My wife asked me this question last night. I’ve informed her that I know everything, so she was quite dismayed when I couldn’t even BS and answer.
Why did VHS tape take off instead of Beta? What caused Beta to sink like a lead balloon?
(if this has been addressed before, forgive me - I couldn’t find it with a search)
Better promotion perhaps? Maybe more movies were available in VHS, and therefore, it was more popular. I think that Beta was a better format for quality purposes though.
Marketing, really. Both formats hit around the same time. They were comparably priced, and reasonably similar. (Beta was actually slightly superior.) But more companies put their weight behind VHS and promoted it strongly, even convincing some studios to release tapes only on VHS. When you went to your local video store, there would be walls and walls of VHS, and only a few Beta tapes. Which VCR would you buy?
“more movies were available in VHS” I think the # of available came FROM the popularity of the format, not vice versa.
IIRC, there was a significant price differential from Beta to VHS, where the VHS’s were manufactured by multiple companies which led to lower prices vs. the Beta that were, I believe one company. I don’t know, I’ll ask my SO, when he wakes up. He’d know. (he’s been in electronic repair for 30+ years)
My recollection of the situation was that Sony was very reluctant to license the Beta technology to other manufacturers, preferring to keep an exclusive hold on the (generally conceded) superior technology. However, Dutch Phillips (? Not entirely sure of the manufacturer) had the VHS ready to roll out and issued licenses largely without any restriction beyond the fee, which is what led to more programming being available. After a while, technical improvements in the VHS made the difference in what it could do vs. Betamax virtually negligible. But don’t throw that old beta away – somebody’s bound to develop a vcr collection someday, now that hard-disk technology and cd’s are taking over.
Read this page for an interesting viewpoint.
There’s an article about this at http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/beta_vs_vhs.html . The author claims that most of the popular beliefs about the “format wars” are false, and VHS’ victory was at least partly due to sheer luck.
Incidentally, Beta hasn’t completely disappeared. You can still find it in use in professional applications, e.g. at some television stations, not to mention the fact that some technofreaks (like a friend of mine I could name) still have operational home machines.
I also know some people who still have working Beta machines. They really made out well when the video stores were getting rid of their Beta tapes, and bought up most of the old stock. They have such a collection of movies on Beta, why would they get rid of it?
I never asked if anyone would be able to repair it should their machine break down.
I still have my old Beta, still chuggin’ along. Replaced a belt a few years ago and it’s worked fine ever since, although I’ve long since worn out my Rustler’s Rhapsody tape.
And, no no no no no, the type of Beta used at television stations is nothing like the type used at home.
Completely different.
–Tim
Yeah, that’s Betacam, which costs about ten thousand dollars (at least) per deck. Not the old BetaMax of yore.
DennisKY’s answer was half of what I heard. This concerned the fact that the Beta technology was proprietary. I’ve also heard (probably UL) that size came into play. The person who told me this said that people thought “Bigger is better” and that cause some of the popularity of VHS. Sounded like BS then, sounds more like BS now that I type it. Maybe someone can support/deny it.
So far, the answer seems to be: a combination of luck/marketing/and the fact that Sony were greedy bastards.
That helps me, the only explanation I remotely came up with on my own was luck. That just isn’t satisfying for an inquiring mind like mine.
I was in electronics retail as a salesman when Beta and VHS were going head to head and I’m surprised that no one has mentioned one of the main selling points that did convince many people to go VHS vs Beta.
IIRC the first Beta units did not have enough time to record much longer than an hour or so on a tape and the first VHS units could go (memory fading) 2 hours + (albeit it with crappy quality). For people seeking to record football games and blocks of soap operas or movies (or more than one hour long program) while they were gone this was an important consideration.
And on a vaguely related note, I went to Target today, and guess what? Yup, they actually have Beta tapes for sale. WTF? I understand that there is still a (small) market out there, I just didn’t think Target of all places would cater to it. Anyone need me to pick up a sixpack?
DennisKy has the right answer. Beta lost out to VHS for the same reason Apple lost out to PC.
I heard from my father (who worked as a TV and VCR repairman around when VHS took over) that the real reason that VHS took off was that it was the first format to offer a tape that could hold 6 hours of time on EP. This was important to sports enthusiasts who wanted to be able to tape an entire sporting event on one tape.
Once they had VHS decks, the market catered to their needs thereafter.
Besides Cricket (which I think is one game that started 100 some years ago and hasn’t ended yet) what other sporting events last 6 hours?
Could the market have been driven by the demand of Cricket fans alone?
A friend of mine used to claim, seemingly sincerely, that the big porn producers got together to decide on a single format for their movies. They chose VHS and the market was forced to follow. It’s plausible, and way more interesting than any other explanation I’ve heard.
Actually Beta is better suited for porn while VHS is better for sports
I used Beta for recording medical ultrasound images, and it was fantastic. One thing especially nice was you could speed it up or slow it down in almost any incements.
The main drawback was it required a lot of tape for the same recording time, so the media was expensive. That shaved profits from the movie studios.
That was in “regular play” mode, which became obsolete after about two years, when extended play came out, but too late to change anything.