Forum Archive Home -> Media -> VHS vs Beta
VHS vs Beta | ||||||
| robjv1 posted 2009 Oct 09 16:39 | ||||||
| Another topic about DVD sales veered slightly into the discussion of this famous (and now esoteric) format war. I often hear the argument made that "Beta was better quality; VHS had market share" and since I missed the original context of this debate (I was but a wee tot at the time) I'd like to know more specifically in what ways Beta was "better" then VHS in terms of measurable improvements and also in terms of perceivable improvements (for those that have actually compared them head to head).
Would we able to perceive the difference between the two even moreso today on today's television sets that tend to a) be very large b) amplify the problems with SD video signals? How about audio quality? Also was there anything unique in the PAL machines vs NTSC machines? I hate to base assumptions on Wikipedia but here is how I understand the debate based on what I have to go by (NTSC) -- 1975 Beta enters market - 250 lines vs 240 VHS, lower video noise, less luma/chroma crosstalk -- Advantage: Beta Beta releases 2hr mode tape to compete with VHS SP -- lowers resolution to 240 lines to do so -- Advantage: all even VHS comes out with VHS HQ - puts resolution at 250 lines -- Advantage: VHS (better resolution, longer tape) SuperBeta (High Band Beta) comes out in 1985 -- 290 lines resolution -- Advantage: Beta... but it's too late as market share had dropped down to 10% and it's all over. Also were SuperBeta tapes the same as regular Beta tapes in terms of compatibility with the older decks? Or was it similar to the difference between VHS and SVHS? | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 09 17:09 | ||||||
| Are you interested only in technical issues? In todays terms Betamax and VHS were very similar. Both were color under Y/C formats that low pass filtered luma around 3MHz (~240 lines of horizontal resolution). S-VHS went out to 5MHz (~400 lines).
We had a discussion on this back in 2007. http://forum.videohelp.com/topic320504.html This article summarized the consumer and business reasons why Betamax failed. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2003/jan/25/comment.comment Some format details http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax http://www.palsite.com/format.html http://www.geocities.com/columbiaisa/camcord_formats_beta.htm | ||||||
| robjv1 posted 2009 Oct 09 17:32 | ||||||
| Great! I was wondering if there was a previous discussion on this (seems bound to happen) but I couldn't locate any based on my search criteria.
I guess my question is most directed at technical issues, but I was also very interested in SEEING the differences between the two. I tried to look for some video clips on the internet to see if there were any noticeable and perceivable differences between the two of them (not just technical) as many people swear up and down then Beta was so much better in terms of image quality, but I suspect this is more swayed by marketing and it's "underdog" status more then anything since the technical differences seem to be negligible. Anyhow, nothing turned up as far as video clips (and god only knows how they would be encoded, etc.) so short of gathering players and tapes together myself, I would settle for some commentary from those that used both formats and have ran them up against each other. Hopefully I will find some of that in the previous discussions. Thanks again! | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 09 17:50 | ||||||
You would need to view an actual model in playback. The differences would be very small. To show any difference, the two machines would need to be in SP mode. Beta lost out because most people wanted longer record time in BetaII or EP mode with quality being of less importance vs. tape cost. S-VHS was much higher for picture quality than Betamax but didn't sell well. Sony's answer was Hi8. | ||||||
| robjv1 posted 2009 Oct 09 17:53 | ||||||
| Yeah, I figured. I guess I'm not curious enough to go searching for beta decks and tapes on eBay, but my guess was that the differences in quality would be pretty negligible. The only thing that led me to wonder otherwise was because of the common argument of "Beta picture was way better then VHS!" that gets passed around from time to time. | ||||||
| robjv1 posted 2009 Oct 09 17:56 | ||||||
| One question though --
So pre-recorded Beta movies came on just one tape I am assuming... how did they fit a two hour movie on the tapes or was it only the blank tapes that were hampered initially by the less then 2 hrs recording time? | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 09 17:57 | ||||||
It was similar to the SACD vs CD audio issues today. Some swear by SACD while most others have converted their CDs to lower quality mp3. | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 09 18:07 | ||||||
They either recorded at lower speeds, used thinner tape or used multiple tapes. | ||||||
| wulf109 posted 2009 Oct 09 18:10 | ||||||
| I was a betafile,owned 14 decks at one point. Beta's picture looked better than VHS primarily because beta used a larger diameter head drum which resulted in a higher writing speed. Remember that beta II was the 2 hour speed competing against VHS SP and still looked better. With superbeta Sony made yet another another mistake in not moving to a higher quality tape to support higher resolution. SuperVHS used a special high quality tape and finally beat beta in apparent resolution. I then moved to SuperVHS,but both formats are now dead. | ||||||
| robjv1 posted 2009 Oct 09 18:12 | ||||||
| That's actually really interesting -- I will assume that the bigger releases came out on a single tape that used thinner tape. I can't imagine "ET" coming out on two tapes on beta versus one tape for VHS and fairing very well.
It seems that with VHS, big-movies always came out on longer tapes. Really long movies would get the two-tape treatment, but mostly anything 3 hrs or less was on a T-180 tape (which I can only assume that commercial T-180 tapes were of higher quality then the T-180 consumer blanks). | ||||||
| robjv1 posted 2009 Oct 09 18:14 | ||||||
| wulf109 -- you don't by chance have any video clips of the same VHS/Beta tape for comparison do you? I know it wouldn't be an exactly true comparison due to the intermediate steps (likely compression and encoding into another format. etc) but it might give me a rough idea of the difference for curiosities sake. | ||||||
| wulf109 posted 2009 Oct 09 18:28 | ||||||
| Beta was introduced as a 1 hour format,VHS was introduced as a 2 hour format. Anyone with gray matter between their ears knew the natural use for a VCR was recording movies,all 90-120 minutes. Most people would agree that recording length is what killed beta. I can remember re-spooling T180's into my beta cassette shells to increase recording length on my beta's. When beta blanks became scarce I used to re-spool VHS into beta shells all the time.
There was a fateful meeting that Sony held with the other Japanese electronic manufacturers to introduce their new product just before beta's release and arrogantly asked them to join them. They didn't because JVC-Panasonic were already developing VHS. | ||||||
| orsetto posted 2009 Oct 09 18:30 | ||||||
| The differences were not significant enough for average consumers to care, especially not 30 years ago when half the country thought reception using a coat hanger stuck on the back of the TV was high tech. The biggest strike against Beta was Sonys refusal to license it quickly when RCA and other then-huge American brands were hot for it. Panasonic stepped right up and whored VHS into the ground with no qualms, rapidly building market share using RCAs modification demand for a lousy but cheap LP (four hour) speed. We see this situation play itself out over and over: a company invents a dramatic, culture-changing device, thinks because they invented it they'll make a fortune keeping it proprietary, then get knocked off by competitors within a couple years and end up a footnote in the history of their own invention. Greed is a double-edged sword and will cut you when you least expect. The most staggering example of this was in 1985, when Bill Gates was absolutely certain the Apple Macintosh was a sure thing to take over the personal computing paradigm. He went to Steve Jobs and the Apple board with a detailed, concrete business plan advising them how to leverage the Mac OS by following the DOS marketing scheme and strangle IBM in its crib. Apple laughed, thinking people would tolerate $8,000 computers forever. Gates took his plan back to Redmond and used it to build the Windows empire. Oops.
Back when the machines were new, assuming both were working properly (never a guarantee with the trouble-prone Beta mechanics), at the two hour speed Beta edged out VHS for color purity. contrast, saturation, noise and sharpness. It was noticeably better to anyone who was particular, despite the fact the Beta two-hour speed was actually slower than the VHS. It was painfully obvious how much better Beta was if you were a collector who needed to make copies of other tapes: VHS was atrociously poor second generation, Beta was quite watchable. Standard VHS never caught up with Beta, no matter how many circuit add-ons JVC threw at it (there were at least three versions of "VHS HQ" alone, two of which were totally ineffective). Beta HiFi was far less static-y and much less prone to audio mistracking issues. But none of this mattered to nine out of ten VCR users, 90% of whom were guys in their 30s looking for porn. Hollywood and adult tapes were easier to get on VHS: the VHS machine population was doubling every six months, and stores catering to VHS popped up on every street corner while Beta stagnated. Sony quickly fell behind on price point, there was a near two-year period when Sony had absolutely nothing to offer the discount shopper while Panasonic , RCA and Magnavox were slashing prices. I started with VHS, hated it, switched to Beta for a few years, then went back to VHS for several reasons (mostly because the Toshiba and NEC alternatives to Sony left the BetaMax market, and Sonys machines cost more in upkeep than my car with their constant breakdowns.) Once VHS matched the BetaHiFi audio feature, most of us holdouts grudgingly embraced VHS as inevitable and abandoned Beta, leaving it a niche market for obsessives. A mediocre recorder thats reliable and a world standard beats a superior but undependable format that no one else you know owns. | ||||||
| wulf109 posted 2009 Oct 09 18:31 | ||||||
| Sorry I don't have any beta decks or tapes anymore,sold everything. My superVHS is stored and no longer used. | ||||||
| wulf109 posted 2009 Oct 09 18:34 | ||||||
| One advantage beta did have was in ignoring macrovision copy protection. Because of the way beta's gain control worked macrovision did not work and a beta copy of a macrovision encoded tape would play normally. | ||||||
| robjv1 posted 2009 Oct 09 19:38 | ||||||
| "and strangle IBM in it's crib" I love that line :p
Interesting! That's a very interesting point about multigenerational tapes that I would not have even thought to ask. I'm particularly interested in how it differed in terms of saturation from VHS? | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 09 20:28 | ||||||
This is so much ancient history now. There are a few Betamax clubs/forums still around if you search. There are also video museums. Ampex had a good one but it moved and I lost track of it. More interesting than Betamax were all the early semi-pro and pro tape formats. Betamax is just a scaled down U-Matic. May I ask why you are interested in Betamax? | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2009 Oct 09 20:58 | ||||||
| My family first bought a Sony Beta. The video rental store near us carried both Beta and VHS. It was or at least seemed to be fairly equal there for a while.
Then I noticed that they would get 2 or 3 of a movie on VHS and 1 in Beta. Then the people with VHS would complain (how come the Beta version is here but not the VHS). People with VHS would rent Beta by accident and get pissed off LOL The nail in the coffin for me was when department type stores like WALMART (well back then there were no WALMARTS in my area but THAT kind of store is what I mean) started to sell VHS movies for $19.99 but not Beta. That was the final straw. I begged and cried and made my family buy a 4 Head Hi-Fi Stereo VHS VCR (our Beta was mono). I remember it was a Panasonic that sold for $599.99 and if I remember correctly it was "cheap" in that most other brands were $699.99 at the time. We knew the people that owned the local video rental store (that also sold hardware) and paid cash and they gave us a deal and sold it to us for $500 ... this was in 1986 if I recall correctly. Maybe 1987. As for the difference ... I remember back around 1992 my Uncle gave me his old Beta which was a Sony that was Hi-Fi and had the SuperBeta tech. I made some recordings on it from my T2 LaserDisc which I also recorded to my Panasonic VHS. I think I used BII and SP respectively. The big thing that I noticed was that the Sony Beta had colors that looked "dead on" to the LD whereas the VHS copy had slightly different looking color. Maybe it was just the Panasonic (which was getting old and heavily used by then). - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 09 21:25 | ||||||
| Color saturation and hue are internally adjustable. The main differences to look at are luminance and chroma noise or other artifacts. Both used color under recording.
Broadcast recorders of the day used direct recording (e.g. Type B and Type C 1 inch helical) After Betamax was phased out, the Betamax transport geometry was further developed into Betacam for broadcast ENG. The Betacam signal format was analog component Y, B-Y, R-Y. The required increase in tape speed meant a full tape recorded 20 minutes instead of 1 hour or more. Even that produced marginal video quality by today's camcorder standards. Analog Betacam was further developed into Betacam SP and later into Digital Betacam. | ||||||
| robjv1 posted 2009 Oct 09 21:33 | ||||||
| Yeah, I was wondering that regarding saturation as well.
Anyhow my interest wasn't motivated by any particular quest, my curiosity is purely academic; it just crossed my mind as something I'd never seen quite fleshed out and I count on you guys for the little details that are hard to find otherwise! Thanks for the insights. | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 09 21:42 | ||||||
| I added more above. DV format (1998) was the huge advance for home recording. It put home and lower professional broadcast on the same standard. Then came DVD MPeg2 (longer recording) and later high definition. | ||||||
| mazinz posted 2009 Oct 09 21:44 | ||||||
That was only true up to a point. A friend of mine had a beta deck made in the mid to late 80's. Some of the "later" decks did have macrovision implemented into them. I recall he could not copy one certain film (name eludes me now) because it was copy protected (not sure what betamax brand it was), but my beta deck (being from 1985 and still here with me now) copied it without a problem | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 09 22:16 | ||||||
| Unfortunately, the excellent Ampex Museum of Recording Technology is no more. They donated the collection to Stanford University for research use. They had examples of most recorders including those from Sony, RCA, IVC, Bosch and other companies.
http://www.aes.org/aeshc/museums/apx.stanford/ampex_museum_status ... 10-01.html Reminds me of the last scene in Indiana Jones. All the good stuff boxed in a dusty warehouse. | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 09 22:37 | ||||||
| Some interesting Betamax-VHS history
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/notes.html#beta | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 10 01:14 | ||||||
Thesis research? Why does one product succeed while another technically superior product fails in the same market place? Glad to hear the battle is still being hashed. I have studied it myself. Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it. | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 10 02:44 | ||||||
| Sony did much better with the Video8/Hi8 camcorder formats. | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 10 03:24 | ||||||
They did. The earlier Walkman was another big success for Sony, it's executives and shareholders. Sony was at the train station when their boat came in on MP3: In 1996 Sony had already designed, and was prepared to market an MP3 music player. It was far superior to anything on the market and would have been an IPod contraceptive...the IPod would never have been conceived or born. But Sony had been on a buying spree. They bought major US movie and music companies. The executives at the music companies complained to the President of Sony Corporation in Japan that the new MP3 player was nothing more than a device designed to steal copyrighted music material and that consumers where now so used to the extremely high quality of CD music that they would never accept compressed MP3 music and its inferior quality. The President of Sony Corp agreed. Several fired Presidents later, Sony is still in the downward spiral that started in the mid 90's. When Sony started buying Hollywood movie and music companies they learned : You can fire the entire executive management team (Japan or US) and nothing changes when the movie or music executives are involved. They do not understand the industry or the consumer. They understand their bonus and how to achieve it. Period. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Oct 10 07:53 | ||||||
Of course, that describes the execs at most companies these days. | ||||||
| lordsmurf posted 2009 Oct 10 11:08 | ||||||
Not only is the "90% looking for porn" statistic fake... ... but porn had nothing to do with the win or loss of the format. That's a revisionist myth. It's more false than "Beta was better than VHS". | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 10 13:48 | ||||||
I would like to see some data supporting that 90% of all people renting or buying video cassettes in the 1980's were guys in their 30's looking for porn. The adult industry has always been the early adopter of technology to distribute its product: be it postcards, 8mm film, video cassettes, DVD or the internet. I don't think they care about the format, just as long as it gets the product out there. The Hollywood movie and music people could learn a thing or two from them. I think the problem is that it is a 20 billion US dollar a year industry that no one buys, or admits that they buy. A murky business at best. Beta was better than VHS. 9 out of 10 guys in their 30's out looking for porn say so...it must be true. :) | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 10 14:43 | ||||||
| Betamax's minor performance advantages were swamped by other factors. Their consumer use assumptions were that customers would record and edit their own families or short TV segments one hour max. This was before affordable home camcorders existed. They crippled themselves when they sized the plastic cassette. JVC sized the VHS cassette with time shift in mind and had the 4 hour LP mode from day one soon followed by 6 hour EP mode. Betamax was always chasing record times. Sony also failed at developing partners and distribution. They were just too arrogant. All in all Sony bungled Betamax.
For Video8 Sony had 2 hour record time and camcorders from day one. The small cassette allowed for smaller camcorders. This time JVC was caught sleeping and had no VHS solution. The VHS-C cassette was a clunky answer to the more elegant and better performing Video8 and Hi8. The reason Sony missed mp3 was their ownership of Colombia Records. They saw digital compression as a threat to CD rather than an alternate distribution. Again they retreated into high end production first with DAT. They ignored the digital Walkman until it was far too late. Laserdisc and DVD were natural extensions of CD that allowed better control of the media assets. Looking back, iPod is the replacement for Walkman that Sony failed to risk. iPod was more about music distribution than technology. | ||||||
| DereX888 posted 2009 Oct 10 15:35 | ||||||
| FWIW, IMHO German VCC format (aka Video 2000) was much better than VHS or Beta alltogether.
We had one in my family when I was a kid, and I didn't knew what people mean by "video ate the tape" until we got first stupid Sony's Beta VCR (and later VHS...) (for me) it was huge step backward both in usability and quality. Maybe I don't remember it now correctly, but I think picture quality of both Beta and VHS were worse than that of VCC. Not to mention my biggest surprise I still *do* remember: that none didn't even rewind tapes at the end like VCC did (those "Please Rewind" stickers on rental tapes were there for a reason, LOL) The first VCR that was finally better than our old Grundig VCC VCR was probably the "Home Theater Series" 4-head stereo hi-fi VHS VCR years later, 1990 or 1991 Philips VCR - because it was stereo, and it finally did auto-rewinding too ;) But I don't think it had any better picture. To me, both Beta and VHS were crap anyways, if there was any difference between these formats it must have somehow escaped my usually sharp eyes ;) I prefered LD for movies. You could clearly see the difference in picture quality between LD and VHS/Beta with your naked eyes. | ||||||
| lordsmurf posted 2009 Oct 10 18:45 | ||||||
| Video8 was better in some ways, but worse in others.
You can still play a misaligned VHS-C somewhat, but you're nearly 100% screwed when you get a misaligned 8mm tape. The 8mm was better in terms of quality, as well as how secure the tape was in the plastic clamshell. | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 10 23:24 | ||||||
You skipped over Sony's breakthrough technology: MiniDisc. It had compression and was sold as "near CD quality". They even made AM/FM/MiniDisc in-dash car stereos because they arrogantly thought it would go mainstream. If digital compression was such a threat in MP3 form, why was it not a threat in MiniDisc? Could it be because they owned it and could control it in a labratory style distribution to the public? Sony's business logic is baffling at best. No wonder their C-Suite changes with the weather. It makes one question if they do not just blindly stumble upon a winner every now and again. After the aquisitions it appeared that the movie and music executives in California are actually controlling the whole company. No wonder they are stuck in the mud. | ||||||
| yoda313 posted 2009 Oct 10 23:50 | ||||||
Didn't minidisc have some kind of protection on it? I seem to remember it having something akin to macrovision for audio. I have a audio cd recorder deck (physical macine that has an optical input as well as analog) and it has a limit on digital copies. I think with minidisc you can copy via analog all you want obviously via left/right anlaog jacks or simple headphone out jacks but pure digital copies via toslink fiber optic cables are limited to one (or one per session or something - not infinite or at least not easy to do). Also sony did that ATRAC3 thing to counteract mp3. However I don't think atrac3 did anything. I think it was probably their response to microsofts WMA windows media audio system where they could embed drm in it. ------------------------------------ Regarding the original threads vhs/beta focus. My family started with Beta. In fact when I was four I could operate the "tank" without a problem. It was a Sanyo model if I remember correctly. I don't remember much about picture quality and we had gotten rid of our original model sometime at the end of the 80s or early 90s, no exact date remembered of course. One thing I always remember my dad talking about beta vs vhs was that he liked having just one show on a tape instead of more than one. For him he didn't like accidently recording over something that could happen on a vhs tape. The shorter record times on beta dictated that. So I guess some people did not see that as a factor. I don't remember when we went to vhs only that we did. Regarding LP recording speeds. I have never liked that. LP almost never works properly on a machine other than the one you originally recorded it on (or the same model series). The tracking was just to wacked out on the hybrid mode. Of course sp worked on virtually any player. And even though slp was always "weaker" in terms of visual quality (yes you can tell even on standard def tvs) it played more reliably on different brand machine, I don't know why but the tolerance was better for slp mode than lp for whatever reason. Maybe the 4 hour mode just wasn't "standard" enough. ------------- I have a question of my own - it seems in the three different recording modes - sp, lp, slp, - when you fast forward or rewind the horizontal bands you see on the screen seem to be of different sizes. Is that in correspondence to the different recording lengths used and translates on the screen as the wavy lines you see during rewinding/fastforwarding? Or is that related to something else? Or could I be remembering something else from my last session with a vcr? (which was just the other week for some dubbing by the way) | ||||||
| edDV posted 2009 Oct 10 23:55 | ||||||
Walkman was attributed to Akio Morita himself. I like to think this is true. Late stage Sony is all about control by unique patents. They have been anti-standard unless they controlled it. Blu-Ray is their latest clear victory but it is somewhat hollow and very late. They lost their dominant Betacam broadcast ENG market share to Panasonic's DVC-Pro. They are losing the premium HDTV market to Samsung. They have mostly lost HDV camcorder market share to Canon. The same trend is happening for AVCHD. The PS3 game share is in a fight for survival vs. Nintendo and Microsoft. Today it is not good to be Sony. I'm sorry to see the decline even though they harmed me in the past. | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 11 03:20 | ||||||
I also like to think that Akio did brainchild the Walkman. Why did he not drive what drove him to believe in such things into those who came later? Why? Management is such an important part of business or any other undertaking. Control of unique patents has become the new stage for a technology (or any) company. Look at the break-up of Nortel in Canada. They hold many patents over ethernet and wireless technologies. The company name, its physical properties and resources are worth nothing. The patents it owns are worth millions or billions. It will all be sold to the highest bidder. Another Canadian company, Research In Motion (RIM) (Basillie vs Badman of the NHL) does not hold significant patent rights. They do have significant cash holdings and large continous revenue streams. They will most likely want to aquire firms that hold patent rights over technologies related to wireless and the internet. This trend will continue as the developing nations of the world expand into industrial production centers and join the developed nations as mass consumers. As countries such as China and India join into the global economy they will want to ensure that trade is done in a fair and negotiated fashion...no more street market MS-Windows, at least for the ones making it big...patent rights over the few billion consumer product sales will be a railway tycoon's dream come true. | ||||||
| raffie posted 2009 Oct 11 04:22 | ||||||
| If theres one thing you can learn from AV-history, its that ppl arent interested in what is the best quality. Look at audio cassetes, look at MP3. The VHS/Beta argument, well, I think the difference wasn't big enough to be a factor in any case. I have Video-2000 recorders, and I do have to say I'm surprised that format didnt get appreciated more, because on top of very descent quality, it had 2 sides on a video tape (2x4 hrs), and recording time being an issue in the VHS/Beta format war and all.
Also both technologies kept improving, so it's very hard to make a good comparison. I liked Beta when I was 15 because I could buy 2 of them for no money second hand :) . Those decks have long since died, but I still love Beta and I have a couple of Sony SuperBeta recorders that show very nice results especially with the Pro-X tapes, I'm afraid tho that every piece of analogue video-equipment will have to be retired soon. With analogue tuners becoming obselete, with HiDef video becoming the standard. The Superbeta could still compete up untill now and show better picture than normal VHS machines and even comparable with digital recorders, but compare it with high definition and everything else looks like crap :wink: | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 11 04:40 | ||||||
It has to do with the tape speed and number of playback heads on the drum. In SP mode the tape runs fast, in LP mode the tape runs slow. At a slower speed there is less data per inch of tape passing past the drum, thus in slow motion or fast read, less data is available to display, producing bigger waving lines between the heads on the drum. A 2 head and 4 head machine would also make a big difference. More heads = more data. My Mitsubishi ceramic 4 head displays very clear during fast forward and rewind. Slow motion and pause are almost flawless - except for NTSC dot crawl. That is if the heads are clean...and someone has given me a VHS tape to play...and I have dragged it out and plugged it in...then I have to pull the bottom panel and lube the eject belt because the thing sits so long between plays and the belt is getting old, dry and slips on the drive wheel and I am not paying for a replacement to play 2 tapes a year. Tape...it's what drove me to go digital in the first place. :) C:/Windows/Files/VHS/Make_My_Tape_Play_Now.exe If life were that easy... | ||||||
| MJ Peg posted 2009 Oct 11 05:29 | ||||||
| Minidisc was brilliant for its time, basically something like MP3 quality audio at 256kbps (?) it sounded so close to CD that the remaining difference didn't stop me enjoying the music if I ever noticed - which wasn't often. Sometimes a particularly sudden crescendo of percussion would upset the encoder and it wouldn't record that peak well, but apart from that it was wonderful. It was like being able to record my own CDs, but little tiny ones well protected in robust cases like a floppy disc. The Serial Copy Management stopped you making a digital copy of a copy but I stuck to analogue mode and never encountered all that.
Sony blew it with Minidisc by not pushing it forward as a computer floppy replacement. It could have been the great standard way to fits a 100 floppy's worth of data onto one disc, but they lost out there. Still, that's ancient history now that internet file transfers and USB drives have taken over on that front. | ||||||
| BD_SC posted 2009 Oct 11 06:23 | ||||||
| I can give you some information about why VHS won the format wars. I completed a course in radio and TV servicing in 1988 and though the war was over by then we covered the two systems from a field servicing point of view.
You have to realise that when the two systems came onto the market in the mid 1970's (at least in the UK) they were horrifically expensive, maybe two thousand pounds a go in todays terms. So many people rented them, this puts bulk purchasing of the kit into the hands of rental company service managers. The purchase decision was apparently made on the basis of servicing costs; how much servicing and repair in hours did each system take up. As you know the major item in video tape repair is the rotating video head assembly. In both systems the head assy had to be desoldered, then unbolted, lifted off and the replacement put back, however the VHS heads were pinned into place so that the new head assy was in very close alignment with the original unit. In the Betamax system the heads were not pinned and the newly installed heads had to be set up with an eccentricity gauge. After that both systems would be set up electronically. the setting up on a Betamax machine could take up to an hour longer; it was quite fiddly. In my opinion the extra hour per machine per head change was enough to put off the business customer and when the machines came down in price that went for home buyers as well. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Oct 11 06:41 | ||||||
I bought one when they first came out in the USA. I found it was very poor at recording solo piano. It had terrible breathing (hiss that's louder on the attack and fades with the decay) on each note. Although the hiss at its peak was lower than even a good cassette recording the fact that it wasn't constant made it much more distracting to me., | ||||||
| Bix posted 2009 Oct 11 13:27 | ||||||
| Maybe at their best (at least after BI was removed, I've never seen it myself but heard about how wonderful it was), VHS and Beta weren't that different in terms of picture quality, but at slower speeds, Beta was certainly superior. Generally speaking, the BIII recordings (both off-air and dubbed from commercial releases) that I've seen are far superior to similar VHS SLP/EP recordings and comparable to VHS SP. | ||||||
| DereX888 posted 2009 Oct 11 14:25 | ||||||
Yeah, I feel the same. But Sony is not really in decline generally as a corporation. It just has moved on from being primarily electronics/hardware manufacturer into many other businesses. | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 11 17:48 | ||||||
As at fiscal year end (March 31, 2009) Sony Corporation reported a 1 billion dollar loss for the year. They posted a 390 million dollar loss for the first quarter of this year and the only good news has been that the second quarter was only a 290 million dollar loss. That is still 780 million dollars in loss at the mid-point and Sony is not reporting good news looking forward. Their latest CEO, Howard Stringer, has vowed to rattle the cage within the ranks of Sony. They are reducing the number of manufacturing plants from 57 to 49 and eliminating 8,000 jobs. The scary part is that every business segment is experiencing declines in revenue and profit due to increased competition and a slow adaptation to the new global business order. We know what the movie and music executives will blame the decline on, because it could never be their fault. Maybe they need to do another one of those root-kit backdoors to help instill consumer confidence in their products and business practices. | ||||||
| DereX888 posted 2009 Oct 11 18:44 | ||||||
| @Video Head
There are many companies Sony owns (wholly or partially) reporting gains, not losses. i.e. just from the top of my head IIRC MGM = $500M as of middle of the 2009 (although they have to pay ~$300M in interest for their $3.7B debt or so) SPE = $178M as of September and so on, you just gotta read around... Yeah, another rootkit certainly will help them ;) As much as I avoid anything-Sony, it would be sad day if they would flip over. Bunch of bad CEOs and their anti-customer initiatives and products they enforced on this company in past 10-15 years wouldn't justify loss of one of the best innovators on the market. CEOs can be changed, entire company's strategy can be changed, but once it's gone is gone and that can't be changed...
hahaha, this is great :D | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 11 21:14 | ||||||
The data I gave is what Sony Corporation, Japan reported (in Yen, converted to USD). They are the parent company and I would assume that it includes all sub's and wholly owns, but maybe not. Who knows what is going on inside these companies these days. I too would not like to see Sony go away. I have owned, and still do own, their products. I was even a share holder for a while back in the 90's. But they appear to have lost their way and do not hold the same values and direction that they once had. The one thing I do know about business is that if one entity fails, and end user demand still exists, the void left by the failed will quickly be filled by someone new or an existing competitor. That is part of Sony's problem right now - competition. Their products are not industry leading anymore, their name no longer carries the same weight it once did and now they need to get up in the morning, fight like dogs and hopefully gain a small advantage and then do it all over again the next day. I do not know if they have that fight in them anymore. When the movie and music industry guys came in they brought a huge culture change with them. Those guys are usually too busy yelling at car wash attendants about a finger print left on their CLK to be bothered getting in the furball. This CEO has his work cut out for him... | ||||||
| MJ Peg posted 2009 Oct 12 03:44 | ||||||
| So long as they're too busy putting their IP 'rights' ahead of their consumers, obsessed with DRM because they own so much content as well as trying to produce the means to watch/listen to it while locking down what we perceive to be our rights to fair use, then Sony gets a boycot from me.
That and their misguided efforts to set standards of their own where more open standards would benefit us far more (like MemorySchtick) - they're not getting any of my hard-earned unless they come up with something so compellingly far ahead of anything the competition comes up with. Every sector Sony competes in usually has very healthy competition and I see no need to lock myself into non-standard tech. I find it very easy to dismiss them as irrelevant these days. | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 12 03:54 | ||||||
| [quote="DereX888"]@Video Head
There are many companies Sony owns (wholly or partially) reporting gains, not losses. i.e. just from the top of my head IIRC MGM = $500M as of middle of the 2009 (although they have to pay ~$300M in interest for their $3.7B debt or so) SPE = $178M as of September and so on, you just gotta read around... [quote] I read around...do you believe that MGM would survive Chapter 11? Does not look good for those involved...anyone for a KrispyCream? Sony Corporation has a 20% stake...45% of common...they do not have to report until realised...that's gonna hurt like a 330lb offensive linebacker stepping on your hand...with cleats. | ||||||
| kimco52 posted 2009 Oct 12 06:27 | ||||||
| All I know is my experience. The Beta deck mechanics are more reliable than the VHS decks. I still have all the beta decks I have owned, starting with their "portable" camcorder with the separate tuner, deck, and camera. and 4 more decks that I acquired over time as they came out. All are Sony and they all still work. They were my workhorses, delaying programming from TV shows and recording some shows for keeping. I have some feature flicks which were bought and all were at Beta 2 speed on one tape. I have since used the tapes and recorded over the flicks. The Beta Hi-Fi audio was way ahead of VHS audio. The picture quality, to me, looked better, which is why I used them ..... Super Beta was good.
I have had 4 Super VHS decks. Sony SLVR5 and 3 JVC's. All were top of the line at the time I got them. The Sony still works but the JVC's have all died. Different problems. I have not had any tape thread or crinkle problems with the beta decks. Did I mention they all still work, 20 years later? I have had problems with transport problems with the VHS decks. Tape not going back in allthe way when the cassette comes out, crinkling the tape. I did have a problem with the Sony R5. A plastic guide part fell off it's mount but I put it back. I used to do some editing with the Sony Beta 900. It could slave a separate deck and sync roll and do inserts. I also modified the deck so that I could record in Beta 1 speed and that looked good. I found the instructions on line way back in the 90's. I used the S-VHS decks to make some video masters when I was making some tapes for reproduction but not anymore since I do that in the computer and burn DVD's, now. For better quality, I went to laserdiscs, but that format did not last long. Particularly when I could not rent them anymore. Luckily, I worked with a guy that loved the format and he bought the deck and discs I had. I had moved on to DVD playbacks for rented movies and building personal libraries. I do have one VHS movie (It's a Mad Mad World) and that took two VHS tapes......It was a purchased movie. I since have it on DVD. I don't use tape much anymore for obvious reasons. I moved to H-8 for camcorder, migrating to Digital 8... all Sony's. They are still used. I also moved to Canon for Mini-DV. I have a problem getting rid of stuff. I seem to keep everything, except the failed VHS decks. A colleague gave me two professional S-VHS decks. Different models. They both have problems. The TBC on one of them doesn't work and I haven't had time to figure it out. The other one has tape guide problems at times. Why bother, you ask? Good question. I dunno. Just Because. Just my experiences. | ||||||
| orsetto posted 2009 Oct 19 14:27 | ||||||
Sorry, LS: you may be the single greatest technical resource on this site, but I doubt you worked in video software retail as early or as long as I did. Anyone who worked a video store counter in 1980-81 will verify the "90% guys looking for porn" (or at least R-rated titillation movies). It was a cliche joke among store clerks. Perhaps small conservative towns in the midwest had a more balanced client base, simply because "mature" material was frowned upon and not readily available, but in big cities the "mature audience" absolutely drove the market. By 1981 VHS was so entrenched in its "more easily available exploitation rentals" legend that the vast majority of customers browsing a dual-format store had no idea what Beta was or thought it was long-since discontinued. Nearly all would ask "why do you carry Beta?", because they could see for themselves it would collect dust on the shelves while every VHS title in the store would turn almost every day. The early video store era seems unbelievable if you weren't actually there working at one: its almost impossible now to conceive a 1981 where the sheer novelty of a video rental was so powerful you could rent every single rotten T&A movie on your shelves every single day for months on end. You can't imagine the garbage these guys would eagerly rent over and over again. The exploitation and adult crap was way more successful than feature films at first, because that was something you couldn't get elsewhere. It wasn't until 1983 or so that the tide turned and the mass market began replacing their movie theater habit with rentals of new releases. Before that, you could count on one hand the number of women who came into the stores each day, compared to the hordes of men. But it was definitely format-dependent. By 1982 the Beta rental market had contracted to a more "upscale" client base looking mostly for foreign films or artsy flicks. In VHS you could rent anything, any day, to anybody. In Beta, you were lucky to turn a dozen or so titles a day: it really was that bad, at least in the USA (Beta had much greater success in other countries, which helped it survive longer than expected). Between 1980 and 1984 I worked every type of store, from fancy Manhattan emporiums to blue-collar Brooklyn. The "horny guys/VHS" factor ruled in every locale except the store across the street from Carnegie Hall, which was mega-upscale and sold more tapes than it rented. Here, Beta held on at about 30% share, especially with foreign tourists and celebrities (I still have the charge slip carbons signed by Mick Jagger, Frank Sinatra, Empress Farrah of Iran, etc). In late 1985 I raised enough money to open my own store in brownstone Brooklyn, where even the affluent customers had moved to VHS, so I dumped my Beta stock at a loss in 1986. I replaced Beta with LaserDisc rentals, which did surprisingly brisk business for a few years.
That wasn't until later, with the nifty 2000-series Sony portables and the slimline front-load models with direct drive mechanics. The original, popular, huge, piano-key 8000 and 5000 Betamax designs broke down constantly, as did the later large size front-loaders like the first BetaHiFi 5200. While its true Beta breakdowns rarely damaged tapes like the more-insidious VHS breakdowns did, when a Beta tanked it was completely useless and generally required an expensive overhaul that only held up for a few months. A repaired Matsushita-based VHS usually stayed repaired, the ever-disgusting JVCs were always a lost cause and the later Hitachi-based RCAs were almost as bad. | ||||||
| DereX888 posted 2009 Oct 20 15:39 | ||||||
My first VHS "original" tape I ever bought was in my teens, a movie that probably would be censored even on a Playboy channel today :oops: And I do remember there was no porn on Beta. Although I don't think "the porn factor" could have been such a big factor in Beta's demise. One other (personal) factor: I've been collecting music on CDs and VHS since I was kid. To me VHS was a winner (albeit I didn't like it) simply because of availability of concerts and music videos on VHS, while there was basically no choices on Beta (or Video2000). One of my oldest VHS videos I still have - I just had a look - was released in 1987 *in stereo* (and with Dolby NR). I really can't recall having any stereo Beta music tape or concert. And I don't think I have to emphasise difference between stereo and mono to those who like music ;) I think if VHS VCRs were cheaper than Beta VCRs than *that* was a main reason why VHS won (which I don't know what prices were back then, but considering Beta was a S*ny product I think I can easily assume Beta VCRs were outright more expensive than VHS VCRs, right? ;) ) | ||||||
| joecass posted 2009 Oct 20 17:18 | ||||||
| The so-called "porn" industry was indeed a firestarter for VHS, most young men in those days went to video stores to rent porn tapes. After VHS machines came down in price, movie rentals were the main reason for it's success. It only took a few years for VHS to overtake Beta, simply because of the 6 hour tape speed. 6 hours equals 3 two-hour movies, or 6 one -hour TV programs. I owned both formats in the early 80's, the Beta picture was always superior, as was the transport and loading mechanism. Don't remember any problems with Beta mangling tape, or getting distracting video noise on the screen, but with
VHS those symptoms were common. VHS tracking from what I remember..... was a big pain until they came up with auto-tracking. Even today, though I rarely use videotape, tracking on VHS machines is shaky. Sorry to see so many people trash Sony, to me they were an innovative company that made reliable products. I still own a 1970's vintage open reel Sony tape machine, works just like new. Ditto for a 1990 Sony VHS machine, the internal calendar expired in 2008, but it still works pretty well. Also own a Sony Mini Disc recorder, the sound quality rivals anything I've ever heard, and that from someone raised on analog sound dating back 50 years. Had a Sony DAT machine, sold it after 10 years, still worked like new. The only thing I refuse to buy is a Blu Ray player, IMHO they should be $100, not $300..... Maybe the decline of Sony products can also be attributed to the manufacturing shift to 3rd world, and former 3rd world countries like China..... or Indonesia, Singapore, Mexico, etc. etc. Electronic products Made in Japan were .... built to last, not like the throwaway market we have toay | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 20 23:58 | ||||||
Nobody is "trashing" Sony Corp. They are making observations of the current day struggles of a once great company lead astray by a late coming, and highly influencial group of individuals who do not appear to have the long term survival of the company at heart. And yes, agreed, Sony has been slow to adapt to the new world business order. | ||||||
| Video Head posted 2009 Oct 21 00:45 | ||||||
No porn on Beta? Ginger Lynn (mid 1980's): "Sony and Beta backed me into a corner once. I said NO! and NO! means NO! these days! No one should have to do the things they wanted, exactly the way they wanted...their demands just made me feel confined and yucky". Ginger probably doesn't recall that interview...she and Charlie where probably a little wacked that day... The porn industry supported Beta as long as Beta could support itself...then on to the new thing...just like Ginger, Jenna and so on and so on... |
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