Sony C7 Betamax Advert with John Cleese (1981-1982)

Advert for the Sony C7 Betamax video recorder, the very machine that made many of the recordings on this channel. The advert features John Cleese with an ending line of "Who's a clever little Sony then" 4:3 SD from Betamax. ITV

[@BritishComedyUK69]

gotta love john cleese

[@muhammadbahalwan348]

Video Sony yang ini, saya juga memiliki type sl- c7. Milik saya ada 2 unit. Sampai sekarang saya masih memakai untuk menonton siaran TV. Hasilnya juga bagus.

[@TheBudgie29]

I had two of these for recording the whole of Live Aid, from a mate who worked for the Council, repairing all the TV's and Video Machines. When I was done, He let me keep one, and wrote It off as UN-repairable. I had It for years, then the heads went on It. Could not get Replacements for love nor Money. Had to throw It In the Bin In the end. Really miss that player. Had to go over to Inferior VHS.

[@djbenavit]

Wow….I remember my parents having that model in the 80’s

[@Cool2BCeltic]

These commercials always made me laugh. Nowadays what's being advertised looks incredibly obsolete but the ads are still funny.

[@veeraraj2886]

Thank you for uploading this.

[@ThingsOffTape]

You're welcome.

[@The70s80scollection]

I bought a C7 early 81 and it cost around £750, the picture quality of the C7 compared to VHS machines of the time was simply staggering, however movie rental picture quality and quantity selection was poor, the machine finally packed in 87/88, replaced with C& with an Hitachi VHS HiFi stereo machine, the C7 in its day was still a far superior machine

[@purefoldnz3070]

it was porn that won the video wars.

[@The70s80scollection]

@@purefoldnz3070 so it would appear....🤣

[@airzulu2733]

You needed a bloody forklift just to lift it on to the cabinate. My how technology has changed in such a short time .

[@ThingsOffTape]

It was a heavy machine 15.5kgs.

[@martinwalsh3228]

In or around (1981-1982) was the year.

[@ThingsOffTape]

Thank you Martin

[@dw5749]

Got it 🙂
Cleaver little Johnny 👍

[@purefoldnz3070]

0:25 that would be a Flarhgunnstow later perfect by Tayne.

[@xerox8080]

"who's a clever LITTLE Sony then". It's a Sony alright and perhaps a bit clever, but it wasn't little by any means. My father had one in the eighties and I remember it as a huge and heavy piece of machinery with a whole lot of a small and fiddly buttons and dials...

[@ThingsOffTape]

Hi Xerox 80, yes it was heavy 15.5 Kgs, great machine at the time, although setting the timer on any VCR back then was a challenge.

[@xerox8080]

@@ThingsOffTape Yes I know. Luckily my father was an engineer because you needed an engineers degree to know how to program that thing... Lol

[@ThingsOffTape]

@@xerox8080 😂😂😂

[@Trigger_000]

*This will never catch on. DVD recorders and Sky boxes are much easier and convenient.*

[@2j4ez]

How would you record a movie with only a 1hr tape?? no wonder it failed

[@ThingsOffTape]

Hello there, an L750 tape lasted 3 hours 15 minutes, they even had an L830 that ran for 3 hours 36 mins.

[@2j4ez]

@@ThingsOffTape i remember a member of family was told by her friend dont buy VHS it will loose the format war. went in to the local comet and asked about video recorders the sales person said here is your beta choices and here is your vhs choices there was loads more vhs players so we got a ferguson video star video recorder

[@ThingsOffTape]

@@2j4ez At the time the Betamax picture quality was a little better than VHS, smaller cassettes. But it didn't take long for VHS to catch up with many more companies producing the machines, improved picture quality, they even doubled the recording length of a three hour tape to six hours.

[@musmodtos]

@@ThingsOffTape Very true, I'm researching the format war in granular detail to make a video on here and that's right. In PAL especially the Betamax picture quality wasn't really distinguishable - although Betamax machines were on balance generally less variable in quality than the VHS machines, the VHS machines being built for any price-point so there were some pretty nasty VHS machines around, even at the start of the format war. Even the cheapest Betamax machines (like the Sanyo VTC-5000) were still quite pricy and built out of good quality components.
Betamax thoroughly deserved to lose when you really do a deep-dive on this, it was an inferior system in just about every regard from day 1 (yes, I did say that) and even in 1975 pre-launch, most pundits predicted it was an inferior system on balance and would eventually fail.
I have no axe to grind (I have many of all formats) but it's not quite a good a format as some electronics historians like to retell it.

[@DarklineEntertainment]

@@musmodtos Hi Andy, you say that Betamax was an inferior machine right from the start, just interested why you say that and what specifically made it inferior. At the time if you made two identical recordings, one on VHS and one on Beta and then played them back the Beta without doubt looked much better. I was always of the understanding that the reason Beta failed was that Sony would not allow other manufactures to make machines, but JVC did, so there were many more machines available at varying prices for the public. Best - John