (Genesis), NES Vectrex, Atari 400, 800, XEGS, Vic-20, C64, Aquarius, TI-99, Tandy Color Computer etc. I bought a beautiful Amiga 1200 setup with monitor and extras at a Yard Sale (boot sale) for $120 usd. a few years back. They were much more common and better supported in Europe than here. Finding a setup like mine at a yard sale in America is as common as seeing a Unicorn fight a Dragon in your back yard :-). Your gaming history is much more rich and interesting than ours (all those Damn defective blinking NES consoles) which is why I've learned all about it.
@@BHALT0S By the way, our first games console with interchangeable cartridges over here came before the Atari. The Atari VCS was actually the 3rd that came to market. The Fairchild Channel F came out in 1976 and it turns out the video game cartridge was invented by a black man named Jerry Lawson (We use the term 'African American'). He gets too little credit IMO. I have a channel F, but for me it's more of a collectable than a game console. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Channel_F
I once briefly owned a speccy 48k (the one with the rubber keys I think it was) I have been very lucky in being able to either have a good loan of a gaming console or own various ones over the years, I even used to use Prestel (an early precurser of the internet) to message my friend who lived next door lolol, I still have my ps2, again it's collecting dust in the attic, I used to own a second hand snes and even played it once on a casio TV430.... go look at how small that screen is... I was an ex-foster kid at the time (17years old) and the woman who owned the place used to turn our electric off at night, so myself and my room mate couldnt play the damn thing, so I got a couple of big rechargarable torch batt's(big square things) and used them to power the snes and then of course the wee casio 430 had it's own batts. for power, and we played loads of games on it... im surprised I dont need glasses (im 43 now)... I am Scottish btw lol.
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.
Much better...but like HD-DVD vs. BluRay, the manufacturers went (in both 'wars') with storage time over quality; the irony being that most Blu-Ray discs put out by studios today don't even have special features to use up even half of their storage capacities. HD-DVD is almost as good as 4K (try Googling HD-DVD vs. 4K...you'll find nothing), and could've alleviated the need for another format change to 4K entirely, but us consumers love buying the newest piece of expensive hardware. Since our vision clarity as humans maxes out before 4K, it'll be interesting to see what format they'll come up with next so that we can re-buy everything again.
Nothing beats 4K, sound and picture. I love my 2018 50" Samsung, and my Samsung 4K blue ray player, and my Toshiba DVD/VHS recorder! Upconverts to Hi-Def, HDMI connector to TV!
Beta was too expensive, and no one had tapes. PLUS, the tape always stayed in contact with the HEAD, degrading and abrading the tapes with repeated viewings. PLUS, no recording time, and the cassette shell was not designed well. No way to see how much tape on one side.
No, it did not. There was no technical reason for Beta to have a better picture. Sony's licensing, however, required tighter tolerances and higher-quality components in Beta machines. NTSC resolution is 720x486, and that's that.
@@Beamshipcaptain The point about tape threading is right, but you left out WHEN the tape stayed in contact with the head: during rewinding and fast-forwarding, which is a terrible design.
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 UA-cam.
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.
6:57 - "A VHS cassette is still a somewhat common sight..." Too true...at least in my area (Fallon, NV). My local Walgreens and Walmart still have VHS cassettes for sale on their shelves. Of course, considering the amount of dust on them (at least at Walgreens), they've been there for quite a while. lol
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.
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.
There is actually a way to trick the VCT-400x (same as the one you are showing but w/o the SLP mode) into fast-forwarding tape w/o unwrapping around the playback heads, same for the 'black on pause' issue). The FF trick was not good for the heads or tape (heat caused by friction), required many hardware hacks, AND was limited to only (from memory, been too long ago) about 15th the normal FF speed. The 'display on pause' trick was to simply clip-out the tape motion sensor. The pause button did not actually black out the screen, there was a separate circuit that turned off video output when no tape motion was detected. keep up the great work!
10:06 You have to remember that it was named by Japanese people with a tenuous grasp of English. Often, when Japanese people come up with their own English phrases, they either sound awkward or are grammatically incorrect, like "Shine Get!" from the Japanese version of Super Mario Sunshine. Even the now ubiquitous "1-up" is actually this kind of garbled English.
@@Brenryz 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.
This channel has filled my head with so much utterly pointless knowledge and I love it. I don't need to know any of this. While I think delivery has improved over the years, I always enjoy the way you explain things. It's both very thorough and very accessible. Also, loving the Fawlty Towers tape. That made me smile.
I'd argue that the info here isn't useless, as Sony's failings can teach us all a lesson on how not to sell a product. Alec even mentions at the beginning of this video that the format war is often studied in business classes. And I think this video did a great job explaining why that is.
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.
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
Excellent video! Watching it while surrounded by VHS tapes. Hilarious how eventually Sony would give in and manufacture VCRs and tapes. Wonder how they felt going to JVC and asking for a license to sell them? I do like how older VCRs don't thread the tape, it makes loading a tape to FF/RW way quicker. Here in Australia Beta is really hard to come by. Most I've ever found were some recordable tapes!
I remember as a kid going to the video store with my parents to rent a video. There was this tiny section in the back and anytime I went in that direction my parents would tell me to ignore that small selection as it was Beta and no one can use it. I always wondered what it was since the selection was always so small.
See, the video store I went to as a kid had a very different kind of small section in the back that my mother told me not to go to. A VERY different section if you know what I mean (winks and nods suggestively).
I still remember exactly why I didn't buy a Betamax recorder: It couldn't record long enough to capture a complete 2 hour TV movie without manual intervention, and if I have to babysit it, what is the point of setting it up to record a movie so I can fast forward through the commercials. NTSC was dreadful quality anyway, so who needed the additional quality recording.
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 .
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
This is my new favourite UA-cam 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!
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 .
@@derekheeps1244 🤓
V2000 was the sigma format
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
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.
Great video, I was always curious about the differences between VHS and Betamax.
Looking forward to part 2!
@Andrew_koala I hate to say it, but you're sort of mansplaining here.
"Gimme the Tape!" On a serious note, this was well researched and presented. Thank you for creating this.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
Mark, where was Betaville located?
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 😅
Snake from The Simpsons (Itchy & Scrathy the Movie): "Oh, no! Beta!"
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!
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 haven't heard your sarcasm on this level before. clicked like before the 1st 5 mins were over
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
13:53 instead of saying "things start to get interesting" I thought you might say "things start to get even beta"
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.
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.
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 UA-cam videos nowadays
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.
@15:29 that ad is terrifying. Looks like a promo piece cut from Kilroy Was Here.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
UA-cam 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
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
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.
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.
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 AM SO LOOKING FORWARD TO PART TWO!!!
thanks now i remember the long process of trying to tune
tv channels on a vhs machine
that "neat trick" is useful for skipping ads, though.
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.
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 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
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.
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!
15:06 My mother told me the BetaScan-like fast forwarding or rewinding of VHS tapes (without pressing Stop first) was bad for the tape. Was that true?
This is so well presented. I find it quite therapeutic. Oh yeah, most interesting too!
GIMMEATAPE! WHAM!
Holy crap, my sides!
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!
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 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.
"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....
Notice something, both of these units are still fully functional. Todays electronics won't last 10 years.
@Andrew_koala 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 .
@@WyreForestBiker Yeah, VHS was certainly a tech that I was happy to see be replaced.
I still have my sony betamax 4 head reader tape machine, in many ways it was superior to the VHS machines.
That's probably worth a bit of money. I doubt many 4-head models were made before Sony surrendered.
dunno, it's in the attic somewhere, I also have an original Atari (woody) VCS games console with about 12 games and such, they go for about 40quid maybe, I have a BBC master computer, and an Atari 800 with some carts, like pilot and I think basic, I wouldn't get rid of them, because their not worth much but they also represent some of my history, from when I was a kid.
@@BHALT0S Having an Atari VCS in your country I'm guessing isn't a common thing. England was all about the microcomputers especially the Spectrum. I'd love to import a Spectrum 128 +2, BBC, and Dragon 32. I collect old consoles and computers and have most from the 1970s to 1990s - Atari VCS, Intellivison, Colecovision, Megadrive (Genesis), NES Vectrex, Atari 400, 800, XEGS, Vic-20, C64, Aquarius, TI-99, Tandy Color Computer etc. I bought a beautiful Amiga 1200 setup with monitor and extras at a Yard Sale (boot sale) for $120 usd. a few years back. They were much more common and better supported in Europe than here. Finding a setup like mine at a yard sale in America is as common as seeing a Unicorn fight a Dragon in your back yard :-). Your gaming history is much more rich and interesting than ours (all those Damn defective blinking NES consoles) which is why I've learned all about it.
@@BHALT0S By the way, our first games console with interchangeable cartridges over here came before the Atari. The Atari VCS was actually the 3rd that came to market. The Fairchild Channel F came out in 1976 and it turns out the video game cartridge was invented by a black man named Jerry Lawson (We use the term 'African American'). He gets too little credit IMO. I have a channel F, but for me it's more of a collectable than a game console. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Channel_F
I once briefly owned a speccy 48k (the one with the rubber keys I think it was) I have been very lucky in being able to either have a good loan of a gaming console or own various ones over the years, I even used to use Prestel (an early precurser of the internet) to message my friend who lived next door lolol, I still have my ps2, again it's collecting dust in the attic, I used to own a second hand snes and even played it once on a casio TV430.... go look at how small that screen is... I was an ex-foster kid at the time (17years old) and the woman who owned the place used to turn our electric off at night, so myself and my room mate couldnt play the damn thing, so I got a couple of big rechargarable torch batt's(big square things) and used them to power the snes and then of course the wee casio 430 had it's own batts. for power, and we played loads of games on it... im surprised I dont need glasses (im 43 now)... I am Scottish btw lol.
I think this playlist is the first T.C. I ever watched, ages ago. Got me into this channel.
That 70's Show, Red Forman: "We have a Betamax, we're better than normal people."
The Simpsons, Snake: "Oh no! Beta"
I enjoy your dry sense of humor.
I remember all the hype, my aunt, in the late '70's, was so proud of their new Betamax. hahaha
"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.
we need sony machine ASMR. All those clicky clacks are delightful
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?
ua-cam.com/video/lSA-1tZZTPM/v-deo.html
I fapped to that once or twice
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
BetaMax had the better quality picture (vs. VHS).
Much better...but like HD-DVD vs. BluRay, the manufacturers went (in both 'wars') with storage time over quality; the irony being that most Blu-Ray discs put out by studios today don't even have special features to use up even half of their storage capacities. HD-DVD is almost as good as 4K (try Googling HD-DVD vs. 4K...you'll find nothing), and could've alleviated the need for another format change to 4K entirely, but us consumers love buying the newest piece of expensive hardware. Since our vision clarity as humans maxes out before 4K, it'll be interesting to see what format they'll come up with next so that we can re-buy everything again.
Nothing beats 4K, sound and picture. I love my 2018 50" Samsung, and my Samsung 4K blue ray player, and my Toshiba DVD/VHS recorder! Upconverts to Hi-Def, HDMI connector to TV!
Beta was too expensive, and no one had tapes. PLUS, the tape always stayed in contact with the HEAD, degrading and abrading the tapes with repeated viewings. PLUS, no recording time, and the cassette shell was not designed well. No way to see how much tape on one side.
No, it did not. There was no technical reason for Beta to have a better picture. Sony's licensing, however, required tighter tolerances and higher-quality components in Beta machines. NTSC resolution is 720x486, and that's that.
@@Beamshipcaptain The point about tape threading is right, but you left out WHEN the tape stayed in contact with the head: during rewinding and fast-forwarding, which is a terrible design.
You’re my hero for knowing all of this. Seriously… I love you.
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.
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!!!!!
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 UA-cam.
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.
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!)
I love how thorough you are. Thanks!
6:57 - "A VHS cassette is still a somewhat common sight..." Too true...at least in my area (Fallon, NV). My local Walgreens and Walmart still have VHS cassettes for sale on their shelves. Of course, considering the amount of dust on them (at least at Walgreens), they've been there for quite a while. lol
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.
Once they introduced copy protection, you would have to play a VHS through a Beta and record onto another VHS to copy tapes.
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.
I gave a thumbs up, because you asked humbly. And also a comment, which in these days seems to be worth even more.
There is actually a way to trick the VCT-400x (same as the one you are showing but w/o the SLP mode) into fast-forwarding tape w/o unwrapping around the playback heads, same for the 'black on pause' issue). The FF trick was not good for the heads or tape (heat caused by friction), required many hardware hacks, AND was limited to only (from memory, been too long ago) about 15th the normal FF speed. The 'display on pause' trick was to simply clip-out the tape motion sensor. The pause button did not actually black out the screen, there was a separate circuit that turned off video output when no tape motion was detected. keep up the great work!
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. 😁
10:06 You have to remember that it was named by Japanese people with a tenuous grasp of English. Often, when Japanese people come up with their own English phrases, they either sound awkward or are grammatically incorrect, like "Shine Get!" from the Japanese version of Super Mario Sunshine. Even the now ubiquitous "1-up" is actually this kind of garbled English.
Or "All Your Base Are Belong To US"
I still remember the uproar when Nintendo announced that their console codenamed “Revolution” would be named the Wii.
What's wrong with video home system? Do you read it as "video-home system"? I read it as "video home-system". (I'm not a native English speaker)
@@cube2fox A native English speaker would say "home video system."
@@therealhardrock So what's wrong with the expression?
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.
@@Brenryz 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.
Great vid. I grew up with the old VCR but had no idea they were a thousand bucks when they started.
This channel has filled my head with so much utterly pointless knowledge and I love it. I don't need to know any of this.
While I think delivery has improved over the years, I always enjoy the way you explain things. It's both very thorough and very accessible.
Also, loving the Fawlty Towers tape. That made me smile.
I'd argue that the info here isn't useless, as Sony's failings can teach us all a lesson on how not to sell a product. Alec even mentions at the beginning of this video that the format war is often studied in business classes. And I think this video did a great job explaining why that is.
This is the kind of content I can agree with. Hope to see you someday get a big rush of new subs, your content is fantastic.
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.
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
Excellent video! Watching it while surrounded by VHS tapes. Hilarious how eventually Sony would give in and manufacture VCRs and tapes. Wonder how they felt going to JVC and asking for a license to sell them?
I do like how older VCRs don't thread the tape, it makes loading a tape to FF/RW way quicker. Here in Australia Beta is really hard to come by. Most I've ever found were some recordable tapes!
I just discovered your channel and I am loving it!
how do you not have more subscribers I love your videos
I don't think I really appreciated how big those two machines were until 15:55. O.O
I remember as a kid going to the video store with my parents to rent a video. There was this tiny section in the back and anytime I went in that direction my parents would tell me to ignore that small selection as it was Beta and no one can use it. I always wondered what it was since the selection was always so small.
See, the video store I went to as a kid had a very different kind of small section in the back that my mother told me not to go to. A VERY different section if you know what I mean (winks and nods suggestively).
If it was in a little nook with a curtain over the entry, it was porn. If open but small might well have been beta...…..
@@wherewolfprime Never saw anyone renting porn, but those little booths were in most of the video shops.
@@Catubrannos
Would you risk your own dignity renting out pornos in the middle of a day?
@@TooCooFoYou I don't think I was ever in a video store in the middle of the day, even in the weekend.
was curious about beta vs vhs and immediately knew you'd have a video on the subject.
I still remember exactly why I didn't buy a Betamax recorder: It couldn't record long enough to capture a complete 2 hour TV movie without manual intervention, and if I have to babysit it, what is the point of setting it up to record a movie so I can fast forward through the commercials. NTSC was dreadful quality anyway, so who needed the additional quality recording.