'Tomorrow', 'Day After Tomorrow' is my new favourite quirk of all technology.

@IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT

4 жыл бұрын

Mine is the power switch on the Data Precision Data 6000 waveform analyzer (an ancient digital oscilloscope sort of thing). It's a mechanical button that's on when pressed in and off when popped out, as is common on things like AV receivers, but on top of the button there is text. When the machine is on, you can read "ON" on top of the button, and when you press it to turn the machine off, the button pops out to reveal another word and it now says "NOT ON".

@connor_bell

4 жыл бұрын

@@IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT "not on" lmaooooo

@ian_b

4 жыл бұрын

Six days ahead should be "Yesterday, Next Week".

@Jaymac720

3 жыл бұрын

Quirk.... wait a minute. * Doug DeMuro has entered the chat *

@frostyelkk

3 жыл бұрын

@@IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT Do you prefer your mechines o n or n o t o n ?

That "1 minute before, 1 minute after" feature is ingenious, and something my 90's JVC model VHS never had. 30 minute increments only, which forced me to record a 90 minute tape if I wanted to ensure I got the whole entire Star Trek episode.

@MaximRecoil

2 күн бұрын

That's strange for a 1990s VCR. My VCR was made in 1988 by Panasonic and had onscreen programming. You could input any start time and stop time you wanted. There were no set increments that you had to use. To record a show that ran from, e.g., 8 to 9, I would set it to record from 7:57 to 8:03.

Those prices were outrageous, especially adjusted for inflation, which would be about $4,300 in today's money for a top end unit. Of course the VCR was 1979's equivalent of a UHD 4K curved screen TV, or whatever the latest greatest home entertainment thing is now. The prices did come down over time, but they still were not cheap. I remember my dad buying us one for a "family Christmas present" in 1984. It was $395, but they gave him a deal at the local electronics store because he got 4 friends to all buy one from them at the same time, so they got them for $350. That's $850 in today's money, so not chump change. And here is the best part. The unit is a Magnavox VHS format VCR. It still works, and it is currently hooked up to my basement TV and I still use it! I had several more modern units over the years and they all broke eventually, but the old hunk of steel from 1984 is still going strong. Rewinding a tape does sound like an airplane taking off, but it does indeed work!

@RiffRaffMama.

5 жыл бұрын

As soon as I read "sound like an airplane taking off" I could hear that whirr! Complete with the "klunk!" at the end lol

@Roy_Tellason

4 жыл бұрын

The reason for that noise is that they use a gear to drive the fast speeds, rather than a rubber idler wheel which was used in a lot of other units, and which was a common failure point when it started to wear...

@ThirstyEye

4 жыл бұрын

@@RiffRaffMama. Man, that "klunk" felt like a car crashing into brick wall. Was always surprised that the tape itself never snapped.

@BabyTua

4 жыл бұрын

Why do you use it tho?

@RiffRaffMama.

4 жыл бұрын

@@BabyTua Not everything has been converted to DVD (www.empireonline.com/movies/features/films-dvd/) so he may like some of those movies or recordings of old tv shows that he still likes to watch, but only can on VHS.

This is the first analysis I’ve seen of the format wars that called it the shortcomings of Beta. Usually, it’s “Beta had better picture quality, but due to licensing, there were more VHS machines.” The shortcomings of recording time and that annoying window on the cassette were legitimate shortcomings.

I remember being a kid in the eighties and getting so frustrated because all the stuff I wanted to see just wasn't available on Beta. My father even had to rent a VHS machine so I could watch "King Kong vs. Godzilla". . . Gotta say though, our Beta machine kept working right up until 2016, when it was finally lost in a flood. Credit where due, it was a good machine.

@5Andysalive

Жыл бұрын

Sony builds good stuff. It's just full of proprietary crap and expensive.

@barryschalkwijk9388

11 ай бұрын

Dude i feel your pain. I remember watching the fucking Gobots tape a million times because it was the only decent movie available on it.

@NullStaticVoid

7 ай бұрын

OMG I forgot about renting VCRs! I remember one time for a kids birthday party his dad rented one so we could watch Star Wars or something that had just come out on VHS. Man they sat on Star Wars a long time before it came out on video.

"Sony just didn't seem to get it." ...The more things change, the more they stay the same.

@transfo47

3 жыл бұрын

Except with the PS1, 2, and 4.

@theblackwidower

3 жыл бұрын

@@transfo47 What's wrong with the PS3?

@nthgth

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah they basically knocked it out of the park when it came to video games, overall

@Prime9973

3 жыл бұрын

@@theblackwidower They were really ignorant with the launch by pricing it at $500, when the Xbox 360 was $300 (and had been out for a year by that point). The cell processor was incredibly difficult to develop for. At first they marketed it as a supercomputer for the living room rather than a gaming machine. Basically they thought they were untouchable after the PS1 and PS2, but their ignorance with the PS3 meant they drew with the Xbox 360 and got destroyed by the Wii in sales, and that was only because they eventually got their shit together near the end of the generation.

@theblackwidower

3 жыл бұрын

@@Prime9973 Still, made money. Just because they didn't dominate the marketplace doesn't mean they failed.

Sony should’ve just given up on Betamax and made “Gammamax” or “Omegamax” or something cool like that with bigger cassettes and way more tape.

@NeutralGuyDoubleZero

2 жыл бұрын

Hell even just 'Zetamax' would've been better lol

@shiftfire4511

2 жыл бұрын

Big Max. It's got twice the tape of a regular Betamax!

@Ziess

2 жыл бұрын

alphamax, betamax, omegamax

@Metal27928

2 жыл бұрын

The thirteenth Greek letter N (Nu/New) works have been perfectly branded: NuMax! The newest thing out there!

@General_Taylor

Жыл бұрын

U L T R A M A X

"Not everyone needs a timer, duh!" That is the Sony magic we've all come to know and love! Well, its loved mostly by the competition who have been able to run circles around Sony even at a glacial pace thanks to Sony deciding to lie down and have extended naps during races.

I clicked part 1 with basically no interest in this subject and ended up watching right through. Really good, thorough analysis delivered in a easy to understand way. Great videos

@cristianvillanueva8782

5 жыл бұрын

Same at first i was thinking "well i guess" but now here i am i really did enjoy it

@Goabnb94

4 жыл бұрын

Who do you go for to watch 20+ minute videos about technologies you don't use anymore or don't really think about, because they are entertaining and full of dry humor? Technology Connections!

@xebek

3 жыл бұрын

"Dangit Bobby, I'm glad you stuck around" "...that boy ain't right"

You failed to mention one minor detail as to why Beta failed.....The early days of video rental. As the former owner of a video rental store, I can tell you, we tried to cater to both formats at first, but the ones that kept getting rented (hence, more money) were VHS tapes....and so we kept buying more VHS movies to rent out, and fewer and fewer Beta tapes until we finally phased those Beta tapes out entirely.

@john-paulsilke893

7 жыл бұрын

I too was a part owner of a video store, (non-voting just money). Another problem was angry renters who would get a free rental and be angry because they rented a Beta movie that was two or three tapes but got the wrong number or different tapes. Half of Pretty in Pink and half of My Left Foot makes for a supremely angry customer Saturday morning. In one case with a double tape of The Abyss they got Vaseline Alley a gay porn as the second half, (this was in Toronto and severely cut for penetration but still a nasty second half to an evening of family video night). Those damn multi's still make me angry all these years later.

@DDBurnett1

7 жыл бұрын

Were the videos at your store rented in generic-looking cases rather than their actual cases? (Like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster used to do?) If so, that would explain how mix-ups could happen so easily.

@john-paulsilke893

7 жыл бұрын

Yes they were in hard plastic cases as the paper sleeves they came in would be on the shelves as displays of what was in stock. The paper sleeve/sleeves would replace the actual unit on the shelves behind the cash registers. In our biggest store we had something like 70,000 tapes while our smaller stores had 50,000 and 30,000. Keep in mind early release rental units could cost over $200 each. The Abyss was $143, Planes Trains and Automobiles was about the same and Disney totals were closer to the $200. Our new release rental was 4.75 and older titles were $3.25. That place was taking it in. The main owner had a serious coke habit and his girlfriend and him would sometimes clean out the register at a whim. I invested close to $20,000 of my wages and a year and a half later had more the $60,000. I moved to Mexico and traveled South America for over a year on that.

@ataru4

6 жыл бұрын

People renting more VHS tapes is a consequence of Beta failing, not a cause of it.

@indyracingnut

6 жыл бұрын

Incorrect...but only to a point. Consumer demand was and never is a "consequence" but a judging factor. VCR's were never intended to be just videotape players, but RECORDERS as well.....and you could theoretically squeeze 3 standard sized movies into one tape when recorded on SLP....I can't emphasize how many of my customers had 2 VCR's and would rent movies from us and copy movies using this method. I never saw a single BETA customer do that.

I always think of the Simpson's character Snake Jailbird after he robs the Simpson home. "Oh no! Beta!!!"

@lokalnyork

5 жыл бұрын

Oh no, HD-DVD!

@largol33t1

4 жыл бұрын

LMAO, why am I not surprised Homer would have a Betamax player. He does seem slow to keep up with the times. Doh! :D

@gregdowle8031

4 жыл бұрын

The Bundys (Married With Children) had Beta.

@gamingcinema8686

2 жыл бұрын

YES! i do too!

"Sony released this device with virtually no regard to how people would actually use it!" That attitude of arrogant, willful ignorance would stick with Sony to the present day and cost them dearly time and time again.

@jaffaorange3809

4 жыл бұрын

So how do they survive to this day?

@tristan6509

4 жыл бұрын

@@jaffaorange3809 the playstation, and their bank (they literally own a bank)

@Figjamxlaststar

4 жыл бұрын

They tried to do what apple have done! And to this day they still do it! Sony just doesn’t seem to really like to play with others!

@comradesky5931

4 жыл бұрын

They were just Apple before it was cool

@vadimlevitin4382

4 жыл бұрын

@@jaffaorange3809 Better tech and technology.

Love the tone of your show mate. So refreshing to see a well done dry delivery on youtube, with dry wit to boot.

@patrickmusson4571

7 жыл бұрын

Couldn't agree more, he is a breath of fresh air with no fancy electronic gimmicks to try and look cool. what he's doing makes him look cool. I can't wait for the next video.

@john-paulsilke893

7 жыл бұрын

There's also a sort of 80's technical instructional video quality to the broadcast that really fits with the theme of the channel. Kinda hard to explain, but it's not like he's even wearing clothing that looks particularly current and I suspect he's choosing his "wardrobe" to purposefully not clash with the era he's speaking about. He wouldn't look out of place in 1982 or 2017 for that matter, kinda non-descript. (Gosh I really hope I haven't insulted his taste in clothing as it's not my intention).

@hanniffydinn6019

7 жыл бұрын

John-Paul Silke the guy is just living the retro 80s

@5roundsrapid263

6 жыл бұрын

I love the '80s PBS vibe.

@tankermottind

6 жыл бұрын

I agree, I love the lack of forced, irritating ENTHUSIASM!!!!!1111 or a put-on persona. There are a lot of channels with interesting content that I don't watch because I can't stand some try-hard SHOUTING LIKE A WANNABE BILLY MAYS and spewing jokes that were awful when AVGN was making them eight years ago. This guy has class.

Please see the description for a note about the comparison segment! I didn't include a section on "how lack of porn killed Beta" because _this is a myth_. Many people have heard tales that Sony didn't allow porn to be released on Beta, and that's nothing but an urban legend. There was indeed "back-room" content available on Beta, but far far less of it simply because fewer people had Beta machines than VHS. Porn represented a small percentage of sales on both VHS and Beta, so it's unlikely many people based their decision on what format to buy based on availability of adult content. Lots of comments are appearing noting that Beta lived on in the professional realm. However, that's not the same Beta. What's being referred to is Betacam; an entirely different format, which continually evolved and eventually became fully digital. However, Betacam is virtually unrelated to the consumer Beta format (only sharing the basic cassette design), and ironically a larger Betacam L cassette design was created for this professional format. Lastly, besides flexibility, there's another reason VHS's recording time won people over: Tapes weren't cheap! More stuff could be recorded for less money on VHS because the cost-per-minute was much lower with VHS machines.

@revmpandora

7 жыл бұрын

Technology Connections thanks, TC!!!!!

@Hoodmonsa

7 жыл бұрын

[ I want to apologize for all the spelling errors in this. It's late, and my spell/grammar correct isn't responding. I am sincerely sorry for all the errors and also the length of this. Good thing I'm not using a comment section made by Beta-max...LOL ] Talk about a walk down memory lane. I remember being a kid (I was born in 75) but was quickly submersed in all things VCR , Beta , Huge 16 foot Satellite dishes (with the good old hand crank...Dad was too busy buying all models of each machine produced, meaning RCA JVC , anything that was new so long as he didn't go over his monthly budget that mom finally slapped on him. He eventually through his Satellite installation business got in good graces with a small store (made similar to a Radio Shack, but with less stock in things like Tubes,resistors, bread boards, ect....) anyway, he gave Dad a 10k Line of credit at his store so long as Dad kept up his end of the bargain, meaning he sold the Satellites through the store at a 25% loss. However when it came time for said customer to set up his Dish, the store would recommend my Dad (seeing as he was one of 2 trained/qualified/approved to install these beasts...again were not talking about the little dishes of the late 80's-Early 90's when they started getting TINY(10 , 8 , 6 Foot dishes....LMAO) So my Dad would go survey the site and explain everything that had to be done to get the proper Azimuth/Zenith settings before you buried the pole in in 5x5 concrete with barb strips going down 2 feet. Needless to say Dad turned the 25% loss into around a 50% gain if he liked you...(he would even throw in some of his own built/designed de-scramblers that were becoming a much needed piece of hardware to take full advantage of the systems...especially if you wanted Blu-Max ,Play-boy and so on). To make a long story a bit shorter, Dad didn't have to worry about his credit line with the mom & pop store he was working with, so as I was saying earlier he was able to buy any and every design he could get his hands on. One of my favorites (which I don't remember the brand was somewhat streamlined and set in two parts side by side with one side being the actual VCR/Tape part and the other half was dedicated to channels, component hook up's and a ton of other stuff I don't remember. The part I liked was these two Halves folded into one unit with an arm strap that plugged a Camera into the unit, with the tape staying in the unit and just a couple wires running up the strap, we were able to grab it quickly , Fold, hook up, drop in the "Bag" and go (He worked as a Police Detective at the time and it came in handy when he needed video recordings of a crime scene...since the town/department he worked for could barely afford a few Lo-Band Radios for the squad cars and nothing for the officers to wear while out of the car) So basically he funded their Detective/Tech division using his own equipment which he would (You guessed it, not only turn in a comp or Over time slip, he would bill them for use of professional equipment and so on.) One thing that stands out in my mind was that I was prone to fall asleep on the couch at night watching movies or playing with all this "Futuristic" stuff my dad had, and stumbled upon on feature that helped his relationship with mom. She didn't like any movies or shows that had any cursing or brief nudity and so on...so he would have to watch a movie first and before me and mom watched it, he would know which parts to mute or FFW through, till i showed his this small switch that was recessed inside a cover of a cover for tuning or assigning audio video sources and other things...It turned out to be a HiFi sound and video-port with a switch that had "Audio-Replacement/Aud-dub - Vid-Dub or a combo. I woke up one morning to him watching a Dirty Harry or something movie like that, and the parts that had cursing, he was going through and dubbing different words over them in real time. Which after he mastered the art of using it, gave me 300$ for my Birthday in January for finding this feature...he would change it, pop in a tape and if he wanted to go to bed "Mom" didn't have to worry about what words they people were using, and she was so happy that he was buying/recording less graphic/Less mature content for my mother and I to watch......I told him to keep the money, and he looked at me strangely and said "Well son, why don't you want the money?...I said Mom will get suspicious as to why I got such a large amount for my birthday (Keep in mind I was about 5-7 during all this) he said" well every time we do a job, you are there mixing cement and working and the whole 9 yards speech" I said...KEEP THE MONEY !!! JUST INSTALL A DAMN ELECTRIC MOTOR ON THE DISH TO MOVE IT BECAUSE IT SUCKS BEING WOKE UP AT ALL HOURS OF THE NIGHT TO GO OUT IN THE SNOW AND CRANK A DAMN DISH TILL IT WAS POINTING AT THE RIGHT SATELLITE SINCE YOU THROW ONE IN WITH EVERY DEAL YOU MAKE !!!!! ..... I got slapped across my face pretty hard for cursing at that age....but I was literally tired and fed up, plus my grades were slipping in school from lack of sleep cause home work had to wait till we got the job done that day (Usually he would do 2-3 dishes a week then went to 5 and I had to wait till 8,9 & even 10 pm to do home work and then try to sleep, get up at 7am for school and do it all over again.....But it was worth it in the end....well sorta.... I got a huge education in "Modern Electronics" & got to see the affects of the companies competing (which I initially liked Beta more, until I learned what did what and how and so on..... It's now a fond memory I look back on, because by 1984 Mom & Dad Divorced, which meant that I got to keep all the tech that was in the house, but my exposure to anything new , went down hill for a couple years, until Dad took me over to the store one day and opened me a $500 line of credit for me to get what I wanted when I wasn't able to be with him...anything over that, I or mom had to pay for...... Anyway I'm sorry for this long comment, it just bought up so many memories that I hadn't thought about in years, that probably a lot of kids my age back then hadn't even touched a VCR or a Beta (other than my cousin...they had money and his dad was a Beta nut until the end) but I was in a unique situation for my age and for the tech that was being pushed out. I could go on and on with other stories like Selectavision with the Laser disk also...but you all get where I'm coming from....again, thank you for this 2 part series...I loved it, and love the channel....Keep up the good work !!! -Sam-

@Alexagrigorieff

7 жыл бұрын

To be fair, Digital-8 camcorders were pretty decent, and even allowed direct transfer to a computer. They also could play back your 8mm and Hi-8 tapes to the digital output.

@glpilpi6209

7 жыл бұрын

The earliest British video recorder for domestic use was Philips N1500 introduced in 1972 it had a limited recording time and was mainly used in schools it used helical scanning but had a different mechanism spec to later VCRs .VHS got to the market quicker in the UK and was licenced to manufacturers ahead of Beta .The first generation models were being sold and rented in early 77. There were more rental movie films available on VHS as well. Beta machines were cheaper to buy and were preferred for amateur video production and ease of editing as the picture resolution was generally better.

@glpilpi6209

7 жыл бұрын

wildbilltexas We had the same in the UK VHS tapes being very expensive at first then gradually falling . The first generation Beta tapes got very scarce to buy eventually as the demand plummeted after the mid eighties.

I've been watching a number of these vhs/beta vids. I was working in an A/V video store back in the late 70's where we sold both vhs and beta so I got to see both formats side by side day in and day out. Here's the basic reason vhs won. Technical stuff like how the tape loaded or picture quality made absolutely no difference to most people. Blank tapes back then were $35 to $40 on SALE. When dropping that much on a single blank tape, the fact that recording time on vhs was longer than beta made selecting the vhs format easy for most of our customers. They just wanted to record their soap opera and rent movies and the more time on a tape the better. Just that simple.

You're soft tone and, the way you teach is amazing. You make it so easy to understand the core topic. Thankyou.

I was the Scottish Sales Manager for JVC (UK) Ltd from 1979 to 1985 and our biggest competitor was not Sony but other VHS manufacturers. I remember that in the 1980s VHS videos were sold under 40 different brand names in Europe. There was also no mention of the historical tie between The Japan Victor Company (JVC) and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA Victor) I'm sure you can guess where the Victor in RCA Victor came from and this historical tie between the two companies was very relevant when it came to 'Home Movies' . In the history of home entertainment this was a very exciting time (well it was for me :-) ). It's a pity you did not cover the JVC 'camcorder' of the late 1970s, early 1980s as they were really quite good. l have recently had an old family video from 1980-1 converted to DVD and although the low lighting was not great outdoor video was very good. All in all your coverage of this topic was very good and l really enjoyed it . :-)

@domoncar6782

6 жыл бұрын

Watch the Part 1. He explained the RCA-JVC connection there.

@bloodreport146

6 жыл бұрын

if there was any mention of their historical connection from the 1920s then l missed it

@ismayb754

5 жыл бұрын

@@bloodreport146 I think the guy who made this video was doing it from his own personal American perspective and not taking the overall world-wide story into account.

@kalessin4942

4 жыл бұрын

@@ismayb754 He specifically stated in part one that he was only examining the issue from the perspective of what happened in the American market.

@ismayb754

4 жыл бұрын

@@kalessin4942 So yes that's what I said then :)

Sony has been very hit and miss on trying to create new media standards... Hits: CD and Bluray Misses: Beta, Mini Disc, and Magic Gate (sony's version of an SD card)

@NyzmaKumala

4 жыл бұрын

bluray is consortium not sony own format

@KLondike5

4 жыл бұрын

Mini disc was infuriating. I thought it'd be a good alternative to early expensive mp3 players. You had to use software that only allowed you to "check out" a track to 3 discs. Want to put that song on another disc? You have to remove it from one of the other discs first. And if you recorded anything digitally with the device, you had to upload it in real-time analog despite it having USB. I think you also could use an optical cable but still no USB speeds.

@ironwolf56

4 жыл бұрын

Sony has always struck me as a company of brilliant engineers led by boneheaded, egotistical business suits.

@RKNGL

4 жыл бұрын

@@ironwolf56 Even in modern day this still holds true. On KZread Sony will constantly copyright strike their own videos. Sony US will release a video showing a new electronic device and Sony Japan will manually issue a takedown. I've heard videos have been down for days or even a week due to Sony's crazy internal shenanigans.

@SumeaBizarro

4 жыл бұрын

Magic Gate is not memory card standard, MemoryStick is. MagicGate was a protection standard for sony's Flash based storage medium which infuriatingly was used in PS2 so the console would not act nice with third party memory cards that could not have Magic Gate in them without sony licencing it to them defeating the purpose of most 3rd parties in PS2 Memory Card market. Which came back to bite them as always, when they could not supply enough memory cards and more or less had to get 3rd parties to fill in when they could not having very common Magic Gate MadCatz memory cards. Also the biggest failure in Sony memory cards is the Vita Memory Card for sure - the storage medium that was the silent killer of the whole system the format was made for. When you want to sell 4-12 gig games digitally and ask 120 euros for 64gig memory cards in 2013 you are killing your machine on arrival and sony just did not get it until it was all too late, way too late.

The fact that a video can even be recorded, stored and replayed on a layer of tape covered in differently charged magnetic particles is still bewildering to me. The concept of a vinyl record is much easier to wrap my head around but even that is quite mystifying just because of the level of detail and nuance that can be captured. But the idea that you can magnetize a bunch of tiny particles in such a way that they’re able to store enough information to produce a high quality video is just insane to me. I know that each one of our audio and video storage formats is, in principle, recording and amplifying a certain type of signal but I still don’t really get it.

@gerstelb

8 ай бұрын

The wild thing about both video formats that you need to understand is that video (and Hi-Fi audio, when it was added) is written not in a linear format like this: =============================================== But in a “helical scan,” where spinning video heads write diagonally across the entire length of the tape, like this: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////// This lets them use as much of the magnetic “real estate” as possible. Old-format audio *was* written linearly, which is why it had quality comparable to AM radio. If you were around in 1983 when Sony came out with Beta Hi-Fi (like I was) the leap in quality was absolutely mind-blowing. Until digital computer audio became regularly available, Hi-Fi video tape was the highest quality audio recording format available to home users.

@MaximRecoil

2 күн бұрын

@@gerstelb "Until digital computer audio became regularly available, Hi-Fi video tape was the highest quality audio recording format available to home users." No, it's not higher quality than 15 IPS reel-to-reel (1/4" tape).

I should add that here in the UK, the first and biggest nail in the coffin for Betamax was when Thorn-EMI - who owned something like 60-70% of the rental market - flooded the rental market of VCRs with an order of 100,000 re-badged JVC VHS machines as soon as VHS PAL came to the UK in the autumn of 1978. They got the JVC machines at knock-down trade prices because they were related to JVC in some way, I can't remember how. These machines were badged using some of Thorn's brands - Ferguson, DER, Baird and Multibroadcast being a few. These JVC "piano key" decks were re-badged by many companies, I know German manufacturer Telefunken did, even Akai re-badged one or two models. Granada Rentals (Thorn-EMI's closest rivals) here in the UK did so as well (and they rented out Betamax decks, too!) You couldn't get a Betamax deck from Thorn-EMI's outlets as they simply didn't stock them. So right from the off, there were simply greater numbers of VHS machines than Betamax, being offered in by far the biggest rental company with the most high street outlets. People were more likely to rent VCRs with more than one format on the market, because they didn't want to risk backing a losing horse by buying a machine of a format that would eventually lose. VHS had a distinct advantage and a huge lead over Betamax in terms of market popularity right from the start! It was simply the most visible and accessible on the high street and had much greater availability to rent than Betamax did. While the biggest *selling* VCR in the UK for 1982, 83 and I think 84 was a Betamax VCR (the Sanyo VTC5000), these sales figures were totally eclipsed by the number of VHS VCRs that were being rented. To *buy* a VHS VCR in the UK was about £100 *more* (at early 1980s rates) than if you were buying a Betamax VCR. Video2000 lost because its reliability was hopeless (typical Philips) and it arrived too late on the market - late 1980, IIRC, whereas PAL versions of VHS and Beta arrived on our shores two years beforehand and even then had had 2 or 3 years of development in NTSC form before that! When it arrived in 1980, Video2000 had had no development prior to being launched here other than the standard pre-launch laboratory R&D. Its raison d'etre - the digital tracking system and lack of manual tracking adjustment - is now proving to be a pain in the arse when recovering material from old, damaged and warped Video2000 cassettes.

@jasinere35

5 жыл бұрын

sanyo was a popular machine as its all electronic & user friendly for a Betamax aswell as easy to repair if something went wrong

@mapesdhs597

Жыл бұрын

I'm very familliar with the Ferguson name, bought several, they were indeed cheap but well made, and the brand persisted long after the early big brick models. Today my four main VHS units are a Panasonic NV-FJ780, a Ferguson FV-301LV and two Fergusons for which offhand I can't recall the model number but they can play and record PAL, NTSC and SECAM (I bought two so that I could do basic tape editing of material I could send to friends in the US; IIRC the units only cost about 75 each which I thought was astonishing). Amusingly, after watching this video, I've only just noticed all three Fergusons are marked as VHS HQ (maybe the Panasonic is aswell but it has no such marking on its front). I have three other units but they're in storage as backups. What you say though makes me wonder if perhaps somehow that knockdown pricing arrangement carried on for a long time.

@lyniseuk

8 ай бұрын

Spot on.

I would say the big thing Sony did right for making sure Blu-Ray won was making their latest new console at the time the Playstation 3 include a Blu-Ray player. This secured a huge installed base of machines ready for movies when the discs started to pickup in production.

@DouglasWalrath

7 жыл бұрын

not to mention people didnt even need to buy movies on blu ray to see benefits, games like GTA V on the ps3 all fit on a single blu ray disc while the same games on xbox 360 were split up onto multiple discs

@KuraIthys

7 жыл бұрын

True, but that's not an advantage of blu-ray specifically, it's because microsoft made the HD-DVD drives for the 360 an optional extra. That is, it's not an advantage over it's competing standard (HD-DVD), but rather an advantage over an older standard (DVD). What contributed to Blu-ray beating HD-DVD is another weird question. Some are saying it's because blu-ray is much better at supporting DRM... Talk about an anti-consumer feature, but as it pleases the paranoid film studios quite a bit I can see how that might technically still be an 'advantage'. In my experience blu-rays are one of the most painful film formats I've ever used because of the extremely heavy-handed DRM... But go figure that _that_ would be what made it a successful format in the first place...

@DouglasWalrath

7 жыл бұрын

KuraIthys nowadays even blu ray is declining tho in favor of streaming

@pokepress

7 жыл бұрын

Can you imagine if they did the same for Beta? Imagine playing a game in the 70's with full motion video...that you had to wait for the tape to fast forward or rewind to. That would have put CD load times in perspective. ;)

@Dragonfire511

7 жыл бұрын

pokepress it was made but with VHS with the ActionMax console.

You start this video coming from the first one, you give this man a like from the get-go. Channel deserves more everything. Keep up the good work man!

I have no idea why you're not at several MILLION subscribers. This is one of the best technology channels on KZread!

Part 1 and Part 2 are a great piece of work. I'm hugely impressed at how you included technical details, customer experience AND marketing in your analysis to balance fully this historical tale. It's a very very good and balanced tale. Great job. I'm a new subscriber. Keep it up!

Mate, just discovered your channel a few days ago and loving it so far. The information you give is really accurate (from what I have seen so far) and very well presented. Interesting that I have read and watched many articles on the video format wars and none have had anywhere near this much detail. Keep up the good work :D

Just found this channel, and absolutely love it. Well researched and top production quality

Very well presented video with good substance. The VHS era was the time I started my professional video production company. Your video brought me back to relive those times. Excellent!

Parts one and two of this story are an excellent summary of what happened to these formats. Thank you for making these videos - the time was well spent.

You're improving at a fast speed man, keep on the great work!

The new set is a huge step up from the endless blue abyss you used to film in front of.

Just now seeing this, been subscribed for a while. Enjoyed the content, but I have to say your presentation style has improved! Love the sarcasm in your newer videos! Keep uit up.

That little VCR tape and adapter are nostalgic af! So many of dad's videos of us as kids are on them. I remember dad having two VCRs set up in a way where he'd play the recording in the adapter, and use the other VCR to record THAT to a regular tape.

The ED Beta bit 😄 Great video as always!

I fondly remember watching Raiders of the Lost Ark on a Beta cassette a week BEFORE it came to our local cinema. Such was the quirk of the time ... it took "forever" for a movie to come to Tasmania, but it only took a week or so to ship a cassette from the USA. By the time Indy came to our theatres, the video was already on sale in K-mart USA.

@peterjf7723

6 жыл бұрын

I remember getting a CD of a new film before it was released in the UK. I got it from a bloke in the pub, the film quality was fine but there were no credits, just a blank screen with the words "credit sequence goes here".

@davidewhite69

5 жыл бұрын

late 80s when we deployed to Malaysia we would bring back VHS copies of movies not yet in the cinemas in Australia, and they weren't what is now known as "cams" but professionally recorded copies of US tapes, complete with FBI warnings

Thanx - I really enjoyed that! (watched both parts). Really well researched and presented and certainly answered all the questions I had about the Format War!

Is that the Elmhurst Dairy Queen I spy at about 8:00?! Great videos. Very well made, well researched, and entertaining. Keep it up!

That was awesome, thanks. I wish you talked about Beta's professional line. In mid 2000s, Beta formats where still used on television. And what about their descendants, DVCAM and mini-DV? That warrants a video of its own.

SONY has the habit of stepping on land mines.

@atom_zero5413

5 жыл бұрын

Well, if the story of Betamax is all true, they kind of *embraced* the landmine.

@largol33t1

4 жыл бұрын

@@atom_zero5413 And when the DVD format wars started, Sony was the one laying the mines and Toshiba was stepping in them!

@spotsill

4 жыл бұрын

Don’t forget mini disk another Sony exclusive and they repeated the same exact mistakes, no licensing to other companies and because of the no prerecorded programming . Yes and of course memory stick as well. However they stopped memory stick and now their cameras are cutting edge .

@spotsill

4 жыл бұрын

Agent J for the record I really liked and enjoyed my mini discs 😂😂😂👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻.

@spotsill

4 жыл бұрын

Agent J agreed the graphics got better and the hype bigger after ps2 but the games were never better. It’s all first person shooters now and reminds of movies from the 80’s nothing but sequels.

Great follow up to part one. Fills in the gaps of "The why of Beta and VHS" years ago. I wish all channels had such good sound, clear synchronised pre-recorded captions, and packed dialogue into the time available. I select 0.75 playback speed and subtitles sometimes, to replay some really "meaty" informative long sentences. Good for old "techos". Loved your jukebox discections too, a while ago.

Enjoyed your history lesson on the format wars. Makes me think of all the recording media over the years. Reel, cassette, Sony EL cassette, 8 track, digital 8, VHS & digital box, DAT tape, SD, XD, Memoy stick, CF cards, HD & SSD recorders. It will never end.

You can’t forget that besides taping tv shows u missed, the attraction for me and millions was the chance to record and save movies. Early movies to buy were very expensive and even early rental places were around $5.00 a movie!

@nthgth

2 жыл бұрын

But then you had to buy two super expensive VCRs, right?

@DeltaAssaultGaming

2 жыл бұрын

Um, no. You recorded movies off of tv showings. Thy would air old movies on the weekends on tv.

@nthgth

2 жыл бұрын

@@DeltaAssaultGaming I was apparently thinking he meant recording and saving rented movies lol. I do remember having tons of tapes of movies recorded off cable

My family bet on Beta at first but we'd made the switch to VHS by 1987. Still, I was using Beta machines in the "kids' den" (basement) until at least 1994, to tape whatever show I was watching at the time. And I'm pretty sure there was a Beta machine at my grandparents' house into the 2000s. We totally had that exact video camera as well. Ahh flashbacks XD

randomly came across your channel, as a child of the 80s this info is my history great job subed and belled, look forward to more gadget history

First time I have seen this channel - fun video. A few quick bits of nostalgia... 1) I remember our grade school in the late 80's had one of those ginormous VHS cameras - it was huge and you still had to carry a separate recorder. All of it was battery powered, and if I recall, the battery did not last very long. 2) I lived in Mexico a few years in like 86-88, and Beta had kind of won down there. When we wanted to rent a movie, we had to drive halfway across the city we lived in (Guadalajara) to rent VHS tapes. Good thing my brother had his license by then so we could sneak out and rent movies...

You didn't mention the fact that Sony actually invented the M-Load format (later called VHS by JVC), but decided early on in its development that certain technical hurdles were not cost effective to continue the R&D. Because they already had a successful professional video cassette format with 3/4" tape that was electronically and mechanically proven, called U-Matic, their engineers decided to drop the M-Load format and just scale down the 3/4" U-Matic format to 1/2" tape and a basically identical but smaller mechanical loading mechanism for their home video cassette format and called it Betamax. They then sold the patents and all of their R&D lock, stock and barrel to JVC who ran with it, perfected it and called it VHS.

@tookitogo

7 жыл бұрын

Jay Levine I can't find an iota of evidence to support this allegation.

@jaysound55

7 жыл бұрын

Antonio Tejada Unfortunately I can't either but here is where I got this info (and perhaps somebody can confirm it). I've been working in the post production television industry in Hollywood, CA since the late 1970s. While I was working for a video post house (I'd rather remain nameless) in the early 1980s, we were upgrading and switching most of our VTRs from 2" quad machines to the new 1" helical scan Type-C machines. The majority of the units my company purchased were built by Ampex but we also bought 2 or 3 Sony 1" machines. I was in the market for a personal home VCR at the time and the guys in our engineering department all recommended Beta as a superior format, both picture wise an mechanically. A number of us had some discussions regarding home video formats with the Sony engineers who came to our facility to assist our in-house personnel with the installation and initial operation of the new 1" machines. The Sony engineers were the source of this information that I posted regarding Sony's involvement in the initial development of M-Load. There were several people who participated in our informal discussion who also heard this claim. Over the years since, it has come up on several occasions at various companies and with different engineers, many of whom were also aware of and were of the opinion that it was true. I agree with you in that with a basic online search, I cannot find any documentation of these "facts." I probably should have clarified where I got this information in the body of my original post. I suppose it could be an industry urban legend and I cannot state with certainty that it is an absolute fact. Again, if anybody can confirm this information, it would help to clear it up.

@hihu7200

6 жыл бұрын

Try google patent search. It lets you look up patents by name, subject matter or number.

@leeoliver2969

6 жыл бұрын

Jay Levine if you worked for a company that used Ampex, I trust your judgement.

@ab348

5 жыл бұрын

I bought a Betamax SL-5800 in 1980 or early '81, just as it was introduced, for the princely sum of $1500. At that time it was widely discussed that Sony had developed the VHS format initially and abandoned it. I do not know if that is true or if it is urban legend as I cannot find any direct reference now. However I was able to find a history that says Sony shared details of its Betamax tech with Matsushita and others in the Japanese electronics industry around 1974, in an attempt to convince their colleagues to unite around it as a common standard, and that many of these details were found in VHS when it was introduced. Industrial espionage or chicanery? Who knows. When I was buying back then it was clear to me that the Sony was the technically superior system. The picture quality was better than VHS and on the 5800 I owned, it gave slow-motion and freeze-frames that were virtually crystal-clear. It had a wired remote that was quite feature-packed and a 4-event, 2-week timer. It was also very well-built compared to the VHS machines I looked at. Someone else mentioned the Rube-Goldbergian cassette changed accessory they optioned to extend recording time, but nobody mentioned its ability to record virtually noiseless digital sound recordings using the video tracks. My machine became balky after about 10 years and I was forced to buy a VHS machine shortly thereafter. It was remarkably light and junky compared to the old Sony. I think the real reasons for the failure of Beta were twofold, the recording time being one but it seems a bit of a red herring - the main reason was that VHS machines were much cheaper to buy by the mid-80s due to economies of scale. I looked at a Sony Beta machine around 1985 or 86 and it was beautiful and had lots of features VHS did not, but it was also much more expensive. Even then, cheaper usually beats better.

I miss watching Back to the Future on Beta. This video was awesome.

@largol33t1

4 жыл бұрын

I have watched only ONE movie in my life on Beta and I remember it. It was a true story called "The town that dreaded sundown," which was about a serial killer that stalked a small neighborhood in Texas. The killer was never caught.

@vadimlevitin4382

4 жыл бұрын

If it's for sentimental/nostalgic reasons, I can sympathize. Otherwise, that makes no sense.

We had both a Sony VHS (to play rental tapes) and the SL-HF900 SuperBeta that you show in the video. The Sony was amazing. The jog/shuttle dial (there was even one on the remote) was a joy to use for editing out commercials, and you could fast forward with sound without changing the pitch, just like KZread can now. Copies were identical to the original as far as we could see, and even copies of copies were pretty good. This was my favorite VCR of all time!

Even better than Part 1. Informative, articulate, not a wasted word. Well done and thanks;

I had a Sanyo Super Beta that had a function that was supposed to clean up the video signal when dubbing tapes. I discovered it also filtered out Copy Guard. I was able to copy any prerecorded VHS tape.

@jamesslick4790

Жыл бұрын

Me 2! 👍👍 I was popular in my neighborhood for my "video magic", LOL.

Betamax vs VHS was like iOS vs Android back then. Many similarities on many levels like open vs closed, better quality vs more competition etc.

@okaro6595

7 жыл бұрын

That is a good analogy. However, they were not different enough for both to survive like has happened with smart phones. However, I do not like the word "quality" as people use it narrowly to mean the image quality. The recording time was an important part of the quality. The image quality really was not an issue. Both were worse than direct TV but the whole issue was to make delayed watching possible. But there is a point in it. Most Android users have not used iPhone. Same was with VHS vs. Beta. People do not compare things side by side. For most it is enough that it is good enough.

@CashelOConnolly

5 жыл бұрын

iOS tells me what I’m going to do Android lets me choose what I want to do

Great video!!! Lots of information I never knew, even though I grew up around the VHS-Beta "war!" I'm glad that someone finally explained exactly what happened to Beta! VERY interesting, and well made documentary!

Great video! The capability to play back what you‘ve recorded with your camera on the device was not really expected at that time since unkonwon from analog film. I remember that this was a kind of mind blowing feature to me when I first saw that. :)

I remember walking to a rental store in the relatively early days. On one wall there was the beta tapes while the rest of the store was for VHS. It was pretty obvious which way it was going from that. Some beta rentals also took 2 tapes compared to 1 with VHS.

You should look into QTGMC de-interlacing. It's rather tricky to set up, but once you get it working, it produces excellent results, and can even convert 60i footage intro true 60p (well, actually it's 59.94p, but close enough!). I demonstrated it in my video "VHS - Better than you don't remember".

I rented my first VCR from Granada for about 3 or 4 years. The rental came with a FREE 1 year membership in a rental store a couple of doors down, called Northern Video at Sheppard and Yonge. Smart owner, Brian, getting all that business. The store was about 45 mins away from where I lived (Jane and Wilson), but remember there were NOT video rental stores on every corner like in the heyday of Blockbuster, Jumbo or Rogers videos! And yes, you used to have to buy a membership for $52 a year, $1 a week. But most places would give you a free rental per month. I finally bought my own VCR for $999! It had stereo sound and pretty light meters and was black and sleek! Played it into the ground for 10 years so I got my money's worth! When I bought a new VCR it was only about $200, Oh, and BTW, my Granada VHS came with a remote "stop" button! It was a simple wired hand grip with a on/off click button that you could use from about 10 feet away during both play back and record. My new VCR had an infrared remote but was very basic. And another thing, I actually bought tapes for about $9.99 each! Yes kids, you read that right. $10 a tape! And that was for T120. T160's were $12 each. One thing they didn't tell you was that the T160's were thinner to accommodate the extra tape needed and tended to break and/or get eaten by the machine! I remember seeing VHS tapes (when VCR's were still around) in a clearance bin for 99 cents!!!!! The first movie I rented? "Patton". First show I recorded? "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century"! But I recorded A LOT of "20 Minute Workout"!! :D

Good stuff. Really enjoying this channel. Maybe do a video of the rare AM stereo you never hear anymore. Or HD radio could be good.

Sweet Zombie Jesus. Adjusted for inflation that RCA VCR would cost $4,399.95 (2017). Just wow.

@joesterling4299

6 жыл бұрын

Yeah, but you need to understand that decent people with decent educations all had good full-time jobs with benefits at the time. Paying the modern equivalent of 4 grand for revolutionary home tech was quite doable. VCRs got cheaper too.

@SweetBearCub

6 жыл бұрын

So about $4400, but also, that VCR was pretty solidly built. It didn't suddenly become obsolete or break if you looked at it wrong.

@pauldzim

5 жыл бұрын

Also, if you really, really wanted to watch porn, you had to spend the bucks.

@badad0166

5 жыл бұрын

It was up there with a nice used car. Not the disposable appliance it eventually became. They were overbuilt originally and bleeding edge tech. It was like getting a second car or a pool. You're right. Also the newest phone etc. was not yet a birthright so besides a second car or a nifty floor lamp, what else you gonna buy?

@mattmatthews5414

5 жыл бұрын

Joe Sterling I've read and been told that one needed neither decency nor education back then to be taking home enough money to feed a family and buy a new car every four years thanks to the presence unions and absence of advanced robotics. It is wild though. "This year do I buy a motorcycle, a small boat, or a vcr?" Even a computer strong enough to do CAD/CAM work can be gotten for less than a quarter of what a Honda cbr600 sells for.

12:42 That whole “will it play on my VCR?” argument from the VHS-C camp was never really convincing. TVs and living-room VCRs both soon added extra AV inputs on the side, to make it easy to plug in your camcorder. And you had to copy to do editing anyway. I think worldwide Video-8 and Hi-8 outsold VHS-C and S-VHS-C. Also the extra recording time didn’t hurt.

I swear this is my second time subscribing to you but I never unsubscribed -_-. Great videos and very very informative. I love it

Outstanding AND funny video -- darn I learned even more, after "Part 1"! Keep up the good work!

The "Y Carrier" means the luminescence wire, in other words the brightness carrier, in the video-signal. This is why an S-Video signal, is abbreviated to Y/C, on professional equipment, and manuals.

@davidewhite69

5 жыл бұрын

had an old computer monitor with 'luma and chroma' connections, a commodore 1702 from memory

@electrictroy2010

2 жыл бұрын

Y is more than just brightness. It carries the actual image (as black & white).

@badreality2

2 жыл бұрын

@@electrictroy2010 That is brightness. ...I think you are confusing exposure, with brightness.

Lets all have a moment of silence to remember all who lost their lives in the dreaded format wars. The only other war to surpass it as far as loss of life was the horrible cola wars of the 1980's. Beta vs VHS NEVER FORGET!!!

@john-paulsilke893

7 жыл бұрын

Dave B Crystal Pepsi forever!!! I'm gonna drink this awesome soda forever!

@daveb5041

7 жыл бұрын

I remember it was supposed to taste like pepsi but was clear. Then people realized it didn't taste like pepsi it tasted like shit. Then they said it wasn't supposed to taste like pepsi. I vaguely remember that it was sweeter then pepsi. Would like to try that and new coke as an adult and see what it tasted like. But honestly who would mess with the taste of coke? Its the one thing that generic brands have never been able to touch.

Great coverage of this! Those analog timer controls were hell of a lot easier to work than the later remote-control-only ones, which had a lot of cursoring around and aggravation from choosing the wrong menu item, etc., leading to folks giving up on programming the darn thing and to the 'flashing 12's' becoming a meme long before the Internet. Leading to the invention and success of the VCR+ remote. But I had one of those, too, and occasionally it would program the VCR to tape the wrong show. It also had bugs in its cable-TV lineup dataset and would not be able to tape certain channels. D-oh. I bought a VHS HiFi with great enthusiasm. As a music buff, I was looking forward mainly to making six hour audio-only tapes of my music. And movies on that darn thing did sound awesome, even at slowest speed. But. After stopping, starting and navigating around the tape so much, the tape degraded, leading to that line in the middle of the picture (I fed in my Commodore Amiga's screensaver for some picture content) and that sound like someone shaving with an electric razor in the music. And of course this had to start happening after about 90% into finishing my tape, ruining several nights/weekend hours of work. Live and learn.

@MaximRecoil

8 ай бұрын

"Those analog timer controls were hell of a lot easier to work than the later remote-control-only ones, which had a lot of cursoring around and aggravation from choosing the wrong menu item, etc., leading to folks giving up on programming the darn thing and to the 'flashing 12's' becoming a meme long before the Internet. Leading to the invention and success of the VCR+ remote." By "remote-control-only" ones do you mean the ones with onscreen programming? If so, I thought onscreen programming was way easier to use, at least it was with the VCR I had/have (1988 General Electric VG-7720, made in Japan by Panasonic). Setting the date/time was as easy as falling off a log because you just typed it in on the remote control, just as easy as typing the date and time into this KZread comment. For example, if it was July 12, 1989, 11:30 AM, you would type 07 12 89 11 30, then it prompted you to press 1 for AM or 2 for PM, and then it prompted you to press the "program" button at the exact time, which made it easy to synchronize it with another clock. Programming it to record a TV show was just as easy, because you just typed everything in (start and end time, channel, and whether it would be a one-time thing or daily or weekly), and it had onscreen instructions/prompts walking you through the whole thing, just like when setting the date/time. My VCR was part of the line of VCRs that introduced/popularized onscreen programming / display ("OSD"), and others later copied their blue background OSD, but it was never implemented better than that first generation of Panasonic-manufactured OSD VCRs from the late 1980s. Even today I can't think of any way it could be improved; it was the epitome of user-friendly.

Dang, that was the fastest 30 minutes in a long time. I watched both, part 1 and 2, and really learned some interesting facts I hadn't known about. I do remember a friend of mine buying the Beta format, saying it was superior to the VHS format back in the '80s when Beta was dropping market share. I said to him at the time I would have gone with the VHS since they had the majority of recorded movies and such. Years later he said he should have taken my advice. Great video and glad I ran into this.

Honestly as much I like the increased picture quality I’d totally go with VHS. If Beta I was always available, than I would’ve maybe had a Beta machine lying around for taping important events and TV shows that I want to keep.

@kadajawi2

Жыл бұрын

But VHS had superior image quality, you can see it in the samples.

10:33 How proud of this are you? If I were you, this'd be on my resume. Damn impressive.

@emanuilspasov3678

5 жыл бұрын

im definitely very proud of him for it

@EggBastion

5 жыл бұрын

bONG!

@melodycervantes4167

2 жыл бұрын

Hey, I know it's been two years since you wrote this comment, but I don't get it. Could you explain it?

@theleva7

2 жыл бұрын

@@melodycervantes4167 Erectile dysfunction.

Very interesting case study narrated in a fluid manner. Thanks for this. Great job

Thank you for that enlightening redirect. I had never even thought of Sony's bounceback with the Sony Walkman, etc. and then the huge coup with the success of the Blu Ray for ultra high end videophiles. Good stuff here!

A great 2-parter, was always fascinated by the format war between Beta and VHS. My household growing up never used Beta, but i did have a friend who's parents did. And the inability to share tapes of taped programs was annoying until they caved and got a VHS machine. As for the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war, Sony won that through sheer presence, the PS3 being the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market at around half the price of a dedicated player certainly helped push the Blu-ray format (a trick they used to push PS2's as the cheapest DVD player at the time as well)

@davidwuhrer6704

7 жыл бұрын

+pmailkeey Yes. The first part goes more into the early history and the technical details, as well as user experience of the early models. It is not just bashing Sony for making stupid decisions - in the beginning, Sony did some things right, and for the things that were stupid in hind-sight, they had what seemed good reasons for doing them at the time.

Oh man them tiny vhs tapes and adapters bring back so many memories.

@badad0166

5 жыл бұрын

VHS-C!! (clunk snap grind whirrrrrrr thunk)

Great video, and exceptionally detailed :-) I discovered your channel a couple of days ago and have been binging on your videos whenever I can find time :-) Well, at least in India, they did win the television programming market with the Betacam SP and later on, the Digibeta - in my years as a television editor and producer, I've rarely seen a DVC or any other format used in professional video recording. My biggest axe to grind about the format war is that in markets where the television recording business wasn't exactly big, we were stuck with the 240 lines of VHS resolution while Beta was able to go right up to 500 lines.

@MaximRecoil

8 ай бұрын

"Well, at least in India, they did win the television programming market with the Betacam SP and later on, the Digibeta" But those formats have nothing to do with Betamax, and are therefore irrelevant to the Betamax vs. VHS format war.

The main thing that confuses me still about these type of informative videos is ... how and why do they have dislikes !? Like, are those people pissed at facts ? Is the presentation not up to standard so much for them that its a dislike ? Bots ? I am generally too lazy to like a video and even I have to press like so as not to feel like an a-hole. These type of videos are like having a lecture / a class with a favourite teacher. Not putting a like makes me feel like a jerk. Amazing work sir. Came here cause of your Lase Disc exploration. Subscribed 'cause the VHS & BETA 2 parter.

I was thinking all the show about "what a bad name Beta is" and at the end bang, you brought that name up :)

@mel816

6 жыл бұрын

Looks like they learned their lesson by naming their DSLR line "Alpha" ;-)

@CaravanCamera

5 жыл бұрын

@@mel816 Alpha line was not originated by Sony, but rather Minolta. Sony bought Minolta long after the release of the Alpha line and continued the branding.

I'd love to see a "Halt and Catch Fire" style show on the VCR format war.

Great video as always. I’d love one on the stealth-ish industry success of DigiBeta later on

Very thorough. One point not mentioned but which bugged me: Sony used horrendous compression on their audio and in quiet sections compression racked up the background sounds, sometimes intolerably.

Being that I used both Beta and VHS back in the early 80's I can honestly say that the image quality offered by Beta - when the machines were new and in spec - was noticeably better than VHS. If you were to dub a Beta to a Beta, the image held up pretty well. Going from VHS to VHS, however...bleh. Also, the VHS answer to Super Beta was S-VHS, not VHS HQ. If I'm not mistaken, VHS HQ was really more of better noise reduction circuitry and a slight bump in resolution, but fully backward compatible with the older standard. Super Beta couldn't be played on a regular Beta deck - just as S-VHS could not be played on regular VHS. However, you are correct with how badly Sony screwed the pooch on Beta. They were technology innovators, with bad management decisions everywhere else. They got the CD market and the Walkman market right - at least.

@TechnologyConnections

7 жыл бұрын

I know Wikipedia's not the end-all-be-all of accuracy, but there it is written that HQ was a response to SuperBeta, and the timing would make more sense. S-VHS wasn't released until 2 years after SuperBeta, so I don't think it was a reaction. HQ was "something", and was rolled out quickly. Plus as I mentioned, SuperBeta wasn't the huge increase in resolution that S-VHS and ED-Beta were. I do wish I had a better Beta deck to show these comparisons on, but sadly I don't. I have a total of 3 Beta machines, and they all work, but at various capacities. The SL-5400 in this video doesn't record correctly at all, but it plays back fine. I have an early Sanyo built Sears model that's OK, but has audio problems. I used my best machine here, a front-load Toshiba, but admittedly it's not 100% either. If you keep an eye out for my next video you'll get a better understanding of how I made these clips. Thanks for watching!

@TabPatterson

7 жыл бұрын

They pushed the luminance frequencies up with Super Beta and S-VHS. If you tried to play these recorded tapes on regular machines, it would be very "blown-out" and sparkly. I was doing video production work in the mid-to-late 1980s and nearly all the formats went to this. I mainly used U-Matic, which was treated to the same thing called "U-Matic SP." Betacam became Betacam SP. Yes, you got higher resolution, but the signal-to-noise wasn't that much improved in the consumer formats so dubs were still noisy. Sony tried to improve Beta one more time with Beta ED (extended definition), which bumped the Super Beta standard up another 10 lines or so using metal tape. S-VHS also used metal tape. It was an interesting time back then. Keep up the good work! Your videos are pretty accurate and don't make me want to scream. :)

@MrKeech666

7 жыл бұрын

Actually any Beta tapes could be played in any player regardless of what type of recording machine was used. I grew up with all formats (3/4", 8mm/Hi8, VHS, Laserdisc, and multiple Beta machines both commercial and pro) thanks to my father being in broadcasting, and I can tell you that a Betacam recording in Beta 1 mode would play just fine in any standard Beta (the later mid 80's models, though no commercial model could record in B1), as would a tape recorded on a SuperBeta. The only downside was a reduction in picture quality, and on the early models strange scan-lines.

@mikeydizme1

5 жыл бұрын

That was my experience with both formats as well.

@lawrencedoliveiro9104

5 жыл бұрын

A lot of the generation loss copying between consumer VCRs was not so much actual degradation of the video signal, but poor timebase sync. There were gadgets you could buy (I have one) that would clean up the sync and give you much better copies. Would that have made a difference to the comparison?

For your information, the name "Beta" originally comes from a Japanese word "beta kiroku" which literally means "recording without spaces." "Beta" alone is an onomatopoeia that describes the sound of things sticking together. The U-matic needed extra head gap to avoid crosstalk which resulted in empty spaces between magnetic signals (guard band), but for Betamax, Sony adopted a technique called azimuth recording which allows you to record signals without dead space. But the azimuth effect doesn't work when it comes to recording in even multiple of the original speed, so Beta II seriously suffered from the noise caused by crosstalk which covered one quarter of the screen. Beta II obviously looks worse than VHS SP because of this problem. This is why I think "Beta looked better" kind of opinions are bullshit. Yeah, the original Beta I mode looked way better than VHS SP, but it was abandoned really early like he mentioned in the video. Sony narrowed the head chips when they created SuperBeta so that crosstalk is less of a problem, but it was too late. I do love the Beta format and still own about a dozen Beta VCRs, but I've got to admit that they were really stupid marketing-wise.

@TheSpliceofLife

6 жыл бұрын

And didn't the tape path form the shape of the letter Beta?

@joesterling4299

6 жыл бұрын

I didn't know about the crosstalk problem (thanks for the info), but that was basically my argument at the time. (I was a young adult in the late '70s.) Yes, Beta I is superior to VHS SP, but Beta II clearly not. And that went double for the linearly recorded audio (before AFM, aka HiFi), which had a severely curtailed high-frequency range in Beta II compared to SP.

@lancelot1953

6 жыл бұрын

Even though, the US would represent by far the largest market and the main deciding vote in the success (or failure) of their format - Sony was aiming at best quality (remember the Trinitron) and most advanced technology - and Japanese people were really into technology whereas their American counterpart (I mean the "average" customer) was more into "cheap" (more for your money). This mentality reflected in most of their manufacturing production (cars, motorcycling, audio, video, photo, etc.). At the time, (early seventies), they had misjudged the mentality of the American consumer. Ciao, L

@joesterling4299

6 жыл бұрын

No, sorry lancelot1953. I think you're wrong. The 70s were before personal computers, and the "techie" thing to do was high fidelity. We wanted as much fidelity out of recordings as possible, and we were on board with magnetic tape as the best potential medium for that. What you're overlooking is the absolutely crucial difference in playing time. This was a hard decision for me back then--better fidelity with half the time I really need, or VHS. When Beta 2 became the standard speed for that format, fidelity was no longer an issue. SP is better than Beta 2 for video, and immensely better for linear audio (before AFM).

@lancelot1953

6 жыл бұрын

Hi Joe, I am not sure what we differ on, I agree with you as I was one of those "techies" you are referring to back in the seventies. As far as the Japanese consumer technology pursuit - that was from a marketing study that was revealed to us (I was an intern at Ford) on what was important to the average (underline) American consumer as opposed to their Japanese and German counterparts. We (Ford) were beginning to feel the impact of the Japanese (Toyota) and German (VW bug) in our big car (post 1972) production sale decline. I went to the unveiling presentation of the SL-8200 Betamax (offering B-2 speed) at the electronic show. The specs from Video or Video Review mags presented better specs (I do not remember at what speed) over the newly released VHS model - fidelity which is what I was after. I knew for me, the importance of high fidelity (Reel to reel) tapes - which was what we used in engineering. I am referring to the average buyer which is where a company usually makes money - not as much with technies like us who would go for a Nakamichi Dragon Cassette Deck, McIntosh Amp, Technics SL-1200 turntables, Bose 901 series speakers (or similar competing models) ... I assumed you were one of those "techies" - a compliment, but my apologies if I did not express myself properly. We, Hi-Fi "techies" were the generation that preceded the computer "geeks" generation of the mid-eighties. Regards, Ciao, L

I'm glad you put this two-part series out because it sort of dispels the myth that availability of porn on VHS was the big reason for Betamax's commercial failure.

Really enjoyed this. Our first VCR was an RCA in 1980. I begged my mom to get one so we could record the David Letterman morning show which was on while we were at school. My favorite advancement was the flying erase head. I soooooo hated those red lines.

SONY was sued by the movie industry in the beginning, and that took a lot of effort away from marketing. Then, at least in Europe, the deciding factor for a lot of customers, including myself, was the rentals. Both major movies, and x-rated rentals was almost all on VHS. And of course you wanted the hardware with the most movies to rent.

Excellent analysis! I owned a VHS machine. I remember buying it about 6 months after a few of my friends because the price was really high and then prices fell slowly but inexorably, month after month. Finally, it fell from $1,000 (no way!) to $500 (Not cheap, but...ahhhh....ok.... i want it). I was in heaven. Younger people today don't know how freaking REVOLUTIONARY it was to be able to watch MOVIES AT HOME! Whenever you wanted! And you could fast forward through commercials! And you could watch...ahem... dirty movies in the privacy of your own home! Nowadays, the only way to watch movies is to 'subscribe' to a 'service' which 'streams' them to your TV. Sorry, but that sucks. I want a physical tape or DVD that I can take with me or loan to a friend. I liked my VHS 'library'. I'm a Luddite and I refuse to pay Netflix or Hulu or Mooshabooshalonga every month. Anyway, I really enjoyed your show and tell. I remember that choosing VHS over Beta was an easy choice because my local rental store had ten times more VHS movies than Beta. And I, too, think naming it "Beta" was a marketing blunder. If you're not Avis, you don't say you're second best to Hertz!

@agfagaevart

5 жыл бұрын

yeah...watching movies on a phone ain't the same. Young uns eh?

Your joke about ED Beta at 10:45 is pure gold! I fell out my chair! 💯👌👏

Great channel and thanks for the throw back in time for me picture from my childhood home town Lombard, IL. wow

Love your work

Sony continued the trend of propriety failures for decades. Remember Memory Stick? UGH.

@PainterVierax

6 жыл бұрын

Atrac3 audio format and Mini-Disc too. And this mark has also given its name to one of the most stupid rootkit ever made.

@joeblow8593

5 жыл бұрын

And don't forget "Sony Rootkit"

@ravenfn831

5 жыл бұрын

Yep. They've always been a greedy company, trying to shut all the competition out so they can charge whatever they want. I go out of my way to buy other brands, whenever possible.

@ernestolombardo5811

5 жыл бұрын

@@ravenfn831 A couple of years after buying a Sony CD/DVD burner, I lost the power cord, you know the kind with the yellow ring where you plug it into the device. For no good reason, there are over 30 different proprietary power cords, Radio Shack had about 16 and none of them were it. When I called Sony customer support, the baffled "experts" bounced me around like a ping pong ball for almost an hour, until I ended back with the first person I had talked to. Full circle, even with the SKU # that I dictated to each and every rep. A bureaucratic nadir, they lost track of all the proprietary crap they spit out, no way to get a spare/replacement part. So I went to a local electronics shop, asked them to yank out the stupid proprietary Sony bullshit and install a universal one. Then like you, as it wasn't my first wild goose chase with Sony, I also made a vow to go out of my way and avoid buying anything from them.

@alabamaal225

5 жыл бұрын

"proprietary crap" is a major reason I avoid Apple products. Like VHS vs. Beta, other smartphone/computer manufacturers offer more choices that can interrelate. Apple demands you live in its universe exclusively.

Love your videos and learning more about a lot of the formats I grew up using or was at least aware of, and even some I that I wasn't aware of. I would love to see your take on digital video tape formats, D-VHS/D-Theater, DVC, MiniDV, DVCAM, HDV, MicroMV, Digital8, DigiBeta, HDCAM and the other professional level digital video tape formats from the mid 90s to the late 00s. It seemed like there were a ton of them. Most of which I never got to use because they were for professional productions and way beyond my budget. I got to use miniDV, the MiniDVCAM and HDV. They were a staple of my indie shoestring budget filmmaking days and early pro video career. Also an in-depth video on the three 8mm video formats would be cool too. Just a couple suggestions. Thanks for the great content.

I remember the VCR/Bata wars well. My Family had both. Nice video of Main and Maple. I spent meany summer evenings there at DQ next to the paint store. Watching hot rods cruse main street in the 80's.

I remember my uncle owning some pirated movies on beta. we had to change some three times the tape to watch braveheart at least the quality was ok hahaha

@dunebasher1971

6 жыл бұрын

You were watching Braveheart spread across 1-hour Beta tapes? In the mid-90s?

@Realunmaker

6 жыл бұрын

Yeah. my uncle was the kind of guy that sticks to the choice he makes to the end. I guess he went camp Beta a decade before and stuck to it to the bitter end.

@jondnz

5 жыл бұрын

@@dunebasher1971 My granddad gave us his Betamax VCR in the 90s and I used it to record Rugby League games as back then the Australian competition was only shown late at night on New Zealand TV. I don't remember having to use multiple tapes for things longer than an hour and I'm pretty sure the timer could go up to a week but maybe my granddad had purchased a later model. We were the only people I ever knew to have this format which in hindsight was a bit weird as even in the 90s in New Zealand we were still fairly backward overall heck our first pay tv service only offered 3 extra channels

@kiwihib

4 жыл бұрын

@@jondnz I bought my Sanyo beta when they first came to NZ 1981 was dear tapes as well 30 minutes was the cheapest better quality than VHS also bought later the Sony Hifi better than all later VHS machines had to buy later.

@kiwihib

4 жыл бұрын

@randy s Phillips was longer as like a cassette you could take the tape out and flip it over.

That ED joke killed me

Truly excellent videos. They really shouldn't have been, but they were fascinating and explained the situation is a super way. Kudos - very, very good and informative, not to mention very well researched, videos.

This is another great video which was really good at focusing on the problems that videocassettes faced when they came out. I'm very surprised that you haven't done a segment/video on the other SONY mega-failure. The Elcaset. Actually it was SONY/Panasonic/Teac which should've assured its success. But it really flopped. I can remember audiophiles at boutique stereo stores lining up to buy it. I wonder how that turned out?

Love this video! Maybe it is worth to note that the tape technology of Beta lived on a happy and prosperous life in the professional market in various forms - analog and digital - like Beta SP, DigiBeta, IMX, HDCam, HdcamSR… at many TV stations the Beta tape is a common sight up to this day.

@rarewavemusic

6 жыл бұрын

Thanks for bringing that up. While Sony Beta lost the home market, it seems they won the professional market, and are still going strong.

@bigdchi

5 жыл бұрын

True Until a couple of years ago, many news stations used beta to record stories in the field. Talk to any knowledgeable tv technician and they will tell you beta was superior in quality. A big negative for VHS was the way the tape threaded over the heads and through the machine. Design was much harder on the tape. This is part of the reason that older VHS tapes haven't retained their quality relative to beta tapes.

@kimnach

5 жыл бұрын

Betamax was my analog video format of choice (and I got plenty of grief for it) and have or have had many machines from an early betamax (circa 1979), superbeta (sl-hf900, 1000, 2100), and ed beta (edv-9500, edw-30f, and ed camcorder system); however, do not confuse consumer betamax (or any of its incarnations) with "betacam" et al. that's akin to saying that a chevette is similar to a corvette.

@electrictroy2010

2 жыл бұрын

BetaCAM is not betamax. They are incompatible standards, with Betacam recording tape at 5 times faster speed & completely different format on the tape.

@electrictroy2010

2 жыл бұрын

A 1 hour tape in Betamax only held 12 minutes in a Betacam machine, because they were so drastically different

Let's not forget that in addition to all of that, it was also MUCH easier to find Backdoor Whores 7 for VHS than for Beta in that sketchy dark curtained off area at the back of the local rental shop

@patrickmusson4571

7 жыл бұрын

Lol.

@fredblogs7819

7 жыл бұрын

Tucked in behind the kidneys?

@videolabguy

7 жыл бұрын

There was a 7?

@davidwuhrer6704

7 жыл бұрын

He did mention that in the video, actually.

@kwas101

7 жыл бұрын

Oh the curtained off "adults only" section! How I longed to go back there as a teenager!!!

Thanks for the video. Would love to see a similar video regarding the HD war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

When I was young we basically grew up with VHS and I used to think we don't see BETAs around because they were an older format of cassettes. I didn't know they were made at the same era! Very interesting video(s)!

Not determining what the consumer wants is a problem that a lot of business people have. My pet peeve is computers forcing me to do things only one way, instead of giving me options. Of course many products are that way. No options.

@Tony_Goat

5 жыл бұрын

There also exists the paradox of choice. More choices leads to a sort of lock-up, "there's so many ways to do something, how should I do it?" It's quite the pitfall for people who aren't tech literate (the entire target market for Windows and Mac). If you want choices, try for Linux or a BSD flavor instead.

You really start to "care" for the youtube comments. Very soon you will need a catalyst like the muppets on Techmoan, or else you'll go insane. 😂 Really great and entertaining video btw. Thanks!

Found these two videos really interesting and informative. Also love reminiscing back to the days of VHS-C, filming stuff and popping those lil mini tapes into the adapter. It was so smooth lol Although I also used Hi-8 which was fine, plugging the camcorder into the TV really wasn't that much of an inconvenience. Anyway, all-round good watch, am now subscribed :)

That was awesome, thanks for the video! I got myself a Betamax this week to play some old family recordings.. not having an on screen menu and not being able to ff or rw while watching is annoying me from the very beginning lol