# better technologies that failed (i.e. BetaMax) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 2, 2014, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178 "2014-10-02T12:49:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2014, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/81 "2014-10-05T22:32:20Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > The crowd that populates Apple stores and hangs out over at the Genius Bar tend to be convinced that their various i-goods represent the pinnacle engineering on earth in every respect, even when tech analyses of each new product show that it is technologically behind the curve with respect to competitors. Your responses place you in this group of thinkers. My entire point about iPhones is that they are well-proven tech presented as the absolute newest possible tech in incomprehensible, foamy marketing-babble - so if you can’t see the connection between what Apple aficionados tend to believe and my points about marketing, then I guess all that’s left is an _ad hominem_ attack. Or a straw man. Or something. So now you’re trying to justify your stereotyping. How nice of you. All I’ve asked of you is to back up what you’ve said, to demonstrate the courage of your convictions. For that, you gleefully project stereotypes. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2014, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/82 "2014-10-06T02:39:03Z")
> [@zbuzz](#): > > “iPhones still fall well behind the curve in most technical respects.” What he meant was “iPhones are a curve in most technical respects.” Also, you’re holding it wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Arcite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/67e7ee/32.png) [@Arcite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arcite)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2014, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/83 "2014-10-06T15:28:30Z")
> [@Coriolanus](#): > > (bolding mine) > > That’s why - just enthusiasts who get to see plasma screens at their friends houses or in a special ‘living-room-esque’ demo room in a store. I worked in Wal-mart in 2008 and in a big-box store plasma screens look glassy and reflect the fluorescent lighting, something which a matte-type-finish LCD screen by Samsung doesn’t. You could tell customers that plasma is superior in many ways, but they pretty much came for LCD and that’s what they bought. I think Wal-mart got out of the plasma TV business around that time. > > But yeah, not a “tech-war” any more than how tube amplifiers are superior to transistor based amps. Yes, it’s probably inevitable that the mass-market buyer shopping at a big-box store won’t care. But I think what did plasmas in was the advent of LED backlighting. That’s what made it possible to have the LCDs outshine the plasmas on the big-box showroom floor (even though in your own living room, you’re never watching TV at that brightness level.) > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Plasmas also use a lot more power, which is bad for individual electric bills and other things. I’ll miss plasma when we have to replace my second lovely Panasonic, but having an 80-inch screen or a larger projection display at half to one-third the power consumption will be to the good. I think this is one of those triumphs of “marketing” that’s being discussed in this thread. Everybody knows that “plasmas use more power,” but do they stop to think about how much more? According to [this calculator](http://www.rtings.com/info/lcd-vs-led-vs-plasma/power-consumption-and-electricity-cost), at an electricity rate of $0.11 per kWh, watching 5 hours of TV per day, a 55 inch LED-LCD will cost $13.39 per year, while a plasma of the same size will cost $27.25. So you’re paying $1.16 more per month for having a plasma. That difference might make you feel good about doing your small part to be green, but it’s not like the people who buy these TVs are sending their kids to school with no lunch money because they opted for plasma over LCD. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2014, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/84 "2014-10-06T15:51:02Z")
> [@wedgehed](#): > > I’d like to vote for the Kodak Brownie. My mom took the most wonderful family photos with her Brownie back in the 40s & 50s. In the early 60s she replaced it with some sort of Kodak instamatic. Sure, it was smaller, easier to carry around, had a flash, & could take color photos. > > But the photos were crappy. I’ll politely disagree somewhat on this one. A lot of the 126 Instamatics had a stiff shutter release that made it easy to twist the camera as you were depressing it. That made for a lot of blurry pictures that didn’t need to be. If you had a steady hand with it, the pics were typically pretty decent, especially for what you were paying for. But its various successors and replacements the 110 and the [Disc Camera](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_film) were successive regressions in quality, regardless of what you did. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2014, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/85 "2014-10-06T15:53:50Z")
> [@Arcite](#): > > I think this is one of those triumphs of “marketing” that’s being discussed in this thread. Everybody knows that “plasmas use more power,” but do they stop to think about how much more? According to [this calculator](http://www.rtings.com/info/lcd-vs-led-vs-plasma/power-consumption-and-electricity-cost), at an electricity rate of $0.11 per kWh, watching 5 hours of TV per day, a 55 inch LED-LCD will cost $13.39 per year, while a plasma of the same size will cost $27.25. So you’re paying $1.16 more per month for having a plasma. That difference might make you feel good about doing your small part to be green, but it’s not like the people who buy these TVs are sending their kids to school with no lunch money because they opted for plasma over LCD. Plasmas are also heavy and they run hot (you can literally feel the heat coming off the screen if you’re close enough). Superiority in this space is subjective, but just like Beta versus VHS, there is superior technology when comparing Plasma versus LCD/LED. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2014, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/86 "2014-10-06T17:12:44Z")
Not sure if this fully qualifies In mountain biking, the early 90’s saw a lot of bikes with twist shifters as standard, which had several advantage over thumb button shifters. But they did have some crucial disadvantages as well (the biggest being that while there were fewer ways for grip shifters to break, when they did break that was it for them). Opinions differed as to which one was better but bikes seemed to stop coming with twist shifters by the middle 90’s. ---
**Author:** ![FordTaurusSHO94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f07891/32.png) [@FordTaurusSHO94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FordTaurusSHO94)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2014, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/87 "2014-10-06T18:42:38Z")
SRAM still makes high level grip shifters alongside their trigger style shifters. ---
**Author:** ![Arcite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/67e7ee/32.png) [@Arcite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arcite)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/88 "2014-10-09T16:27:05Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Plasmas are also heavy and they run hot (you can literally feel the heat coming off the screen if you’re close enough). Superiority in this space is subjective, but just like Beta versus VHS, there is superior technology when comparing Plasma versus LCD/LED. I think these objections arealso more of the same “marketing” that shouldn’t really make that much of a difference. I just bought a [Samsung PN51F8500](http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-pn60f8500/) (the reason I’m somewhat vested in this topic,) my first plasma, and in fact the first big-screen flat panel TV I’ve personally owned, as I lived with housemates for 3 years, and one of them had an LCD-LED in the living room, and before that I still had a CRT. I don’t know whether the heat objection was overstated from the beginning, or plasmas have just improved a lot (I have read old reviews where people complain that their AC runs continuously when they have their plasma TV on,) but my TV feels… barely warm. I’ve stood in front of flourescent-backlit LCDs that gave off more heat than my plasma. As for the weight objection, that’s somewhat akin to the “power use” comparison–while technically true, it’s pretty trivial. My TV weighs 50 pounds, and I didn’t exactly break my back mounting it. Perhaps more importantly, a TV is a pretty permanent fixture in a room. You bring it home, mount it on the wall or place it on a stand, and don’t move it for several years. With that in mind, how much does weight really matter? For comparison’s sake, let’s say I had bought the 60 inch version (Samsung doesn’t make a 51 inch LED-LCD.) It weighs 64.4 pounds. Their [latest-and-greatest 60 inch LED-LCD smart TV](http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/UN60F8000BFXZA) weighs 45.1 pounds. When it’s something you barely move at all, how much difference does 19 pounds really make? ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2014, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/89 "2014-10-09T17:42:55Z")
Weight was always an important consideration to me because I used to move a lot as a young twentysomething and lugging a 90-pound CRT around got old after a while. So when the 42" LED I bought was 33 pounds and a comparable 42" Plasma in the store at the time was 53, that was just one more check in LED’s favor. You say “marketing,” I say feature I was looking for independent of the marketing… ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/90 "2014-10-10T21:48:22Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > The Atari 7800 was a dandy little video game system, but they never put out many games for it. Putting out hardware without software is a recipe for disaster. It was inferior to the NES (and SMS), not better, though. If it had come out in 1984 as intended instead of waiting 2 years, it would have been the best around, but it didn’t. The Wii certainly kicked the asses of the PS3 & 360 though, and it was hella underpowered compared to those. The PS2 was far weaker than the GC and Xbox, but that year of lead time on the market, plus free DVD playback (Xbox made you pay extra, GC didn’t have it at all), and backwards compatibility with the vast PSX library made for a perfect storm of dominance. And going back further the 2600 was king of the pre-crash era, even though Intellivsion, Colecovision, and even Atari’s own 5200 far outperformed it. It was so dominant that all three of those systems wound up with converters to play 2600 games! Going back to laserdisc, flipping/changing discs several times per movie certainly didn’t help the format to take on VHS. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/91 "2014-10-10T21:53:16Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Clearly, the PS3 could have had an ordinary DVD drive. It would have worked just fine. It would have knocked at least some off the cost. It would have been reliable. It would have had more than enough capacity for all the games that were ever released for the box. More than enough capacity if you wanted games coming on 10 discs, maybe. Hell, why not put a simple CD-ROM drive in there, I mean you’d only need 50 discs then. Would have worked just fine. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/92 "2014-10-10T22:40:43Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Exactly. If you are going to introduce a technological innovation, no matter what its advantages it CANNOT have, or seem to have, any disadvantages. It has to match ease of use and familiarity and smell just like the traditional tech before the one big leap it contains will be accepted. > > One of the things that reinforces this response from the market is that too many manufacturers have brought out “completely new and different” products that were utter shit, either due to outright fakery (a new kind of plastic does not a better vacuum cleaner make) or insufficient regard for how they would be used in the real world (people won’t completely change the way they wash clothes, for example). I think you’re over-stating the effect, and under-estimating the effort it takes to refine a new product category. It takes a lot of iterations to refine a new technology until it becomes a refined, reliable product. When the first commercial jet airliner was sold, it took 13 fatal crashes before the cause was identified. Apple’s first tablet (Newton) was a failure, and widely ridiculed. And plenty of new technologies take hold despite obvious disadvantages, because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. DVD replaced VHS even though you couldn’t record TV shows on them. (Yes, there’s DVD-R, but that’s a niche market, at least in the US.) High-end laptops used to have 500GB or larger hard drives, now 128GB (SSD) is typical. We used to have cell phones whose standby time was measured in days, while our new smartphones need to be charged every night. ---
**Author:** ![henker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/46a35a/32.png) [@henker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/henker)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2014, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/93 "2014-10-23T02:38:59Z")
Didn’t the Commodore 64 have S-video long before anyone else did? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2014, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/94 "2014-10-23T03:37:44Z")
> [@henker](#): > > Didn’t the Commodore 64 have S-video long before anyone else did? From what I can tell, no: [It had a video output which was similar to S-Video, but wasn’t](http://sta.c64.org/cbmmon.html); it is, however, [apparently straightforward to convert what the C64 had to S-Video using only a cable, with no extra logic.](http://sta.c64.org/cbmsvideo.html) [More on how to make the cable.](http://ilesj.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/c64-s-video-cable-the-easy-way-and-with-no-scart/) [More on the C64’s native A/V jack, which had enough pins to combine audio and video into one connection.](http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/A/V_jack) ---
**Author:** ![runningdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@runningdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/runningdude)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2014, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/95 "2014-10-26T17:32:48Z")
> [@zbuzz](#): > > If you bought your Macbook when it new, then Office 2004 was the current version for Mac. It ran under the Rosetta translator and had system requirements of 256 MB of RAM and 610 MB of disk space. If you bought a base Macbook, it would have come with 512 MB of RAM and a 60 GB hard drive. > > How did it not “even run MS Office?” What immediate upgrades did it need to make Office usable? A precursory web search for other people who couldn’t run Office 2004 on 2006 MacBooks until they made hardware upgrades results in pretty much nothing. The spec’s you provide are correct; however the [minimum requirements](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/871018) for MS Office you cite are for a native processor (no revised requirements for Rosetta appear to have been issued). With only 500 mb of RAM, Microsoft Word under Rosetta would hang and crash frequently. I believe it even corrupted files I was working on occasionally when it crashed. Only after upgrading to two gigabytes of RAM did the program become reliable. If you objected to strictly “even run”, understand that this was meant as hyperbole. Technically, it ran, but for a brand new computer, its performance was abysmal. I could have easily added “even run with any reliability”, but that seemed to be unnecessarily exact language. After all, I was ultimately complimenting the computer’s reliability. I am still able to edit this post, even with one memory slot dead (although performance suffers with 1 gigabyte today). ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2014, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/96 "2014-10-26T20:48:13Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > The crowd that populates Apple stores and hangs out over at the Genius Bar tend to be convinced that their various i-goods represent the pinnacle engineering on earth in every respect, even when tech analyses of each new product show that it is technologically behind the curve with respect to competitors. Your responses place you in this group of thinkers. My entire point about iPhones is that they are well-proven tech presented as the absolute newest possible tech in incomprehensible, foamy marketing-babble - so if you can’t see the connection between what Apple aficionados tend to believe and my points about marketing, then I guess all that’s left is an _ad hominem_ attack. Or a straw man. Or something. Apple has been building up their CPU/GPU design capabilities for years, and for the last couple generations their internally designed chips are substantially outperforming all rivals. While the CPU/GPU is only one component, it has a huge impact, and they are clearly leading in that arena. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2014, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/97 "2014-10-27T07:16:38Z")
> [@PSXer](#): > > Laserdisc failed even though it was better than VHS and Beta > > It was too expensive. And the discs were too cumbersome. It was ahead of its time. People back then weren’t ready for widescreen at home and audio commentaries Plus, you could bootleg tape MUCH more easily than Lasers… But - If you want the last remaining version of the original Star Wars - see Laser - the tapes rotted years ago, but I still have my Lasers AND a player 😉 ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2014, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/98 "2014-10-27T07:24:56Z")
Sheet film - even the baby 2x3’s produced hugely superior images to anything ever produced on roll film with the same optics. But roll film was cheap and easy, and you could carry hundreds of images in a large pocket. But mainly, George Eastman owned a ton of patents on everything relating to roll film, and he bought camera companies and started turning out roll film cameras. By 1930, it was over. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2014, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/99 "2014-10-27T07:48:48Z")
> [@bump](#): > > And… as for the Beta vs. VHS fight, that one was decided primarily by 2 things. First, people liked having longer recording times- originally Beta was a 1 hour tape, and VHS was 2, which meant that you could actually record an entire broadcast movie on 1 tape with VHS. > > Second, JVC was more free with the licensing, which meant that more units could be produced by more manufacturers, driving the price per VCR down. So you basically ended up with cheaper and longer recording time (the 2 hour movie was IMO the big point there) versus _slightly_ better quality and size. Cheap almost always wins out over quality if there’s not a huge perceived difference, and something like an inability to record an entire 2 hour movie or TV special is a BIG strike against a VCR. well, there was a 3rd thing, even if it isn’t mentioned much. Sony, with its usual desire to control everything, was more restrictive in what content could be put out on Beta. Whereas anybody could produce and sell VHS tapes. Specifically, porn. Sony made it hard for porn producers to use Beta, so they used VHS. Thus there was a lot more porn available on VHS early on. And frankly, a lot of the young, male, early-adopter types went with VHS because of that. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2014, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178/100 "2014-10-27T11:53:25Z")
> [@Sigene](#): > > . . . .the most obvious example I have is BetaMax vs. VCR technology . . . As an aside, I have been told that the death knell for BetaMax was when people started to conflate VHS and VCR 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/better-technologies-that-failed-i-e-betamax/700178.md?page=6)