Betamax
Vs VHS
Once upon a
time, television was an ephemeral medium. Unless a broadcaster repeated a show,
you only had one chance to see it. Then came the video cassette recorder.
Finally, it was possible not to miss your favourite shows because of work or traffic. But back in
the early days of VCRs consumers had two dilemmas. First, they were expensive
($1,400 in 1975). Second, which one to choose. And it wasn’t just brands to choose from. They
were a dozen formats to choose from. Eventually, by the mid-1980s, this
narrowed down to a choice of just two – Betamax, from Sony, and VHS, from the Japanese
Victor Company (JVC). The following info is based on tech that was sold to
consumers. Professional equipment can have way different specs.
Betamax
Sony’s work with magnetic recording is mostly thanks to engineer Nobutoshi Kihara, a.k.a. “Mr Walkman.”
Sony (in
collab with JVC and Matsushita) pioneered the video tape cassette with it
U-matic system in 1971. It was successful in professional applications, but
proved too expensive and complicated for the home user – the intended customer. It didn’t help that standard U-matic
cassettes were big - about 219 x 137 x 30mm. Sony thought that a smaller
cassette was needed. The collaboration ended and everyone worked on their own
U-matic alternative.
In 1974
Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry began to force
manufacturers to adopt a single format to prevent consumer confusion. Sony made
a prototype and convinced the MITI to adopt what became Betamax as the
standard. They even showed to other manufacturers, including JVC. But JVC had
other ideas….
Sony
launched Betamax in 1975, to pressure the MITI.
Sony made the last Betamax player in 2002 and the last Betamax tape in 2016.
Betamax had
great audio. In 1983 Sony introduced Hi-Fi audio to video tape. It played a big
role in digitalizing the music industry by been the first medium used to make
digital master recordings.
From 1977
Beta machines had different speed modes. Beta I (normal speed), Beta II (half
speed), Beta III (third speed). This increased record length on tapes, but
sacrificed image resolution to do so … to the point that it was no different to VHS. (240 lines in Beta II).
But Sony did increase it again with evolved forms of Beta. In 1985, SuperBeta
increased vertical resolution to 290 lines. Then, in 1988, “Extended Definition” ED Beta increased it to 500 lines!
Beta records an additional “colour burst” (the part of the TV signal that encodes the picture’s colours) on the tape to improve colour reproduction.
The name “Betamax” came from the how the tape spun out of the
cassette in the machine vaguely looked like the Greek letter. Also, because it
sounded like “better.”
Video
Home System (VHS)
In 1971, JVC engineers Yuma Shiraishi and Shizuo Takano put together a team to develop their own format, with simplicity, cheapness, openness and a two-hour record time minimum been the objectives. JVC thought (rightly) that an open standard would be better for the industry It would have hampered innovation, if everyone had to pay Sony to use their format. Despite funding issues that saw the project officially shelved, by 1973 the team had (in secret) made a working prototype. To prevent the MITI from adopting Betamax, JVC convince other companies, particularly Matsushita (the biggest electronics company in Japan at the time and JVC’s largest stockholder), to back VHS. This persuaded Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Sharp to join them. This forced the MITI to back down from pushing a standard format. JVC launched VHS in 1976. The last VHS player was made in 2016. But tapes are still made in 2020.
VHS offered
Hi-Fi audio in 1984, but because the VCR needed to record a picture as well as
sound when recording, VHS VCRs on their own had limited editing capabilities,
compared to Betamax.
Picture quality was improved on VHS over time. In 1985 VHS HQ was introduced increasing vertical resolution to about 250 lines. In 1987 Super VHS increased that to up to 420 lines. In 1994 W-VHS was made in Japan to record early analogue HD TV. In 1998 D-VHS was launched to record digital HD TV.
Why VHS
Won
A number of
factors helped VHS win, and they are a subject of wide debate in business study
classes since the 1980s. But form what I gather, this is what happened.
Nail 1 - It
began when Sony decided on a size for their cassette, using a company dairy as
a template for a “convenient
size.” This limited how
much tape, therefore how much can be recorded, in a cassette. JVC made a bigger
cassette, containing more tape, allowing more recording time.
Nail 2 -
RCA helped VHS along when it asked them to make a VCR that could record up to
four hours on a single tape – enough to record an entire American football game. They asked Sony, but
they refused, because of the issue of diminished picture quality. Matsushita
designed one for them and released the first VHS VCR with long play mode (the RCA VBT200)
in 1977. This later forced Sony to add long play mode to their machines,
hurting its perceived picture quality. Sony did later fix this issue with
SuperBeta and ED Beta, but it was then too late.
Nail 3 -
Sony did license Betamax to other companies, but (according to Akio Morita)
licensing problems between them slowed the growth of Betamax, allowing VHS to
gain ground. But what really happened was that only a few companies choose to
license Betamax. VHS was a simpler design and JVC was not as controlling as
Sony, which led to VHS having a large variety of machines available to
consumers.
Nail 4 -
With JVC licensing the technology to so many companies (including RCA), by 1980
VHS machines were cheaper and more innovative than Betamax machines, taking 60%
of the North American market. It didn’t help that in the beginning Sony sold VCRs with separate timers,
thinking that customers could use them to control more than just the VCR. But
most didn’t see it that
way. With ads advertising them as “time-shifters”
customers saw the separate timer as a money grab. This was the first example of
Sony not listening to what actually customers want.
Nail 5 – By the late-70s Betamax was losing
out. But Sony thought that they can beat VHS by been more innovative – in the wrong way. While VHS
machines had long play and more useful timers, Sony focused on the audio-visual
experience, such as inventing “picture search”
(the function that allows you to see the picture on screen while rewinding or
fast-forwarding the tape). It didn’t help when VHS manufacturers later copied Sony’s innovations.
Nail 6 -
Been the format used in the most useful (and cheapest) devices, VHS became the
biggest selling of video tape formats. So much so that when pre-recorded
content began to be released the sales of content on VHS tapes outsold that of
other formats. This led to more content been released on VHS over other
formats, leading to VHS tapes flooding video rental store shelves. By the
mid-1980s, when many began buying/renting their first ever VCR, when they
looked inside a video rental store to see what was available, the high number
of VHS tapes over other formats convinced them that VHS was their first choice.
Dud nail – There is a myth that one reason Betamax failed was because Sony forbid certain content on the format. There is no evidence to back this up. In fact, most media format makers have little control over what gets recorded with their format. For example, Playboy Video Magazine was available on both Betamax and VHS between 1983-87 (as well as a few other formats in the early years).
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