In the
late '70s and
early '80s, a format war ensued between
two video cassette formats, VHS and Betamax. These two competing standards for recording video onto cassettes both tried to make their format look as good as possible. Betamax arguably had better picture quality, according to many experts, but VHS won mainly because of it's longer recording time and cheaper recorder price.
So, Betamax
lost the format war. But many professional recorders leaned toward Betamax because of its better picture quality compared to VHS. It didn't fade into obscurity right away, but when VHS achieved near total dominion, it was mostly forgotten. On a standard L-500 tape, a Betamax recorder could record 1 hour with
Beta 1 recording speed, and 2 hours with
Beta 2 speed. VHS, on the other hand, could record 2 hours on SP (the equivalent of
Beta 1) and 4 hours on LP (the equivalent of
Beta 2). This
short recording time, combined with a variety of other factors like less advanced timers, caused the downfall of Betamax.
Since the main purpose of owning a videocassette recorder was timeshifting, or recording programs to watch at a specific time, the timer and recording length were very important. Betamax had neither of these going in their favor, so it
lost the fairly drawn-out format war.
Betamax was developed by Sony, and was first to market, but eventually,
even though a very big company had a first-to-market advantage, they still
lost because of the fatal flaws the product had.
In 1980, a customer has to decide between a Betamax or VHS VCR.
Customer: "Hmmm... Should I get the more expensive Betamax
machine with a less advanced timer, more expensive tapes, less recording time per tape, a smaller
library, and better picture quality, or the VHS
machine that is less expensive, has a larger movie library, cheaper tapes, more recording time per tape, but worse picture quality?"
"Betamax is dead, long live VHS!"
