VHS won the battle vs Beta. Why?
In: Technology
Ive also heard that a single VHS tape could hold longer feature length movies. Max time for beta was something like 1 1/2 hours.
Now, if you recall that whole hullabaloo where Hollywood was split into schisms, some studios backing Blu-ray disc, others backing HD DVD. People thought it would come down to pixel rate or refresh rate, and they’re pretty much the same. What it came down to was a combination between gamers and porn. Now, whichever format porno backs is usually the one that becomes the uh most successful. But, you know, Sony, every PlayStation 3 has a Blu-ray in it.
I would be curious if anyone has any source data for what I was always told; someone on the VHS side of things convinced several of the main producers of porn to adopt the VHS format, and from that time betamax was losing the battle one inch at a time.
Critical mass, they had more machines and more videos were using their system for new releases etc.
The main reason is because the porn industry backed vhs. Same thing happened with DVD’s and blurays. I dare say if poem got behind virtual reality that would take off aswell.
Early betamax could only record about an hour per tape, later doubled to two hours. VHS started at 4 hours, and went to 6 pretty early. Later on they both made longer tapes, but at the time that VCRs became common the VHS ones held 3 times as much.
So for VHS, 2-3 tapes could hold an entire season of a 30 minute show, a single tape could hold a trilogy of movies, and they also were a lot cheaper. Betamax cost a lot more and you’d have to buy, store, maintain, and switch out 3x as many tapes.
Beta was only supported by Sony (there may have been a few other small manufacturers but no one cares), but VHS was more of an independent standard with many suppliers of both tape and machines. And VHS was cheaper (more suppliers => more competition). And VHS recoreded significantly more video on a tape cassette (tapes weren’t cheap, so even if they cost the same $ they recorded more video so were cheaper to a user). It was easier to find video rentals on VHS (so there was more source material, even tape rental places that had both types of tapes had more selection on VHS).
If money were no object, beta would’ve been the winner. Money is *the* object, so VHS won.
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