There was a war between Betamax and VHS video recording tape and VHS won. Unfortunately, Beta had a better image but it also had Sony's large licensing fee whereas JVC essentially open-sourced the VHS format to anyone who wanted to manufacture it.
Unknown to a lot of people, Betamax was still in heavy use by television stations because of the better image quality. From the UK Guardian:
Betamax is dead, long live VHS
Sony has announced that in March next year it will stop producing Betamax video cassette tapes, forty years after its introduction and 28 years after losing the war to VHS.
Assumed already dead by many, the final Betamax cassette will roll off the production line in March 2016 as its maker concedes defeat to the march of time, 20 ,maybe 30, years late.
The video cassette format was pioneered by Sony in the early 1970s and first released into homes embedded in a 19in TV in 1975. It was embroiled in a format war with rival video cassette VHS, produced by Japanese firm JVC.
Betamax came first and initially offered superior video quality, but when offered a license to use Betamax by Sony, rival JVC decided to develop its own open format to avoid Sony’s domination of the market with a format it would control.
As television stations upgrade their equipment, there is a vigorous market for the used stuff - particularly for small stations in developing nations. I bet there are a lot of Betamax recorders being lovingly maintained by these engineers.
Leave a comment