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VHS machines were [...] just as high fidelity...

I'm sorry but this is just plain wrong.

I work at a (small) TV station, and we still use VHS and Beta, some consumer grade hardware, and some professional grade. Yes, we're stuck in the 1990s - the CEO seems to take the attitude that "it still works, so we don't need to replace it." As a result, we barely get things working most of the time. It really is a half-arsed seat-of-the-pants operation run by a CEO who's incompetent to be in charge of of the cafeteria (which is just a room with tables and chairs).

You can tell which the source was just by looking. It's so obvious which is VHS and which is Beta that I find your statement to be completel unbelievable. Has history colored your perception?

Our machines do regularly fail. The Sony service agents for my region looked at one of our Beta decks and said that the thing should be in a museum as a testament to their engineering - it'd been run around five times longer than any other machine he'd seen.

I recall having to manually clean the heads on it - almost half the machine is used to get the tape wrapped around the heads. That's just mental.

...on a completely irrelevant side-note, this is the particular model of Beta my father bought around 29 years ago.

Here's a picture of the Sony PCM-F1 PCM processor from the early 1980s. See the little "copy prohibiting" light? This stuff's been going on for ages.

The one hour limit was Beta's main downfall.

This is flat out wrong. Betamax tapes came in many different lengths:
http://www.palsite.com/tapes.html

Three-hour tapes were common. We still have about a hundred of them at home gathering dust.

I bought the XBOX add on drive for £90 in January, while it's down to about £35 I got 5 Free HD DVD's thrown in - http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/hd-dvd/default.htm

Since Toshiba pulled the plug I have bought another 7 HD DVD titles at an average price of about £6 each, plus I am a customer of http://www.lovefilm.com/ so I can still rent HD DVD's from them. In the UK, the firesale seems not to have started yet, so I'm currently buying most of my stuff from Australia

I also own one of these - http://www.palsite.com/9300ovi.html so I have a history of backing failed technology ;)

Jonathan

1. Beta tapes lasted 1 hour, instead of two. How many 1 hour movies did you watch back then? None? This made the tapes next to useless for movies. Back then, recording movies off of HBO and shit was the thing to do... can't do it with Betamax! Tapes are too short. Those VHS tapes, though, they are just long enough!

How many Beta tapes did you see for rent back then?

If you want to know more about Betamax: Betamax PALsite. I should also note that this should not be confused with the Betacam format.

If you want to know more about Betamax: Betamax PALsite. I should also note that this should not be confused with the Betacam format.

"Also it is still used by film majors for its higher quality."

First, this is a good article here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax

But to your point:
No, it isn't. You're thinking about the pro version of Beta known as Betacam, which I believe uses similar tapes, but a different technology. A description can be found here:

    http://betacam.palsite.com/format.html

VHS had two hour capability, Betamax had one hour.

Not true. VHS had three hour tapes, Sony had a multi-loader unit called the Beta Stack that would load extra tapes automatically, for up to five hours of recording time on the SL-C7.

Sony kept Betamax to themselves.

Not true. Betamax was licensed to Sanyo, Toshiba, NEC, Pioneer and Aiwa. Sanyo , Toshiba and NEC certainly sold Betamax VCRs, I'm not sure about all the others.

The vaunted quality of Betamax was only on the video, and not enough to really notice, given how crappy TV is anyway;

Possibly true on NTSC TVs, but the superior quality of Betamax was very apparent on PAL systems.

VHS had two hour capability, Betamax had one hour.

Not true. VHS had three hour tapes, Sony had a multi-loader unit called the Beta Stack that would load extra tapes automatically, for up to five hours of recording time on the SL-C7.

Sony kept Betamax to themselves.

Not true. Betamax was licensed to Sanyo, Toshiba, NEC, Pioneer and Aiwa. Sanyo , Toshiba and NEC certainly sold Betamax VCRs, I'm not sure about all the others.

The vaunted quality of Betamax was only on the video, and not enough to really notice, given how crappy TV is anyway;

Possibly true on NTSC TVs, but the superior quality of Betamax was very apparent on PAL systems.

Okay, we all know that VCR stands for "Video Cassette Recorder",
but do you know what VHS stands for?

What do you mean? I took your comment to mean that licensing of innovations and new technology is not in Sony's past. If that is what you mean, you seem to be mistaken; Sony licensed Beta to other companies, and have since licensed other technologies of theirs. Sony killed Betamax, but not by not licensing it to others.

...something like a TBC: my V2000 VCR :=)
The V2000 does *not* support Macrovision (it's a VHS thing), therefore it's OK to copy a VHS tape over to V2000 and back. Maybe it won't be too good for the quality, but it should work (never tried it though). Perhaps Betamax and others work too ?

I was going to keep my big mouth shut about this subject but I can't anymore. This article is crap. Beta has always, ALWAYS, been ahead of VHS in quality and features take a look here for a description of some of the Beta features that dwarfs VHS. And have a look at the tape times as well. Although the longest tapes weren't available at first, they became available. The video rental place the author of the article visited, presumably did not rent out films with 1/3 of the movie left out...

The demise of Beta was crappy marketing and high prices. Period.

I was going to keep my big mouth shut about this subject but I can't anymore. This article is crap. Beta has always, ALWAYS, been ahead of VHS in quality and features take a look here for a description of some of the Beta features that dwarfs VHS. And have a look at the tape times as well. Although the longest tapes weren't available at first, they became available. The video rental place the author of the article visited, presumably did not rent out films with 1/3 of the movie left out...

The demise of Beta was crappy marketing and high prices. Period.

UH...I'm pretty sure that BETAMAX was made by sony...if you don't believe me, then check out the Betamax PALsite.
I believe you are partly correct, however: Beta has long been acknowledged as a better format, and it was market forces that allowed VHS to win out. I'm sure that there are lots of people on the PALsite who would say the same...