# Is porno the reason why VHS beat Beta?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-porno-the-reason-why-vhs-beat-beta/148421>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 14, 2003, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-porno-the-reason-why-vhs-beat-beta/148421 "2003-01-14T01:24:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-porno-the-reason-why-vhs-beat-beta/148421/21 "2003-01-15T14:36:37Z")

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**Fretburner** , surely you’re aware that Beta SP, Digibeta and Betamax have hardly anything to do with the original Beta format of the 1970s.

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**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-porno-the-reason-why-vhs-beat-beta/148421/22 "2003-01-15T14:52:14Z")

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While it’s true that the first home videocassette recorders were made available in the 1960s, I know for a fact that they were hellaciously expensive, and I have it on pretty good authority that they were clunky and somewhat prone to mishap (Hugh Hefner actually had a live-in Ampex engineer for a while there, although this could have been a publicity stunt).

The U-Matic machines were also large, clunky, and hellaciously expensive, although the picture quality was quite good. The local TV stations around here were STILL using U-Matic in the late eighties for their news video, and may still be doing so, for all I know.

But VHS was there, and it was cheap, and it flooded the market, and caught the public’s imagination at the right time at the right price. My first machine was VHS, because in my mind at that time, “Beta” hooked up with “extremely expensive”.

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**Author:** ![Fretburner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fretburner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretburner)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-porno-the-reason-why-vhs-beat-beta/148421/23 "2003-01-15T14:53:54Z")

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I am aware of that. I was just trying to qualify my my earlier post a little bit. I’ve seen Beta/Betamax tapes from the 70’s and early 80’s and they seem to have held up better than VHS tapes of roughly the same vintage.

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**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-porno-the-reason-why-vhs-beat-beta/148421/24 "2003-01-15T14:57:27Z")

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Well… they were better made, the tape was wider and generally of better quality, and (possibly) they haven’t seen as much use…

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**Author:** ![Fretburner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fretburner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretburner)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2003, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-porno-the-reason-why-vhs-beat-beta/148421/25 "2003-01-15T15:08:43Z")

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Good point, \*\* Wang-Ka\*\*.  
Minor niggle though. Was the tape actually wider? I thought they were both 1/2 inch formats. Unless you meant “thicker,” which it probably was.

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