Sony announced today that in 2016, it will cease production of Betamax tapes. I suspect I will not be the only one surprised to learn that Sony was still making Betamax tapes. I can understand having old recordings on old tapes (I still have a few VHS tapes lying around), but who out there is recording new things with them?
At any rate, farewell, Betamax. We hardly knew ye.
I’ll be surprised if anyone did know they were still making them. Are they still making 8-tracks too?
Cheap Trick album released in 2009 on 8-track.
The article doesn’t say; who are their customers these days? Are there applications for which it’s preferred over digital recording? Or is it simply that some people continue to own and operate Betamax recorders and never made the switch?
It’s frustrating how quickly technology changes these days. At least I can still enjoy my ‘Police Academy’ and ‘The Flamingo Kid’ tapes. They can’t take those away from me!
Wasn’t a version of Betamax the standard for broadcast TV studios until very recently?
I’m picturing Betamax players in yurts on an open plain.
Nah, they’re still using Edison cylinders.
I would say some old security equipment or something like that would be the reason it was still being made.
Or Sony simply forgot about that line of manufacturing, and the workers were surely not going to remind them.
Betacam, not Betamax. The Betacam S cassettes used the same form-factor as Betamax but had a higher-resolution encoding system. Think S-VHS vs. VHS. Those were largely supplanted by DigiBeta which again uses the same form-factor cassettes but with digitally-encoded video, up to 720p.
Presumably they were selling Betamax cassettes and not just warehousing the production each year. So I’m curious who the end user customers were that were buying this tape, even if in small quantities. I mean, I’ve heard of people still interested in Polaroid film or some of the Kodak films, but there are usually particular reasons (artistic or technical) why these products appeal to them.
I used an old JVC hifi* VHS for audio recordings in a small studio for a while. Maybe Betas were used similarly?
*HRD470, if any were wondering
Prior to digital many of the earlier broadcast cameras (and television stations) used beta tapes. Perhaps they’ve been selling to smaller stations.
Betacam was the standard for ENG (electronic news gathering) before Digital came in. With SVHS, the in-the-field camera guy had a recorder on a strap hanging over one shoulder and a camera resting on the other. With Betacam, the camera was also the recorder.
I wonder who, i. e. what category of customer, was actually still buying Betamax tapes recently. I would guess these weren’t regular consumers who for some reason happened to be stuck in the past.
I’m imagining some 18-year-old newbie in Tokyo walking up to his boss:
“Sir, the shipment of Betamax tapes is ready to go out tomorrow.”
" Snerk Good joke, kid. I’m surprised you even know what a Betamax tape is."
“No, seriously. Look here.”
"Dafuq !!! … we haven’t made Betamax players since, I dunno, World War 2 or something. Why in the hell are we still make tapes? Who’s buying them?
“Hmmm… The ‘Ship to’ coordinates are just an empty spot in the ocean. Are they just tossing them overboard?”
“Probably. I’m guessing nobody had the heart to shut the line down and fire the workers. Sigh I guess I get to be the bad guy. (Lucky me.)”
Great. Now I have to upgrade all of my collection to Laser Disc.
I still record football games on VHS
At the Parent’s night at my daughter’s school last year there was a video played on a cassette. The older parents giggled when they saw it, the younger ones crinkled up their brows.
The video included a statememt from the new principal, so couldn’t have been made more than a few weeks earlier. Might well have been betamax.
With the express written consent of the National Football League I presume.