Slashdot Mirror
Sony Kills Betamax
Hiawatha writes "Years after losing its grip on the consumer VCR market, Sony has announced that it will discontinue the Betamax format. "With digital machines and other new recording formats taking hold in the market, demand has continued to decline and it has become difficult to secure parts," Sony said in a statement." Finally. Although this is the prototypical example of good technology outdone by better marketing, it's an example of a company being stupidly obstinate about wanting to own a system, and shooting themselves in the foot. Update: 08/27 17:52 GMT by H : Yes, they were successful in broadcast, and to some degree overseas - but the commercial success was still severely limited to, say, VHS.
i never knew they still made them.
Runnin' On Empty
this is really bad news to the TV people, I think, for betamax is vastly superior in quality compared to VHS.
I love the hearty sound of a can of worms being opened!
Or did betamax die a long time ago?
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
Umm - did you Read The article?
Sony said it would continue to offer repairs and manufacture tapes for the format, adding the move would not affect its Betacam products for the broadcasting industry.
'nuff said!
Disclaimer: I meant what I thought, not what I wrote! What? You can't read my Mind? Oh dear!
for a Slashdot poll:
My preferred video format is:
I bet such a poll would show why Sony did this....
#define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
Without being too familiar with the TV industry, it would seem that digital is too convenient compared to betamax. You can hook it up to your computer in your office and start editing immediately. With betamax you still have to convert it to a format the computer understands.
Of course, I am sorry betamax is dying. I still remember those small tapes at the video rental store.
I'm sorry to disappoint you, when you say 'finally', but Betamax was quite popular in places outside of the US. Also, some professional equipment used Betamax. While the Hemos' comment on Betamax vs VCR is technically correct, I don't think he grasps its popularity in other market segments and countries. Hemos, just because it isn't popular in Holland, MI, doesn't mean other places don't use it.
I don't think BetaMAX and the 3/4 inch Beta professional format are the same thing. I can't believe they would kill all beta. Virtually ALL professional taping is done with Beta.
Plus isn't some of the Betamax stuff that the broadcasters use digital anyway? (I just know that in some catalogs that offer broadcast/production equipment there is Digital Betamax on some items.)
Where/to whom were they selling thse things? I mean.. what was there market.. surely it was not Joe and Jane sixpack of anywhereville USA...
BetaMax WAS and IS better, but when it was first introduced, the tapes only held ONE HOUR of video/audio.
This, obviously, sucks. And it meant that movies really couldn't be put onto Beta tapes without splitting them. VHS ruled the rental market because of this, and most people liked being able to record more hours of their own stuff, too.
So Beta wasn't perfect by any means. It wasn't mis-marketed, it just wasn't right for the market, period. In the beginning, anyway.
Sony has reluctantly decided to cease production of its MiniDisc format.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
If a rotten tree falls in the woods, and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
....
... other than my old beta)
That tree obviously didn't make too many videos either
BTW: Does anyone remember the last time you could purchase a movie on beta? Maybe 1988????? (the memory is the first thing to go
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Thats is what you think. Beta is used my the majority of TV stations for the news, etc. it is a superior quality, thus the reason they use it. But since this didn't affect you, you must have assumed it did not affect anyone. I know it does not affect me directly, but I am still aware of it effects before opening my mouth.
Great Linux Site
Note that, according to the article, Sony is only discontinuing making consumer players.
The format will still exist.
I thought one of the bigger reasons Betamax lost was that Sony refused to license the formant to other vendors. Vaguely reminiscent of the whole Apple vs Microsoft battles around the same time, where Apple refused to license MacOS.
Sony has killed the BetaMAX line, not the BetaCAM line. BetaCam was the professional version of the Beta format, incredible video quality but the tapes aren't compatible with each other, because the BetaCam tapes (which come in 2 sizes, 90 minute and 30 minute, and they are physically different sizes, yet can be played by the same machine, by putting it in the same slot) have a much higher lead content, and need a more powerful motor to push them by the heads. Betamax players can't give it the umph, and the playback speed on Betacam is much higher.
I worked for a pro A/V house for 3 years maintaining over a hundred of these decks, and about half as many U-Matic (3/4" broadcast tape) decks.
Mouse, Mice. Goose, Geese. Moose... Moose?
Maybe they should have at least done a Release Candidate...
I worked in a television station for a while, and even our station was moving towards digital formats, although we had Betacam SP machines which if i am not mistaken are also digitial formats aswell. The digital formats have a big advantage, they have 3 hours on a tape compared to the one hour that is on a Betacam sp (and if you have ever seen those tapes they are atleast a foot in length.. huge tapes), the downside of the digital formats is that they quality is alot less, that is why all of our masters are on Betacam SP and all of our air clones are on DVC-PRO 50.
>>JVC is spitting out VHS systems for >$100 a pop ...
>making them for $100 each, that's the trick.
Stupid slashdot, interpreting my less-than as opening an HTML tag. If I'm posting in PLAIN TEXT, don't interpret it, dammit!
There is Digital BetaCam. There is no Digital BetaMax. They are completely different formats.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Actually, this would be news. You can still find "Coke 2" is certain markets...
Those who complain about affect & effect on
LOL!
Hang on to those Beta VCR's folks. I have. Why? They make EXCEPTIONAL Macrovision filters. Run the signal through the Beta, voila, no Macrovision.
I know Betamax has been a dead format for ages, but don't a lot of news stations and stuff still use it?
You forgot "Camcorder capture of movie in theatre converted to DivX"! According to Jack Valenti, we all have several gigabytes of this video format on each of our hard drives.
GMD
watch this
They're discontinuing due to lack of demand. Pro TV hardly ever used VHS.
Professional level TV production and distribution went digital back in the 90's. It used to be you'd see racks of beta decks in production studios and control rooms. Now they're racks of servers.
Those people that still need beta decks are probably buying them used from people who don't need them any more.
As Groucho Marx once said, "time wounds all heels."
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
None of the articles for the past 20 years actually said why Beta was the superior format. One big point is the head rotation in relation to the tape movement. Simply put, in order to get better analog recording (for example, cassettes, 8tracks, reel to reel), you increase the relative speed past the heads. With VHS, the longer the recording time, slower the heads moved past the tape (longer play, lower resolution). With Beta, the longer the recording time, the (relativly) faster the heads moved past the tape (longer play, higher effective resolution, ending with the final results being relativly little loss of resolution).
There is no Kitsune in Kitsune Udon
My mom bought a top-of-the-line Betamax the year before Sony stopped selling them in the US (at the consumer level, anyway). She bought the best VCR you could buy at the time and within a year there wasn't a movie to be rented anywhere.
The thing is 15 years old, or so, and other than a squeak on one of the rollers, it still works perfectly. Not that it gets much use anymore, with no rentals and almost zero availability on blank media.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
bitchin!
Thanks dude, that's the cheapest device I've seen like that!
(I forgot to mention that I wanted a $500 device for that... hehe)
Sony has reluctantly decided to cease production of its Memory Stick format.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
(insert obligatory apple vs. microsoft comments here)
Close the world.
Betamax is NOT used in the broadcast industry. Betacam is.
Sony used to make one - bought a DVMC-DA2 ~2yrs ago, and Canopus still does in that price range too.
Which is why the DMCA makes trafficking (sp?) in Beta VCRs illegal.
Also old VHS models without the automatic gain bullshit.
Feh.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Hang on to those Beta VCR's folks. I have. Why? They make EXCEPTIONAL Macrovision filters. Run the signal through the Beta, voila, no Macrovision.
I dunno, might depend on what you have. I've got 3 betas, and while they can record and playback a macro'ed movie just fine, the signal coming through the machine (or from the beta tape) has the signal in it still, and triggers my VHS/capture card to disrupt the picture.
Followed by the blowout of quad four-track reel-to-reel players.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
One place it becomes an issue is when you have TV screens in the foreground in a movie set. For example, the monitors inside the Nebuchadnezzar were playing VHS when they were in the background but Beta when they were in the foreground. You can read about it in an interview on the Matrix website.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Well they did stop making them. It's just some one at Sony discovered they forgot to turn off the BetaMax Maker and it's been pumping them out for the laast 20 years. -Don't worry, they have a whole building foull of them and an estimated supply to last mankind until the next millenium! yay!
What People Seem to Miss is that Sony is the Microsoft of Japan
Yup, just keep making them, somebody will like it and buy it, After all it is better --- sounds like a Mac doesn't it?
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
A cursed shame, my entire career is on betamax! Ruined, Ruined I say!
Heh -- I think the same thing applies to Sony's minidisc. It was a great technology, but Sony has the bad habbit of keeping everything proprietary. Who would want to invest in a media format that is owned by someone who holds the only rights to make the readers/writers? Minidisc is great, and sony makes good stuff, but I would never buy it because I don't want to get locked into a Sony-only world.
A little Microsoft-ish?
Try my Sega Dreamcast...or N64 for that matter
Theres a informative article here with many different view points.
:D )
(Sorry, had to do it incase someone posted this story again in 6 or so hours
Whoa! Back it up a few miles there... DVD is a *million* times better than VHS? I beg to differ.
Yes, DVD has better picture and sound. But try these tests:
1. Scratch a section of your VHS tape away. Can you still watch the movie? Now gouge a section of your DVD. Same question. On a side note, funny that this talks about a Sony product, when Sony DVD players are some of the worst (in my opinion) at playing scratched disks.
2. Put a VHS tape in your VCR. The movie starts playing (after the usual FBI bs). Put a DVD in your player. Does the movie start? No, you have to understand how to manipulate menus (which differ on every DVD) to get from the stupid-ass opening menu to the actual movie. Count out the entire elderly generation who don't want to have to learn a sequence of commands just to watch a flick.
3. When that VHS tape is in your VCR, can you fast forward past the FBI warnings, previews, and other intro stuff? Now try it on your DVD. Unless you've hacked it, you are forced to wait for several seconds (a minute? more?) just to get to that same stupid-ass menu from item 2.
4. If I buy a VHS tape in non-USA country X, I can come home and play it for my friends. Oftentimes not so for DVD (again, unless you hacked the system, although recent Slashdot articles indicate this may shift).
Are DVDs better than VHS? In terms of watching the actual movie, yes. But I also hate them with a passion and loathing I never felt for VHS.
What would I like to see?
1. A DVD player that lets you fast-forward anywhere. (This may be a DVD format restriction though... not up on the details there.)
2. A common DVD menu format for accessing actor bios, making-of stuff, etc. without the crappy glitz that gets mashed into today's DVDs. Just give me a directory structure any day... I can navigate that.
3. DVDs that start the movie automatically, and only pull up the menu if you ask for it. (Wow, I'd love to find out this is a feature... would never be more happy to be declared ignorant.)
4. Finally, I think the only way to avoid DVDs getting scratched (either via poor handling or sometimes by the DVD players themselves... thank Panasonic for that one, mucked up 2 of my Buffy DVDs) is to put them in a cartridge of some sort. I know, it bulks them up and everybody hates that, but as our removable media density increases those teeny scratches are going to ruin the works. They already make some DVDs unplayable (at least on Sony players).
That's my input on how to make DVDs much more palatable, anyway.
-FF
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
Does the movie start? No, you have to understand how to manipulate menus (which differ on every DVD) to get from the stupid-ass opening menu to the actual movie.
I don't know about your DVD player, but mine has a play button on both the remote control and the unit. You don't normally have to go through the "stupid-ass" menus.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The ATRAC3 encoding scheme has the copy protection scheme that is based on MagicGate, but that only implies to the NetMD version of the MiniDisc recorders. The non-MiniDisc recorders had SCMS (Serial Copy Management System) protection, required by the home recording act, on the digital in portion (you can make a digital copy from a master to a copy, but you can't make a digital copy from the copy to another copy without a SCMS stripper... yes, those are available).
I believe that the professional recorders do not include SCMS since I don't think they fall under the home recording act.
I personally love my three portable MiniDisc recorders (the MZ-R30, MZ-R90 and the MZ-R909) since they are quite portable, the discs are small yet rugged (compared to an SD card, or worse a hard drive or a CD), and the sound quality is very nice. I use an MP3 jukebox at work, but on trips... I'd rather take the portable MD and a small box of 20 MD's that can all fit in my car's glove box. Also try getting 15+ hours of playback on a single battery charge on a Nomad Jukebox.
I hear Coca-cola is planning to have Paula Abdul shoot some comercials for them too...but that's just a rumor at this point. I heard about it on that new Cable TV channel..MTV is it?
that Apple is gonna start licensing it's OS and get out of the hardware business, Microsoft is going to Open-source Windows, and if you believe in Hell, that's gonna freeze over, too.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
Have you ever compared the pause or slow rewind/ff feature on a beta machine compared to a VHS? There is no comparison -- on VHS it generally sucks, and on beta it is far superior.
Most innovations happened on beta first, anyway. Jog-shuttle, flying erase heads, Hi-Fi, etc. All on beta before VHS.
The truth is that there are basic reasons that beta is better. The tape winds at a higher speed, meaning you don't need to cram as much information on a smaller space as compared to VHS. Anyone familiar with analog storage technology can understand how this is better.
From a quality standpoint, beta is vastly superior to VHS, or the format would have been gone two decades ago. It isn't until another superior technology came around - DVR & DVD - that it was dethroned.
Now Sony can actually launch there video recorder. I am sure almost 20 years of beta testing will allow us to have a really good way to record movies from TV
Welllll...
> a) Longer recording length, which is what really killed Beta
Somewhat true. A Beta 750 tape lasts 4.5 hours at Speed III, compared to 6 hours at VHS SLP-speed, which has a significantly lower picture quality by the way. I'm not sure that that amount of difference (33%) was enough to make VHS win a side-by-side comparison all by itself, given Beta's other features (view-during-FFWD, etc.).
> b) Less expensive players
That didn't happen until after VHS won the marketing battle and sold enough units to bring the manufacturing costs down. I bought dozens (hundreds?) of both types in the 80s and the costs were almost identical.
> c) Less expensive media
Same answer.
> d) Non-proprietary
My first Betamax was a Zenith, circa 1979. Lots of companies licensed the beta format from Sony. In fact I'm not sure I ever owned a Sony. Of course when manufacturers eventually chose sides the licensing costs were a factor, but several chose to manufacture both for a long time. Your point is valid, but I don't want to leave people with the impression that "proprietary" in this context has the same meaning that it has today. In 1985 no consumer would choose VHS because it was an "open standard".
By the way, the Zenith was around $850 as I recall. It was a top-loader, recorded one-hour tapes - $20 each -- and the timer was an extra $100 unit that clamped to the top and switched the power on and off.
The Sony Beta SX, Digibeta and IMX formats are digital. Beta SP is an analog format.
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
Although pro-equipment could play betamax and could use betamax tape (albeit the higher quality stuff and filling the tape after 20min), most people confuse betaMAX (the consumer format) with betaCAM (the pro format).
Consumer BetaMAX players could not play betaCAM tapes so I doubt many pros bought them...
Although I don't doubt some garage shops uses betaMAX along the way, I think this categorization only serves to confuse the issue.
VHS also had a much more complicated tape mechanism, which increases the chances that your tape will be broken or damaged through regular wear-and-tear.
I remember seeing diagrams of VHS and Beta in my dad's "Popular Electronics" in the early 1980's, and wondering why anyone would want a system as labyrinthine as VHS's...
I'd like to see you buy a VHS tape in Europe and play it on your American VCR. Not only will you need a PAL (or worse SECAM) VCR, but you'll also need the matching TV.
But when it came to recording your own, our Beta-III deck produced tapes which were indistinguishable from orginal broadcast. We owned a Beta-II/III and a VHS/SVHS deck. When our friends asked why, we'd do show them a head-to-head comparison, Beta-II/VHS or Beta-III/SVHS. The betas won every time.
Is vastly the right word? Yeah, I think so. Look at it this way: my seat-of-the-pants estimate was that home VHS recording was 90 to 95% of broadcast quality, home Beta was 98 to 99%. That's only 3% or so. But it's vastly closer to 100% than VHS or SVHS ever got.
I'm sooo glad the Tivos/etc are finally bringing in a next gen technology.
If vendors put DVDs into a cartridge, it's less likely that you'll scratch it. There's no reason to buy a replacement for an unscratched DVD. Think about it.
Sony's memory stick, if you're not familiar with it WRITES at 1.5MB a second. It can READ at 2.5MB a second. It literally makes dumping your pictures/data to your system ina few SECONDS. It also allows you to manage pictures and indexes on the cameras themselves in REAL-TIME with NO DELAY. The other alternative is SMARTMEDIA, which MOST digital cameras use, and you know what? It's COMPLETELY SLOW. It takes FOREVER to transfer, preview, and modify pictures. If you haven't used a Sony MemoryStick product yet DONT complain, their product is far and away SUPERIOUR to anything else on the market. You wont appreciate it till you see how quick those little cards are!
Karma be damned, im gonna comment anyway.
"VHS to pretty much anyone willing to write a check"
It is all about the Pr0n. Always earlier adopters of technologies that make them more profit.
You could not get pornography on Betamax because of the licensing.
(same goes for why DivX is so popular)
As for why VHS won, it wasn't really technical inferiority, but _perceived_ technical inferiority. Yes, Beta could "only" achieve 270 min of record time on its slowest setting compared to 480 min on NTSC VHS, but realistically, unless you really didn't care about heavy static, the slowest VHS speed was virtually unwatchable. This leaves the best setting on Beta and VHS to 90 minutes and 160, respectively. Realistically, again just IMHO, Beta's second slowest setting was still a better format than VHS's fastest, and would hold 180 minutes on a 750' tape.
This is all moot, though, because of VHS's VASTLY superior marketing. 'Just say to Joe Sixpack, 'quality's arguable, but ours holds twice as much!' and you've got a marketing coup. Who cares that hardly anyone I knew would record more than one movie to a tape, and most people either taped over the same thing daily for their 'soaps', or bought prerecorded anyway!
Keep in mind, though, that many would argue that the _sole_ reason that Beta lost was because Sony insisted on keeping all of the IP rights associated with Beta. Their Japanese peers were forced into promoting a more 'open' format. Ergo, Open Source wins again!
On the last DVD I tried it on, the play button didn't do anything. You had to select the "play movie" entry on the main menu. I assume that this was caused by poorly written UI software on the DVD. You should be able to play a movie without a remote, just using the buttons on the front of the DVD player.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
You are mistaken. Beta SP is an analog format. Beta SX, Digibeta and IMX are the half-inch digital formats. And you can get 90 minute SP tapes.
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
those main "cons" that you mention about dvd are actually 'features'. buy a dvd drive for your computer and have some old skool 'y3, 1m l337 h4x0r phun'.
came very handy with matrix when i couldn't be pissed to watch the movie with the click when the white rabbit appears sh***.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Beta was slightly better.
Yes, it ran the tape over the head at a higher speed (good for fidelity with magnetic tape), but was narrower than VHS (bad for fidelity with magnetic tape). By the time "Hi-Fi VHS" arrived in the late 80's, the gap in quality was pretty much already closed.
No matter which type of tape you used, you still had the problems of the incoming signal quality, and those were the days before component video and S-video were common, so you were mushing the video and audio signal into an RF converter to send a coaxial cable to your TV antenna input on channel 3 or 4.
You can talk all you like about how nice a fast-forward looked on Beta tape, but who gives a crap how good the commercials look as you zip over them? I remember when my family bought their first VCR. We went with VHS, not becuase of popularity (rentals wouldn't catch on for a couple years, so what the neighbors used was a non-factor), but because Beta cost more, both for players and for tapes, and the tapes had shorter running times. A few years later, a friend of mine bought a Harmon Kardon "HiFi VHS" machine that looked and sounded every bit as good as my other friend's Sony Beta machine. Even Sony finally gave in and started making VHS machines in the end... and they were (and still are) some of the best consumer VCR's on the market.
Now it looks like PVR's like TiVo, and HDTV's wider screen (which most DVD's support but VHS does not) are causing VHS to die out, but it will probably cling to life for another 15 years, just like Beta did, because obsolete != useless. If it still works, and you can't afford the shiny new stuff, you will probably still use it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Memory Stick is by far the better media.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Only got mine a couple of weeks ago. Of course, like you mentioned, got one that will play either PAL or NTSC and output either PAL or NTSC. Also has region coding disabled - apparently, although it is a hack, like you mentioned, it seems the majority of DVD players actually have codes to disable region coding.
Anyway, what I really wanted to take issue with was your fast forward complaint. My DVD fast forwards... did I really get something unique? I doubt it. It is true that you can't watch half a movie, take it out, put it back in, and pick up where you left off. I'm sure they can be made to do that, since I'm guessing each DVD has a unique identifier like CDs, the player would know where you were when you last stopped. But I haven't seen that feature.
My DVD player actually fast-forwards and rewinds quite nicely - press the button once for 2x, twice for 4x...all the way up to 32X (or faster, I haven't gone beyond that). It also lets you skip to the next scene, so you can generally get close to where you want quickly, then fast forward the rest of the way. Ultimately a lot more work on your part, but also a lot faster than tape.
I'm not too worried about scratches. I've never lost a CD to scratches, after what? 15 years? I'm sure I'll be a bit more careful with DVDs - plus they don't get used as much, carried around on trips or in portable players.
I don't know about "a million times better", but my wife actually said "it looks like a brand new TV" when I played the first disc...
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Lovely, your technical prowess amazes me with your amazingly witty and well thought out remark, you have an amazing ability stick to the topic of discussion and do your research. You must be some kind of l33t h4x0r :)
Close the world.
At that rate, they'll still be pushing MiniDisc players in 2018.
Hey both of you morons, I was only kidding. Point is that most people will not be affected by this. I am sure a disproportionate number of ./'s will be but I got news for you 99.999% of ppl dont care..
As several other people have stated - the pro format from Sony is BetaCAM not BetaMAX.
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
I admit it. I use MD and Betamax almost every day. I have one of the original Beta Hi-Fi decks (SL-2700B, which is just black instead of the silver SL-2700), and I've been using MD ever since it came out, and only a few months ago purchasing my MZ-N1 MDLP player that can record directly from the computer at up the 32 times. Yep, dedicated to Sony technology, simply because it's better. ;-) (Nope, can't afford a Tivo or DVD burner yet)
You forgot IMX. Same tape cartridges, but it uses 50MB I-frame only MPEG2.
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
Sorry bout that I missed your moded down post..
Not true. Did you even read what you linked to? It refutes two of the statements by the poster above. I quote:
1. Sony did not "refuse to license Betamax."
In its January 25 issue, Time explained that "While at first Sony kept its Beta technology mostly to itself, JVC, the Japanese inventor of VHS, shared its secret with a raft of other firms." [13] This is blatantly untrue. While Sony was decidedly behind in the licensing of its technology, it tried from the very beginning to sign on other manufacturers to the Beta standard.
2. Betamax was not too expensive.
Consumers buying a new VCR saw only minor pricing differences between the two formats. Those looking for the latest technology could apparently find Betamax machines for much less than comparable VHS machines.
My university roommate's Betamax player had one great advantage I've never seen in another player; Beta, VHS, or DVD, It could play tapes at double speed.
No, I don't mean fast forward, nor the existing 2X speed thing with no sound. It could play regular tapes at double speed, with sound. The sound was at normal volume and pitch. People and music didn't sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks, they sounded like people speaking very quickly or music played at a faster tempo. You could watch a complete 1-hour drama in 25 minutes without missing anything.
I would love to hear of a DVD player that could do that.
I don't remember hearing about Beta IMX. Is it a new thing? I've been out of TV business for few years.
Beta Sp isn't 3/4 - that is U-matic (or U-matic SP). Beta is 1/2 inch in two different size cartridges.
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
Sony finally had to bite the bullet and concede that the Digital Format was locked in. The Betamax made Sony a fortune, it was, and still is the worldwide leader in commercial broadcast formats, and Sony did not lose to the VHS, they made millions on those tape decks also, Sanyo, Panasonic and Matsushita only made VHS, Sony made both formats, not too dumb after all! Sony is not going to file Chapter 11 just yet, they still have billions of yen.
1: Well, if you actually scratched away part of the tape, that would likely cause the head drum to tear it to shreds and jam the player, so no, you couldn't still watch the movie..
2: This is just due to dumb-ass authoring of the DVD - you should be able to just hit Play at that point to watch the main movie.
3: Blame the DVD Forum for that one - in order to get a license to play CSS-encoded movies (i.e. virtually all movie discs), they manufacturers HAVE to abide by the restrictions of fast-forwarding the warnings, etc.
Ah well, at least I can now upgrade to the new Laserdisc player that I've always wanted.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
According to the Sony rep that I talked to at NAB, IMX is to format to replace all formats. The machines will play Betacam, SP, SX, IMX and on the high end DigiBeta. They use MPEG2 compression and have 4 channel of high quality audio (or 8 of mid quality). They have SDI (serial digital) and analog ins and outs.
The problem right now is they don't make IMX camera backs (dockables).
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
NetMD seems to take only a few minutes for an hour's worth of music.
Kris
Kriston
Those of that work in broadcasting call BetaCAM "Beta". We just pretend that BetaMAX never existed. :-)
I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. - Edgar Allan Poe
The Ebay prices on beta VCRs just doubled with this announcement... from $1 to $2.
I could've swore they killed beta max a LONG time ago!
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
One... I don't record my MiniDiscs from MP3's but rather from the original CDs, that way I don't have to deal with the re-encoding of the song (thus adds another layer of lossy compression).
Two... I already have an MP3 jukebox (as stated in my post). It is a Nomad Jukebox 6GB and I'm looking at the Nomad Jukebox 3 40GB model. I have two completely different uses for the MD player and the MP3 jukebox. Sure, the iPod is nice and small, but I'd rather not risk a hard disk head crash while driving on the not-so-smooth roads of the Pacific NW.
Three... NetMD allows for fast transfers. Sure, it's not as fast as transfering files to the iPod via FireWire, but it's still fast enough for many people. There are even CD->MD units that rip and record CD tracks onto MD at rates of 2-8x.
Four... I do other things while I set the MD player to record off of my CDs like reading, coding, errands, chores, etc. Also, it gives me some background music while doing a lot of those things.
Five... working with 200+ MP3's on a jukebox isn't exactly an easy thing to do, mostly when trying to make playlists on the fly. With MD's, I already break out different song styles and moods onto sets of discs... if I feel like listening to depressing music, I just slap in a disc. The iPod has much better playlist control over the Nomad, but it still doesn't fit the way I choose which songs I want to listen on the fly.
"The result was that there were four or five competing VHS brands, against Sony's Beta"
This is not true. Along with Sony, Toshiba, NEC, Zenith and Sanyo all had Beta machines in the mid-80s. What Sony didn't have was a rugged industrial duplicator for making pre-recorded tapes in huge volume. They made duplicators but they were junk; they couldn't hold up to people jamming tapes into them 12-15 times a day. As I remember NEC and Toshiba both made duplicators that were a bit better but not enough to get the big duplication houses to support Beta. This is the main reason you couldn't find pre-recorded Beta tapes in the video stores. It was downhill from there. From then on consumers saw Beta as a dying format and went with VHS. The longer recording time as you say was something that no one used but it still helped folks justify the decision to go with the VHS format.
Your right! It was betacam. Looks like my memory is on the way out!
and last but not least
e) To use Betamax, consumers had to understand fractions. OTOH, VHS had 2,4, and 6-hour recording times.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
"Once again..Betacam (which is the 3/4 inch deck he's talking about) is in no way related to Betamax."
Read my post. Never said it was. I said DV damn close to Betacam.
"Anyone who uses premiere and says they can do the same quality as broadcast is straight up lying to you..."
Um yeah you can. You call people liars, but ya don't say why they're wrong. Premiere doesn't destroy the DV data. If the DV is close to broadcast quality (and it's used in broadcast a ALOT) then Premiere can make the edits without loss of quality. You can pay more and get better products, that's a given. The point I was making was that I have a complete solution for $5,000 and ONE (1) of the components the TV Studio had cost over $20,000. I've already done profesionaly quality using Premiere and DV so arguing with me on this point would prove both fruitless and humiliating.
"same with lightwave...try XSI next time buddy."
Oh boy, another lame 3d religious debate. Never mind that Lightwave is the standard broadcast animation tool. XSI is cool (and costs more) but there is no die-hard reason to use it over LW unless you have a very specific feature you need from it.
So yeah, nice attempt to troll there. I can see why you hid behind an AC mask.
I have not once had trouble skipping the warnings. While I can't fast forward, I can do a chapter skip, which is even better.
1. Scratch a section of your VHS tape away. Can you still watch the movie? Now gouge a section of your DVD. Same question. On a side note, funny that this talks about a Sony product, when Sony DVD players are some of the worst (in my opinion) at playing scratched disks.
Ok smart-ass, try this test: place a magnet on or near your VHS. Now place one on or near your DVD. Jump to the start of the DVD movie and watch it 100 times. Do the same with VHS. Media degrades, careful care of either medium will ensure longevity.
4. If I buy a VHS tape in non-USA country X, I can come home and play it for my friends. Oftentimes not so for DVD (again, unless you hacked the system, although recent Slashdot articles indicate this may shift).
Hate to break it to you, but VHS tapes aren't international either... try playing a US video on a UK VHS player, and see how far you get. (Hint: it doesn't work)
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
"Beta Sp isn't 3/4 - that is U-matic (or U-matic SP). Beta is 1/2 inch in two different size cartridges."
Thank you. I never could keep those terms straignt in my mind. (I was just the CG guy, heh. Didn't work with tapes much.)
It took a lot of expensive equipment to get the video off those tapes and into a computer. Then one day I plug my $500 DV camera into my Firewire port and I have most of that capability here.
To anybody looking into doing broadcast quality 3D animation: $500 DV camera (Sony TRV-140), $50 firewire card, and a $600 copy of Premiere (Educational license MIGHT work and be cheaper...) are worth the purchase.
Since I ain't in the US, I mock your DMCA. (Of course, most sane thinking American's do too...)
If you record to a Beta tape then back to the VHS, it doesn't work. The Beta copies it all intact.
Do you mean you're actually running the signal THROUGH the Beta, or playing the movie on the Beta? Just to see if we're on the same page here, I mean that basically you plugging the Beta in between two lengths of coaxial going from VHS1 to VHS2.
If that IS what you mean and you're getting the signal, I find that fascinating because technically it shouldn't happen. (Something to do with the automatic gain happening at a different time on the Beta to the VHS. Can't remember the technicalities.)
Am I to assume correctly that you have South Park on Beta tapes?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Ford has announced that it will cease production of the Model-T after the 2003 production run. The company cited difficulty in finding craftsmen skilled in sheet metal beating as the primary cause.
Similarly, the Sperry Rand Corporation has ceased all work on new UNIVAC models. Sales had dropped off in recent decades to the point where the financial viability of the line was no longer profitable. It was also noted that the availability of vacuum tubes played into the decision.
Finally, The Mayo Clinic has declared that it will no longer offer leeching as a method of treatment for bad blood humours. "We've found that Mr. Moogle's Magic Tonic works just as effectively without the unsightly hickies," noted Chief of Staff Wilhelm Norton.
Back to you Hemos...
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
is Fast Forward. It gets into detail how the VHS format won consumer acceptance.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
it's probably worth noting that sony has voluntarily, and probably against better judgement, held up a relatively dead technology for years, supporting legacy software owned by their customers.
who else does that?
this does not mean however that sony is discontinuing betaCAM, which is still the absolute gold standard in video acquisition formats. DV and other sorts of digital video still suck for acquisition due to digital artifacts, which make it impossible to make good composites.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Actually original betamax could not record a full two hours on tape whereas VHS could. This did play a role in consumer perception. This book goes into detail.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The Canopus ADVC-100 is $300. It doesn't have its own tuner, but I'm sure you could use a spare VCR for that.
I'm not certain why you'd need one if you already have a DV camera, though. Doesn't your DV camera have analog inputs?
The thing to do, and I'm really surprised that this isn't more popular, is to get one of those Sony rotisserie style jukeboxes that holds 200 or 300 DVDs. I just got one to hold all my CDs (well, 400 of them anyway) mainly to get some clutter and plastic out of my life, and reclaim some bookshelf space.
Yeah, it costs a few bucks more than the single tray player but it doesn't cost nearly as much as replacing your DVDs because they all got scratched. I have replaced enough CDs over the years (I was an early adopter, I started in 1986, which wasn't all that early) that I wish they'd had a 400-CD jukebox years ago. Fortunately they have 'em for DVD, a pretty easy technology transfer I guess. Do yourself a favor and get one.
Perhaps originally. But the long-play L750 tapes came in very early, well before VHS obtained a major lead. I imagine that most VCR buyers didn't even know that that there had ever been such a limitation. I certainly didn't know it when I was buying my first VCR, and debating between beta and VHS (I bought an VHS, but ended up exchanging it for a beta because I was unhappy with the quality and the tape handling).
maybe you can clear this up -- In this announcement did Sony kill all of it's "Beta" products (Digital Beta, Betacam, Beta, BetaMax) or just the home tape Betamax?
Is Beta dead as a format carte blanche, or is it still being supported in it's newer incarnations?
Thanks,
Grip
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
This is an example of Sony thinking in terms of America, Europe, and Industrialized Asia....
The Developing countries are going to be stuck with analog technology for YEARS to come......
In developing countries, radio stations still have reel-to-reel and Carts (little 8-track-lookin' dealies), As for TV stations, there's probably a few left with old-timey 2-inch reel-to-reel tape. Yes, digital will replace Beta in the TV world (and it mostly has, including a format called "Digital Beta"), but STILL, the world's gonna need analog formats for years to come, if we want the third world to have a decent level of communications.
...is that now Faye Valentine will never get to play that tape she mailed to herself.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
Just Betamax. They said that Betacam would still be produced and supported. I couldn't imagine them killing it off now as there are still too many places (independent producers, TV stations, cable head-ends, etc.) using analogue Betacam SP.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
What's really amazing is that the people chiming in, who don't for some reason know the difference between Betamax and Betacam, think they are somehow showing off their knowledge.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Nobody in their right minds would use DVDs instead of Betamax for most tasks that betamax is used for. For starters, where are the cameras that write directly to DVD? And I can't imagine that using 2 DVD players and a DVD burner is a good substitute for a linear editing suite.
On the other hand, I'm not surprised that the end of betamax is near. With standards like digibeta and DVCAM, and all the related ones, most people want to move to SDI or firewire setups rather than analog recording, capture, and playback.
Railing against firewire is saved for another time.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
Well, stations broadcasting letterbox movies are sending the whole lines, they're just black ones. The legality of this issue relates to the concessions on the airwaves, and the signal is exactly the same.
Hugo
Ok smart-ass, try this test: place a magnet on or near your VHS. Now place one on or near your DVD. Jump to the start of the DVD movie and watch it 100 times. Do the same with VHS.
Yeah, but for all practical purposes, which do you consider the bigger problem? I had PowerDVD on my PC complain the very first time I tried playing a movie- one tiny smudge. I've never had a problem with VHS, and I'm not overly careful about magnetism.
VHS tapes aren't international either... try playing a US video on a UK VHS player, and see how far you get. (Hint: it doesn't work)
It doesn't? That sucks; seems my 5 year old (UK PAL) VCR, along with the majority of recent models are being missold with the claim they can play back NTSC tapes.
To be fair, I've never tried this out- the quality might suck for all I know.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
1) Porn was allowed on VHS ...
2)
3) VHS Wins
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Do you mean you're actually running the signal THROUGH the Beta, or playing the movie on the Beta? Just to see if we're on the same page here, I mean that basically you plugging the Beta in between two lengths of coaxial going from VHS1 to VHS2.
If that IS what you mean and you're getting the signal, I find that fascinating because technically it shouldn't happen. (Something to do with the automatic gain happening at a different time on the Beta to the VHS. Can't remember the technicalities.)
Yes, I've tried it both ways, the protection is in the video signal itself, and affects my modern VHS the same way whether it's
a) Raw from the source (source is RCA type connection)
b) Taped to beta and then played to the VHS
c) Piped through the beta live via coax or RCA
My Sony VHS and my capture cards respond to the signal somewhat less when it's coming from the beta on tape, but they still respond enough to wreck a recording. When the signal is simply piped through, it's fully intact and fully ugly.
Perhaps I have an anomoly of some sort in my setup?
How many people do you think even cared Betamax is being discontinued?
/.
1) Twenty
2) Twelve
3) Seven
4) 500,000 cuz it was on
5) CowboyNealoMax
Interesting. I use plain coax, I don't use RCA connectors, but it definitely filters it out. Weird. Maybe I just got lucky!
>Yeah, but for all practical purposes, which do you consider the bigger problem?
Fine. Three can play this game.
Most people like to drink something while they watch TV. Ever spilt a beer on a tape? Doesn't play all that well, that's if it doesn't jam up the VCR immediately. Basically, the tape is trash.
Now spill the same drink on a DVD. Now run tap water over the DVD and let it dry. Yup, its still in (relatively) pristine condition. I'd still make a backup incase the liquid made it between the layers, though.
>That sucks; seems my 5 year old (UK PAL) VCR, along with the majority of recent models are being missold with the claim they can play back NTSC tapes.
In 60 Hz PAL mode. Overclocking your TV is about as reliable as overclocking your PCI bus. If it works for you, good. But some of us like to stay away from the "red zone"...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
>Nobody in their right minds would use DVDs instead of Betamax for most tasks that betamax is used for.
Nobody in their right mind would use BetaMax for broadcast TV.
It probably wouldn't even be good enough for a wedding video master.
Notice those horrible looking ads on TV asking you to buy a beat up junker from Al's Car Store? Yeah... that's BetaMax (240 lines of resolution! Woohoo!).
BetaCam, however, well, that's a different story. But at $1000 for a player, and more for a camera, a lot of independant people (and small studios) turn to DV instead.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
But you at lease don't find this a little interesting? How about the fact that it has taken this long for them to finnaly formally end the run for BETAMAX? I have an idea for you, if you don't like a story that /. posted, just skip it and read on. If you don't like any of the stories, go away and never come back.
Of course, VHS LP is generally actually worse quality than SLP due to the way the tracks end up overlapping. SLP moved to narrower heads to remove the problem, but this prevented recording LP in a compatible way, if memory serves.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
There used to be VCRs from Panasonic, probably others, that would do standards conversion for PAL/NTSC. Now SECAM, yeah, that kind of... umm... sucks. But for PAL, it really wasn't that hard.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
For people in the broadcast industry, Sony's Beta SP and Beta SX (which is the newer digital version of Beta... the visual quality is great) are the standard by which all others go by. Sony really never dropped the stick ever as far as a professional broadcast medium is concerned. If you have ever shot on Sony Professional with good lenses, you never want to go back. Its rugged stuff too. Of course, you're gonna pay through the nose. My old camera cost about $45k when it came out in 89. Figure for todays money.
.5 billion dollar a year business with professional TV. When all the other competitors in Pro TV say "well, this feature is just like a Sony" you know you're really got it all wrapped up.
I shoot on a Panasonic DVC Pro Dockable Camcorder (although it really should be called an ENG camera, camcorders have a connotation of tiny, mine weighs well over 30+ lbs with batteries and mics, lcds and lights) right now. My news station is DVC pro. AS the old addage goes, you get what you pay for. All of the other stations shoot on Sony in Nashville, TN.
Trust me. Sony is not giving up on the professional end with Beta. It probably has at least a
Unfortunately, no it doesn't have analog inputs. >:I
Well then consider yourself lucky. Mine sure as hell doesn't let me do that. It says 'Operation prohibited by disc'.
If I try to fast forward I'll get a similar 'operation prohibited' type message, but the chapter skip works. I've got an old Sony DVP-S550D.
Calling it "bad marketing" is a bit unfair to Sony. Sony had a better product, and they charged more for it. Nothing unusual about that; they sold (and still sell) their TVs on the same basis. Sure, they don't sell as many TVs, but they sell them at a better margin.
The VCR was a classic example of a product being used in a different way than the manufacturer intended. VCRs were intended to be used primarily for time-shifting and archiving TV shows--that's what the famous "Betamax case" was about. That's why virtually all VCRs had TV tuners. Pre-recorded tapes were offered for sale, but they were ruinously expensive, and intended only for a handful of wealthy videophiles. From this perspective, Sony's high-end strategy made perfect sense.
What Sony didn't anticipate was the rise in tape renting, and the impact it would have on player sales. By the early '80's, there was a little "mom & pop" video rental joint in almost every neighborhood (this was before big chains like Blockbuster grabbed most of the pie). But supporting two formats doubled their cost (at those ruinous prerecorded tape prices). So they cut back on beta, the less popular format. Which made people less willing to buy beta VCRs. Which made rental shops less willing to stock beta tapes.
By now, we've seen a similar story played out with computer and videogame software. The less successful system gets less software, which makes it even less successful, which further reduces software development--and the market develops a kind of criticality. If you aren't wildly successful, you are doomed. But Sony had fewer examples to learn from (8-track audio tape, maybe? but that was also an inferior format). So we should not be so ready to fault Sony from the benefit of our 20/20 hindsight. Sony was just following the business model that had served them so well in the past, until suddenly, the world changed.
How do you stop someone from making Beta tapes?
Well, now that's a good question and I'll try to explain what I believe is the simple answer to it. In the time period that this was taking place Sony owned the format lock, stock, and barrell. Ever see what happened to someone who tried to make game cartridges for an NES system when Nintendo was ready to take you to court for doing so without their approval? How about the people who own the patent for the Compact Disc format posturing about suing makers of copy protected CD's and preventing them from marking them as "Compact Discs" since they will not play in all compact disc players out there. Possibly Sony could not have prevented them from releasing movies on Beta but they could have made enough of a mess of it to change the cost of those tapes.
I think the point of this is that the people behind the VHS format were behind in the game at this time (Sony did have over a year with the market pretty much all to themselves before VHS machines started appearing) and they had no qualms at all about what content was on the tapes. It seems almost silly that Sony would have cared at the time too but they did and were prepared (or at least made a good enough show of being willing) to fight it.
"VHS" was the format that provided the least amount of friction for them so they went there.
It's not an Urban Legend. It's the simple truth and like I said, I remember it. Age does that for you.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
all tellies & VCRs made today are designed to automatically compatible with PAL, SECAM & NTSC.
It's simple cheaper as far as economies of scale on the production line. & its been like that for nearly 10 years.
as long as the telly & vcr are less than nearly 10 years old.
Ones made now are all PAL, NTCS & SECAM compatible - its simply better economies of scale on the production side & simpler warehousing/distribution setups.
I remember in middle school there was an old VHS VCR that had a shuttle knob which stayed in place while in use and played audio too. So one could play the tape slightly faster or slower than normal speed or in reverse causing the audio to do interesting things which was sort of amusing to do. The VCR also had interesting dire warnings about how recording TV shows might be illegal.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
VHS : BetaMax
The parallels run deep, and lifecycle is likely to prove to be one of them.
--Blair
The annoying thing about macrovision of course, is that it messes with the sync enough to upset some projectors. So you could spend a fortune on your DVD player, amp, cinema setup, large projector, buy a legal copy of your DVD then watch it all go pear shaped when you hit play.
Mildly annoying.
I'm glad im not the only person that did that.
Up until 2 years ago, i recorded ntsc tv broadcasts to my sony hi8 camcorder.
My beta deck died a long time ago, so i have never compared hi8 to betamax, but i can say that hi8 looks noticably better than vhs-sp. SVHS beats hi8, but taking the tape size into consideration, I'd still chose hi8.
Now i use Digital8 for my tv recording. I can only get 60 minutes per tape, but that suits me fine.
Mildly annoying? Bloody scandalous IMO. ANY so called "protection" mechanism which prevents a legit owner from possibly using it is wrong IMO. Yeah, protect your stuff all you want, but DON'T stomp on consumers rights. Bioware (Neverwinter Nights) just learnt this the hard way with the SecuROM protection on the game. They've had to remove it entirely due to the huge number of people who couldn't play the game.
I hate Macrovision. You also get problems with those combo VCR/TV's if you try to play DVD's. Apex DVD players rule. It's quite simple to hack the region coding and macrovision out. Takes a simple rom flash to do it.
Xavier
Do I make sense? Please report if not.
I still remember having to go to the one small wall of Beta Videos in our local video store, when there where shelves and shelves of VHS. All the movies I wanted to watch were on VHS too...
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Indeed, my "mildly annoying" should be read as "totally unacceptable".
I had my player fixed to remove region coding and macrovision. The company that sold it to me offer most modern players "new" (but modified by them) with a warranty and all the other benefits of buying from a shop.
This news brought to you by the Slashdot time machine circa 1982.
I bought my first Betamax AFTER it was clear that VHS would win, because video stores everywhere were dumping Beta titles for $5 apiece and I thought it would be a great opportunity to build a home video library (prerecorded tapes were $80 apiece then and used VHS movies were not as easy to find as they are now). I bought hundreds of the damned things.
For about a year now I have been using a TV capture card to convert my tape library to Video CDs or DivX. I have found that VHS tapes, even very old ones, give a better picture when playing on modern equipment than the Beta tapes do. In fact, many of my Beta tapes are unplayable. They might play on a television, but as input to a capture card all you get is a blue screen. I have decided that I will try to dub all my unplayable Betas to VHS instead of VCDs.
About the only Beta tapes that look good are those that haven't been played much, and pretty much any VHS recorded at the 2 hour speed looks better.
Fry's Electronics still has blank betamax tapes, atleast they did last week.
Beta was superior in ONE WAY: it had slightly better quality.
nope, sorry.
BetaMAX had:
1.) "U" loading (220 degrees of turns) instead of "M" loading (~500 degrees), so
. lower tape tension, and
. video effects for "scanning" forward and reverse, and
. full speed REW and FF with the tape engaged on the heads so you could have a real-time counter.
2.) a higher write speed (better picture)
3.) the even helical scan tracks were 7 degrees off pitch one way and the odd ones were 7 degrees the other, so less video crosstalk without having to leave buffer space like VHS (which wasted tape) so Beta could have a smaller cassette. (Total recording time was a constant race that became irrelavant at the 5+ hour mark for most people.)
yes, most machines caught up on 1.), eventually, but that was after VHS was way ahead, thanks mostly to cheaper machines made by many manufacturers because JVC was first** to licence.
** I have 2, two, SANYO Beta VCRs...
later came superbeta, then VHS HQ (mostly signal filters), then S-VHS, then ED-beta (Broadcast quality).
fun.
-- Without the right to carry and use self-defence tools, we effectively have no right to life.
Here Here!
I used to work in broadcast as a news vidiographer... I could never get it through to some people that Betacam SP was completely different from Betamax.
I think the trouble lies not just in the similar names, but in the form factor of the tape - the cassettes are identical in appearance except for the little label that says Betacam SP.
With Beta, a single cassette could last 2 hours on high speed play... with Betacam, the same size cassette lasted for 20 minutes. The tape moves MUCH faster to give better signal quality (more tape per second= more recording surface per frame=better picture and sound quality) If anyone ever saw the 1 hour Betacam SP tapes, they would not recognize it - they are about 2.5 times the size of a standard Betamax or Betacam SP tape. The betacam camcorders all use the small sized tapes with that Betamax-like form factor... the edit and play decks have a wider slot and can accept both sizes of tape.
Electronic news gathering and story editing is done on the small tapes. Television stations also often use the small Betacam tapes to store their commercials. (ohh those robotic Betacam commercial servers... mmm) but use the larger 1 hour tapes to archive footage and broadcasts.
The Digital Sorceress
You're exactly the sort of clueless bastard that's holding Linux back.
Linux is superior technology with a marketing system based on saying it's superior technology and hoping that will succeed.
It's doomed.