How Sony's Betamax lost to JVC's VHS Cassette Recorder

The betamax was a largely superior product, but JVC were ruthless, cheaper, lower quality, hostile marketing, bribing partners into exclusivity. Sony wasn't ready for that sort of hostility.

Funnily enough, Sony faced similar competition with the CD and Blu-ray but they were far more savvy. The Blu-ray vs HD DVD was a great example of the superior product winning in the marketplace.

Very few tech companies care about quality, but Sony has a great track record for it.

What did the Audio Dub do? I have never had a VCR with that on it

One thing I've observed is that whenever you have a device that relies on 3rd party products to be really useful, the winner is inevitably the one that gets the most support, and rarely the one which is merely technically the best. We saw it with video cassettes where VHS quickly dominated the rental market. We saw it with computers. First with the 8-bit home computers where the Commodore 64, and in Britain the ZX Spectrum, became more popular than other arguably superior machines that lacked the same range of games. Later, the IBM PC standard became dominant again due to the sheer mass of software available for it. Interestingly, Apple seemed to have learnt a lesson when they introduced the iPhone and made sure there was a wide range of easily available apps for it.

When you demostrated an old style recorder why did you show a film projector?
Also, Beta beat VHS in the professional market for the next 20 years.

Amazing Explanation

I was a kid when the rental boom of the early 80s happened. I knew a few people who had beta, but most people definitely had VHS. Also, I still remember the small video stores...at the time, they'd all have a tiny beta section and VHS dominated.

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Funny cause in HS we had both - mom worked at the library and would bring home bags and bags of the beta tapes for me to watch - if it came out in the 80's on beta - I saw It

Sony had to swallow it's pride and switch to VHS manufacturing by the 90's.

It lost cause betamax was expensive as hell lol Talking $2000+ for a betamax player vs $300-$500 for a vcr. Well early on vcrs could brake the 1k range, but it was still nowhere near betamax players

The biggest reason for the Betamax failure, was Sony refused to license it's technology to other companies. JVC licensed it's format to other companies, which spurred competition, rapid development, and lower prices. Sony wanted to keep it's technology proprietary, and paid the price.

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It shouldnt have lost against the far inferior VHS, Beta I recordings were amazingly clear

So, the circuit board shown on the right side at 027 is not digital?

Anyone here from watching episode 9 of Edomae Elf after hearing about Betamax? Just me? Ok......

I’m quite surprised you simply looked at the oil dampened mechanism on a specific machine as the definitive comparison for loading time. Huh? Some beta machine also did not have a dampened eject mechanism. Also both types soon went with front loading motorized mechanisms. You really should have inserted a tape then hit play to give a good comparison of loading time as the beta system pulls a LOT of tape out and winds it almost all the way around the transport into a beta shape. But comparing the eject doors? Come on, you are waaay smarter than that.

20% lighter, twice the playtime and caters for normal play time length, 30% cheaper: sounds similar to the EV race? In some ways ;_-)

Beta actually doesn't have a better picture. It's often mistaken with BetaCAM

I think you Missed the main Point : While Sony was way better it was Just Japanese, Hollywood rather choose the Inferior, but US made, VHS

You forgot that Sony was stingy with the Betamax
They denied any company to make 3rd party Betamax players and wish the Betamax to be exclusively a Sony product, rendering the Betamax expensive
Where as JVC (Japan Victor Company)'s VHS was open license with the VHS standard

I remember they said the real reason VHS beat Betamax was because of the Porn industry. Betamax was more expensive to produce porn OR that Sony refuse to allow porn to be made & sold with their equipment. (Or is that an Urban Myth?)

Yeah, better times i think back then, now days to make this machine would be a great challenge for engineers, I don't think they could make it with all the modern technologies we have.

Betamax did absolutely not have better image quality. While it in fact true that the original Betamax I specifications gave a better image than VHS, the original Betamax I tape ran at a higher speed (1.575 inches per second) . Along with it’s smaller physical cassette, and larger reels, Sony could only squeeze 500 feet of tape inside - just enough tape inside the cassette for a maximum recording time of 1 hour - not even long enough to record a broadcast move, let alone a sporting event. When VHS entered the market with a standard 2 hour tape, (larger physical cassette, smaller reels inside, and slower tape speed of 1.31 inches per second, and more tape - 812 feet) Sony instantly dropped that standard and Betamax II took over, with a slower tape speed (.787 inches per second) in order to match the VHS record time. Once vHS came out Sony immediately revised the specifications, dropped Betamax I and moved immediately to Betamax II with a slower tape speed, and the two Betamax systems were incompatible. Betamax II machines could not even playback tapes recorded on the original Betamax I machines.
So, the moment VHS came out, Betamax lost its claim to better video quality - something they did deliberately as they realised better quality was trumped by longer record times. At that point it was a war between the original VHS spec versus Betamax II - and VHS ran at 1.31 inches per second and Betamax II at ,787 inches per second, meaning the second VHS was released, VHS was and the format with better quality, as Sony threw out the original higher quality in order to obtain higher capacity. VHS never competed with Betamax I… ever.

how is it just good enough when its lighter and cheaper....

Actually, it came down to JVC getting Disney to use only VHS format blocking out Betamax. No parent was going to buy a machine that did not play videos for their kids. You get the kids you got the adults

I remember going to Albertsons in '83 or '83 with my Mom and renting The Warriors and the Betamax player. The Warriors was and still is my favorite Movie!!!!

"the winner is the one who is just good enough" That's people all over.

As it is today these are both well obsolete and this is why DVD recorders are much better in saturation,recording,picture quality,sound and they are worth only between 10-25 dollars now.

He left out the influence of the porno market. They swung towards VHS.

Well Explained To the point , No Stupid Images and Music 👍

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Perhaps on a market level this is true, but on an individual level, the Betamax seems so much more appealing to me. I would have rather the Betamax overcome its limitations in tape size and make more business deals to have a superior quality product available. Image quality matters a lot to me, after all. I was a somewhat early adopter of 4k technology and still use 4k for gaming and entertainment whenever I can, for example. At a glance, image quality of this level may at first seem superficial, but overtime, you really get used to it, and you can tell right away when you drop down in quality. I could never go back to 1080p for example after using 4k displays for so long for media that is 4k compatible.

this may as well be 1920's technology compared to what we have today

Yo no tenía esa tecnología
El jueves 13 de febrero 2023. Marca SONY

BETAMAX

Great video. I remember this as my friend's family got a beta-max and we didn't get a recorder until the vhs was dominate.

I stubbornly held on to my Betamax machines until the early 90s, I'd record films off my brothers VHS and it made better quality copies than VHS to VHS

Do you own a store in Beverly Hills? If so, Just forget about advertising on TV. Your customer's time is valuable, so they just zap the commercials. The audience for commercials is old folks on social security who live in Compton and watch them on their old black and white TV.

The real losers of this conflict were advertisers. VHS owners watched TV programs they had recorded on a cassette and pressed "Fast Forward" on the remote control, thus avoiding wasting time watching commercials. Nielsen ratings told them about all the people who watched the shows. These folks zipped through commercials except for those who could not afford a VCR or the crap the advertiser was trying to sell.

"Whatever you want to watch" was a pornographic video cassette. For a while most stores would sell you a beta-max or a VHS, Then the pornographers saw that way more people were buying VHS. They thought they could earn way more if they made all their cassettes VHS. Consumers said " WTF would anybody buy a beta-max if you can't watch porn on it ?"
The real dumbells worked for RCA. They invented a machine that would play a disc like a phonograph would ,but RCA could record SO many images on the disc you could buy a movie that was recorded on a disc. The machine and the discs had bargain prices, but RCA refused to make anything used for pornography.

Proof how dumb societal sheep are.

I always thought VHS had better quality, but then I thought maybe the betamax wasn't working as well, or the tapes themselves we're faulty.

More Porn was being shot Directly to VHS because it was cheaper. Thus. it was more popular. The Porn Industry always decides Format wars.

The only time I was glad we had a Betamax growing up was when my mate stole a porn tape on Betamax 😀

This is 100 percent what I was looking for! Thank you.

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the reason why VHS won over Betamax and Video2000 had nothing to do with picture quality or recorder weight. Other than Sony or Grundig, JVC did not refuse to have their video system also being used for porn. Opening up their system also for adult movies was the winning move. Video rental stores made 40% of their revenue with ‚regular‘ movies and 60% with porn films.