It’s not the same format. The broadcast quality format used by professionals is called BetaCam. It originally used cassettes with the same external configuration as Betamax, but the recording format was different and non-compatible with Betamax. The original Betacam format could use consumer grade Betamax tapes, but Sony later upgraded it to Betacam SP (Superior Performance) by using a higher density tape and enlarging the cassettes to hold up to 90 minutes.
However, you’re right that Betamax wasn’t a failure in the same sense that most of the other products mentioned here were. It was simply the loser in a battle for marketplace dominance. From a technical standpoint, Betamax was arguably superior to VHS in several respects. It’s just that VHS introduced several key advantages (most importantly, two-hour recording capability) before Beta, gaining small leads that eventually became large enough to kill its competitor in a segment in which competing formats were in no one’s interest.
How the industry can be repeating this debacle 25 years later with the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray competition boggles my mind.
There was a third video recorder format that was marketed by Philips and Grundig, called Video 2000. As you can see from this Wikipedia article it was superior is some ways to both VHS and Betamax. I owned one of the machines and the only reason I changed to VHS was the lack of pre-recorded tapes in the Video 2000 format.
Was there some race of three-legged people running around at some point in the 70s or something that my history classes have, so far, failed to educate me about?
When I was a little bitty kid (like… 4?), they had something at McDonalds that I thought was the Arch something… I remember all the signs and billboards and stuff said it was a hamburger for grown-ups and it had cauliflower on it. Was that the same thing? I have no idea what a Big N Tasty is, but I can’t imagine it having cauliflower on it.
Fiero was killed even though it sold all it made. The execs wanted it to have universal appeal but a large portion of sales went to women. For some reason the big shots saw this as a problem. They put spoilers on the last ones and made them faster. It was a girls commuter car. Whats wrong with that.
Some insiders I know claimed it was just to test the plastic technology for the upcoming Saturn.
Big 3 are not run well. Never have been.
No, Sony lost for the same reason Apple lost: anyone and everyone could make VHS system machines, but only Sony could make Betamax machines (with a few small exceptions and very expensive and onerous licensing issues). This is why 90% of us use a PC and few use a Mac- you can only buy Mac products from Apple.
Wasn’t the FIERO cobbled together from existing parts? The concept was great-had GM invested the money up front, they could have had a world-class sports car. instead, they cheapened it at every turn. using plastic clips on the fuel line (where it passed near the hot exhaust manifold )was also brilliant-that caused a LOT of engine fires! GM really is company run by accountants-they are so fixated on costs, that they ignore the big picture. I just had to replace some swatbar links on my SATURN-why they didn’t use a more robust desgine? probably cost $0.25/car more! :smack:
It still lives on as an “industrial” OS. Not all that long ago, I saw a BART ticket vending machine booting up into OS/2 Warp.
It’s not a brand, but whatever happened to AM Stereo?
Kodak’s instant cameras flopped, but mainly because Polaroid hit them with patent violations. Kodak’s Disc Film didn’t last all that long, mainly because the image quality was poor on anything bigger than a 3x5 print.
Around here, web-based delivery of groceries and various small things like video rentals made a big splash for about a year or two, then vanished - another dot-bomb casualty. For a while though, you couldn’t walk downtown without getting hit by the legions of Kozmo messengers and Webvan or Peapod grocery delivery trucks.
It’s hard to label Apple as a loser. Yes, PCs have the lion’s share of market, but Apple has significant presence in niche markets (graphic design, for instance). And for a period in the 1990s, Apple did license other vendors to make Mac compatibles. I had a friend who bought a PowerMax Mac clone - it behaved exactly like a Mac, only it was cheaper and way more expandable than the Quadras they were putting out back then. (Steve Jobs put an end to that experiment fairly quickly, though.)
The fact that Apple is still around and making new computers counters the idea that they “lost.” They’re not number one, but they and the Mac aren’t going away anytime soon.
It apparently still exists, though not many stations are using it, and the equipment to listen to it is very obscure. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on AM stereo. I’m an avid radio guy, and I’ve never seen a home receiver for AM stereo. In fact, I’ve only heard it once. In Toronto, one of the unused cable channels rebroadcast the sound of 1050 CHUM in stereo. It was awful. Pretty much full separation, marred by atmospheric and electrical interference. The chief engineer at the station where I work has never heard it, nor seen a receiver, either. It’s kind of a pity how thousands of stations spent millions of dollars to convert to it, essentially for nothing.
Incidentally, one of our satellite recording computer systems at the station is still using OS2/Warp. It’s about to be retired, though.
How 'bout the Anthony dollar? These things were supposed to replace the $1.00 bill starting in 1979. The problems:
The coins were only slightly larger than a quarter.
The coins were made of the exact same metal as the quarter, so at a glance, they were identical.
The mint continued to print dollar bills and dollar coins at the same time, giving consumers no reason to switch.
The 1980 run of Anthony dollars was 10% of the initial 1979 run, the demand was so low. And the 1981 run was 10% of the 1980 run, and the 1981 coins were released only in special mint sets or through rolls you’d have to buy directly from the mint.
Still, the Anthony dollar maintained some kind of circulation in the United States. When legislation was passed to create a new dollar coin in 2000, the mint found it was running out of dollars by the middle of 1999, so it struck some more Anthonys that year.
The new Sacagawea dollar, while better designed, has also been something of a flop, largely because the mint still wouldn’t discontinue the dollar bill. The 2000 run was the largest, followed by a much smaller 2001 run, and then the mint continued striking Sacagaweas through 2006, but again, only for mint sets and not for circulation.
2007 is seeing possibly a third failure: the U.S. Presidents dollars. This time, each dead president is going to get his portrait on a coin, four presidents per year until we’re done (and yes, Grover Cleveland is appearing twice.) Sacagawea is taking a breather, and this year we’ll be seeing the Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison dollars, with the Statue of Liberty on the back. The mint is hoping that coin collectors will get excited, and that regular folks will, too, just like they did over the successful Fifty State quarters series (scheduled to end next year.) A shiny William Henry Harrison dollar says that this series will also be declared a failure by 2009. As long as those paper dollars continue, the coin’s going to fail! Ask the Canadians—they know!
-The highly unpopular DIVX dvd players at Circuit City.
Buy a dvd at rental price that will only work for 48 hours. Pay more if you want to keep it. Baaaad idea.
-The SONY MD (minidisc).
-I’m still waiting for both BlueRay and HD-DVD players and discs to go on clearance. An overpriced technology that has pretty much no demand.
The sad thing about it was that Edsel Ford was a quality car designer who took the lead in developing the body design for the Model A, and the original Lincoln Continental (1940 model shown).
