Why VHS Was Better

otis wildflower writes "An article in the UK's Guardian describes why, in the end, VHS is better than Betamax. While this may not be terribly useful knowledge on its own, the author then makes a pretty convincing case that viewing something's success or failure purely on technical merit is not an entirely accurate way of looking at things. For better or for worse, success of new products and technologies is determined by a broad range of factors that make up "the whole product", quality being only one, and possibly a minor one at that. Kind of explains what happened to the Atari Lynx and Jaguar, dunnit?"

Comments

Fooey

[zapfie]

I really thought Betamax was close to winning, too..

And in mor important news:

[N3WBI3]

I stubbed my toe this morning, this will have an effect on a total of one more person than the end of sony betamax...

Dang...

[tinrobot]

No more Betamax? I guess I'll need to buy a new doorstop then.

Re:Dang...

[Tet]

No more Betamax? I guess I'll need to buy a new doorstop then.

Doorstop? My Betamax machine is still in full working order. I figure I'll hang onto it for a few more years yet, and then make a killing by selling it as spare parts to those in need, now that Sony have discontinued them. After several failed attempts at amassing obscene amounts of wealth, this time my plan's foolproof. It has to work, right?

In other news:

[xeroh]

Phillips has decided to discontinue the 8-track tape.

Re:In other news:

[ReadParse]

It's Philips with one L... yes, spelling counts in jokes, too. And a little research might have yielded the name of a company that actually produced eight-track tapes (such as RCA), instead of Philips, which decidedly did not, further enhancing the humor.

Just tryin' to help a comic out.

Gah

[Reality Master 101]

Not the ol' Beta-superiority-undone-by-better-marketing myth.

Beta was superior in ONE WAY: it had slightly better quality. Yes, I said slightly.

VHS, on the other hand, had a LOT of advantages:

a) Longer recording length, which is what really killed Beta
b) Less expensive players
c) Less expensive media
d) Non-proprietary

Bottom line, VHS was far superior in the areas that mattered.

Re:Gah

[pthisis]

True. See e.g. Urbanlegends.com's beta vs vhs page.

Sumner

Re:Gah

[Qrlx]

Actually, I think the biggest thing that Beta had going for it was that you could scan the tape while fast-forwarding. On VHS, you had to stop, wait for the moving parts to stop whirring, and then press play to see where you were on a tape.

Eventually the VHS people figured out how to do it, but for the first ten years or so you had to get out of fast forward mode in order to get a picture on the screen. Beta could do that from the get-go, and it made working with the tape, a lot faster and easier.

I'm sure someone who is really into video will take up the crusade of why beta is sooo much better than VHS, but eventually VHS more or less caught up, and the six hour tape thing was a really big deal, one in which Beta never could compete. Beta, while technologically superior, was cursed by poor political decisions on the part of Sony, and the tapes were too short anyway.

VHS was to Beta what Microsoft was to IBM back in the 80s -- the open architecture alternative. (Sorry, I had to throw that analogy in just to be cantankerous.)

Let's face it, DVD is a million times better than either VHS or Beta. And if you still need an old beta player, check your local thrift shops. There's more of them out there than you might think.

Re:Gah

[pthisis]

Eventually the VHS people figured out how to do it, but for the first ten years or so you had to get out of fast forward mode in order to get a picture on the screen.

Our VHS circa 1982 lets you see the picture while you fast-forward. It also has a remote control with a cord on it, which is less than useful.

Still works, though mono audio forced it off the main TV long before DVD did the same for our newer VHS.

Sumner

Re:Gah

[Webmonger]

"VHS was to Beta what Microsoft was to IBM back in the 80s -- the open architecture alternative"

Here's another one: VHS was to Beta what IBM PC was to C64, Amiga, Atari ST, and Mac -- the open architecture alternative.

Re:Gah

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Our VHS circa 1982 lets you see the picture while you fast-forward. It also has a remote control with a cord on it, which is less than useful.

More useful than you may think - betcha never lost it in the couch.

Re:Gah

[pthisis]

More useful than you may think - betcha never lost it in the couch.

Nope, it didn't reach the couch. So it was always on a shelf in the closet.

The VCR had huge multicoloured buttons, too. The stop button was about 3" by 3". Easily to operate by foot, even with shoes on. Just in case you didn't feel like leaning over.

Sumner

Re:Gah

[Zoop]

True. See e.g. Urbanlegends.com's beta vs vhs [urbanlegends.com] page.

Horsehockey. We had a betamax player in '81-'82 or thereabouts, and for five years, its low speed was significantly better than the VHS, including the Hi Fi format. In particular, images didn't blur as much on playback. There was simply no comparison between it and standard VHS. Only HiFi came close, and yes, we did A/B comparisons on the same TV. At high speeds, the difference was less noticeable, but if you're taping off TV you don't use high quality except for a very few things.

The area that it wasn't as good as HiFi VHS was in sound, since HiFi VHS adopted the spinning head, giving an effective 30 ips playback rate, whereas the Sony was doing it linearly, at something like 1 or 2 ips. Otherwise, HiFi VHS only had about the picture quality of mid-level betamax.

This was obvious to anybody who had access to both, and it makes me really question their research and sources. Oh, yeah, Popular Electronics is their source. Well, that says it, man. I'm sure they can't hear the difference between Dahlquist and Pioneer speakers, either.

Re:Gah

[tgibbs]

Not the ol' Beta-superiority-undone-by-better-marketing myth. Beta was superior in ONE WAY: it had slightly better quality. Yes, I said slightly.

Actually, beta was superior in a number of ways at different times. Sony was ahead in technology by about 6 months, but VHS always caught up. For example, Sony had high fidelity sound about 6 months ahead of VHS. Similarly, when SuperBeta came in, beta was considerably more than slightly superior in terms of picture, but VHS HQ almost closed the gap within 6 months. The one area where betas seemed to remain consistently superior was in tape handling. Even the cheapest betas were superior to VHS in going, say from fast forward to play, although some of today's high-end VHS players are as good as the old betas.

Both beta (Sony) and VHS (JVC) were proprietary formats, and both were licensed to other companies. Betas were made also by Zenith and Sanyo. However, Sony justifiably regarded their VCRs as a high-end product, and charged a premium (and presumably for licenses as well).

I don't believe that shorter recording length killed beta. Long-play L750 tapes were available well before the decline of beta. VHS maintained a length advantage with their larger cassettes, but it was modest. Neither was there much difference in media cost, although with the decline of beta, beta blank tapes became more of a specialty item, and more costly.

I think what really killed beta was the rise of videtape rental. And in fact, it the fall of beta coincided with the spread of video rental shops. As long as people bought VCRs to time-shift and archive shows for TV, Sony's high-end strategy was viable. But people began to use their players mainly for watching rented movies, and carrying both formats doubled the cost for video rental outlets. A store could do better by focusing on VHS tapes, since the cheaper VHS machines sold more widely. Greater availability of rentals for VHS encouraged sales of VHS players, widening the gap between beta and VHS--which encouraged video shops to cut back even further on beta stock in favor of VHS. By the time Sony finally gave up and started making VHS players, many rental outlets offered exclusively VHS tapes.

Re:Gah

[SN74S181]

It must be lonely, being the Betamax Zealot in the year 2002.

Re:Gah

[ghjm]

It sounds like you're comparing B-III with VHS SLP. These are not comparable formats. The correct comparison to B-III is VHS LP. On T-120 (812 foot) and L-750 (750 foot) tapes, the equivalencies are:

Beta B-II (3h.) = VHS SP (2h.)
Beta B-III (4.5h) = VHS LP (4h.)
(nothing) = VHS SLP or EP or XP (6h.)

So if you're going to compare "the lowest speed" then you will indeed notice a difference between VHS SLP and Beta-III - just like you notice a difference between VHS SLP and VHS LP. If you compare speeds that are actually comparable, you will not notice a quality difference.

-Graham

In other news...

[EMDischarge]

Coca-Cola, Inc. announces it is discontinuing its "New Coke" line of products.

Re:In other news...

[grahamsz]

God i hope so.

It's a challenge to find 'Coke Classic' anywhere in the UK these days. I knew one place that kept it but they went out of business.

I just spent a year in the us where coke tastes fantastic and it's still foul tasting over here - but most people dont know any different.

I am totally serious here - go into a mcD's in scotland and they'll serve you new coke.... scary

Re:In other news...

[idiotnot]

Except that a continuous loop tape has an inherently longer lifecycle than a cassette.

This is why a variant of the 8-track, the audio cart, is still a staple of radio stations. We've got some that have probably been in use (the tape part itself) for twenty years, and some with audio on them that have been used pretty much everyday for about seven.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's incorrect. Continuous loop tapes do not last longer, quite the opposite in fact! To get back into the loop, the tape has to fold, and that folding action causes oxide to flake off, causing the audio to degrade rapidly.

The reason why they use continuous loop carts in broadcasting is because they re-cue themselves automatically, and are ready for re-use right away. Forgetting to rewind a tape means dead air, which is a cardinal sin in broadcasting! Carts help prevent that.

Re:In other news...

[kmellis]

Jesus, people are still using carts? I thought that for sure had been digitaled away.

Along with being a jock about twenty years ago, I also later worked for a company that shipped entire music libaries on cart. We'd dupe 'em from a reel-to-reel master to another r2r modified with cart heads. Then we'd splice and assemble the carts by hand. Whoopee!

Yeah, carts and cart machines are not very reliable. They sound(ed) like crap. Their only virtue--and it's a considerable virtue, like you said--is that they're self-cueing. I always liked to have a few songs on cart handy for emergencies (although I, like everyone else, learned how to cue up a 45 one-handed while blathering into the mike).

Re:In other news...

[Blrfl]

...Which doesn't change the fact that there are stations with cheap-assed GMs that are still using 20-year-old carts because the tape hasn't broken yet. :-)

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

College radio and even the weather bureau have been off getting rid of their carts and fidelipacs and going to computer playback.

Around this part of the world, the only people that might still have the tape systems are the ones who were here when that was the way to go.

And the odds are that they've been replaced by computers and some form of voice tracking. Even the bowling alleys are dumping "live DJs" for a centrally programmed, licensed, controlled-content (no songs offensive to families if desired, etc.) data streams for their various forms of "black light bowling".

"good technology outdone by better marketing"

[PaschalNee]

This is one that is always quoted by marketing heads. Anybody have any good evidence to back this up? Why was beta better? What was the marketing campaign that won it for VHS?

I don't necessarily doubt this but I'd love to see the detail.

Re:"good technology outdone by better marketing"

[pthisis]

It isn't really true. See e.g. http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/beta_vs_vhs.h tml

"True, except for the recording length, Sony pioneered most of the improvements over the years, but the VHS manufacturers caught up to each improvement, usually in less than a year. So, for instance, within a month of Sony's announcement of Beta Hi-Fi, JVC and Panasonsic announced VHS Hi-Fi formats...Comparisons between VCRs with similar features showed no significant differences in performance. In fact, most of the differences could only be seen with sensitive instruments, and likely would never show up on most consumer grade television sets. [5] In particular, the qualitative differences between the two formats were less than the differences between any two samples from the same manufacturer. [8]"

Sumner

Re:"good technology outdone by better marketing"

[(trb001)]

here's a link that might help you. Essentially, Beta was first and had most of the innovations, but VHS won out overall. Betas quality was, as everyone will state, better but the record time and lack of pre-recorded media helped to kill it.

--trb

Re:"good technology outdone by better marketing"

[UserChrisCanter4]

It wasn't really marketing. As previously indicated, it was Sony shooting themselves in the foot.

Beta did have an ever so slightly higher horizontal reolution (the way most TV video sources are measured) than VHS. I wanna say 350 lines vs. 320, or something asinine like that. But, technically, it was better.

For the better majority of Beta's life, though, Sony was the only company who made players. They didn't want anyone else getting a slice of the pie. When companies like Panasonic, Philips, RCA, etc. wanted to make a Beta player, Sony said, "no".

Enter JVC.

JVC came up with VHS. it's not quite as good, but they didn't have any real technical disadvantage. But (and this is the big thing), they would license technology. Philips, Panasonic, and RCA could now make a VCR. Now the consumer had a lot of choices: some companies could make stripped-down models, or models with different features, or what-have-you. Additionally, the customers who just have to have all of their equipment the same brand can do so.

It wasn't really marketing in the way someone wants to think (ads and so forth), it was just a better idea.

Think about it this way: Apple vs. PC. If IBM's technology had stayed completely proprietary, and Compaq had never reverse engineered the system, there's a good chance Apple or even some other platform would've won. Instead, there are 1,000s of brand-names for PC and still just one Apple.

Re:"good technology outdone by better marketing"

[sunspot42]

That urbanlegends article isn't entirely accurate. For example, it implies VHS Hi-Fi recordings aren't compatible with plain vanilla VHS decks. That isn't the case. You can play back VHS Hi-Fi recordings on a plain VHS deck - you just won't get the Hi-Fi sound.

Also, Beta's picture was noticeably superior to VHS's picture right up to the introduction of S-VHS around 1986, long after VHS had "won" the format war. Anybody with a halfway decent 27" television would be able to see the difference. The way Beta wrapped the tape around the head drum was also superior, leading to less wear and tear on the tape and making it easier to implement "special effects" like freeze frames, slow motion and especially viewing the picture during fast winding.

The article did do a good job of refuting the bogus claim that Sony was slow to license Beta. They were in fact trying to acquire partners right from the start (JVC turned them down because they were nearly complete with VHS), and did manage to get some big players onboard. Sanyo sold millions of mostly lower-priced Beta decks from the late '70s through the mid '80s, for example.

What killed Beta was the shorter recording time, plain and simple. When VHS debuted with its 2 hour recording time, Beta was stuck with a 1 hour recording time. After a year or so Sony introduced a slower recording speed that allowed for 2 hour recording (with a slightly degraded picture quality), but by then it was already too late - VHS was ahead in the market (having then-gigantic RCA onboard as a partner didn't hurt VHS's chances, either). When the VHS camp shot back with their own slower speeds (allowing for 6 hours of recording per tape, at substantially degraded fidelity) it was all over for Beta.

The lesson here being that people are cheap, and care more about the cost of tape than about picture quality - a fact the HDTV crowd should keep in mind.

Re:"good technology outdone by better marketing"

[tmark]

For the better majority of Beta's life, though, Sony was the only company who made players.

That may be true, but it's not true in an important way. When the VHS/Beta wars were really being fought (late 70s/early 80s ?), there were as many or nearly as many companies making Beta machines as VHS, and Beta machines were as prevalent as VHS machines for quite a while. The proportions did change, however, and once they changed they did so faster and faster, until VHS became the de facto standard and Beta soldiered on under only the Sony banner - for the majority of Beta's lifetime. But while the issue was still in the air, lack of manufacturers wasn't the issue. I still believe that if a coin had landed another way, Beta could well have become the dominant standard instead of a b-school case study.

What they *really* want

[rknop]

...is to kill the Supreme Court Betamax decision, now that they find that they'd rather have the ability of perfect control over media. Maybe they're hoping that by killing the technology the suit was over, the ruling will go away... :)

-Rob

Re:What they *really* want

[Gaccm]

Maybe you shouldn't put words into the mouth of an international corporation. Do you honestly think that they think by not making betamax anymore the court case just vanishes?

Since nobody reads the article ...

[ip_vjl]

A few people have commented how this may hurt the TV/broadcast industry.

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

... so one would surmise that NO, this won't hurt the TV broadcast industry. It sounds like it is just the consumer level Beta product.

Hemos is wrong

[tps12]

Sony did not shoot itself in the foot with Betamax. They've been selling VHS to one market and Betamax to another for years. That's called a win-win. Most consumers don't deal with Betamax these days, but it's been a mainstay of professional video production since its introduction. The only reason they're discontinuing it now is that digital video has just recently become good enough to replace it. Sony wisely decided to focus its efforts on beating competing DV equipment manufacturers, rather than invest in both technologies and have to compete with themselves, as well.

Re:Hemos is wrong

[tinrobot]

BetaMAX a standard of video production? It's always been a consumer format. Are you thinking of BetaCAM?

We use BetaCam sp here, as well as Digital BetaCam. Those formats are still very much alive, though DVCAM has put a dent on BetaSP.

Dumbasses

[Laplace]

Beta is still used quite a bit in the commercial broadcast industry. Sony was making consumer products on the side, just cause there was still a nickel (truly a nickel) to be made. They aren't making enough nickels any more so the niche consumer product line has been discontinued. Beta is still alive and well in the broadcast industry, though.

This will not affect the Sony Broadcast Betacam

[ruebarb]

As I quote from 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"

doesn't anyone read the articles these things point to? F*** almighty...

RB

Re:This will not affect the Sony Broadcast Betacam

[geekoid]

what, and miss a cance to get there un-informed opinion posted on /. 60 seconds sooner then an informed one?
what, you new here?

another urband legend entry

[andika]

http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/beta_vs_vhs .h tml

Betamax still made Sony lots of money

[artemis67]

Sure, they lost the battle for Joe Consumer, but they won the corporate market big time. And while JVC is spitting out VHS systems for >$100 a pop, Sony is selling their Betamax systems for $10 or 20 grand. Of course, nobody outside of Sony corporate knows just how much they've made versus how much JVC made, but I bet the gulf isn't as wide as most people think.

Re:Betamax still made Sony lots of money

[Loligo]

>JVC is spitting out VHS systems for >$100 a pop

It's easy to make VHS systems for >$100 each.

making them for $100 each, that's the trick.

-l

Betamax?

[Xenopax]

I didn't even realize that it was still possible to get anything in a betamax format. Seriously, I'm not trying to troll, but when was the last time anyone even saw a betamax tape for sale?

Re:Betamax?

[artemis67]

Betamax is widely used in video production. When I worked at a 3D animation school, the students would save all of their work to a master Beta tape.

Betamax is still huge for people who do video editing.

Re:Betamax?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Ecchoing previous sentiments, Betamax is not used in production. Betacam is. Similar names, big difference

Betamax-Betacam

[genka]

Betamax and Betacam formats have little in common. They share the shape of the cassette, but tape are different. Recording speed and layout is different too. Whatever it is now, Beta is doing just fine in broadcast industry. The major types are:
Betacam (Obsolete)
Betacam SP (Probably the most popular analog pro video format)
Digital Betacam (Excellent quality, very slight compression)
Betacam SX (Compressed Digital, Cheaper than above)
All formats, except for the original Betacam support not only Betamax style cassette, but also a large one with 3x recording time.

Good timing...

[Anonvmous Coward]

Not a bad time to do it. DV has matured enough to absorb the impact. As a matter of fact, I bought a $500 video camera that uses Digital8 and am surprised at it's capabilities.

I have Premiere ($500ish), After Effects ($600ish), Photoshop ($600), and Lightwave ($1,600) as well. My $5,000 setup (my computer included) kicks the crap out of the TV studio I worked in a couple of years ago where one 3/4th Beta Deck cost around $20,000. The downside is that I don't quite get the color data that beta does. Can't say I miss it yet.

Price per performance has really changed in the last 5 years.

I wish I could record TV to MiniDV, though...

Re:Good timing...

[edremy]

I wish I could record TV to MiniDV, though...

Get a digital-analog bridge and you can. I've been using a Formac Studio with no problems. RCA/SVideo in, Firewire out or vice versa.

Let the obvious comments roll in...

[Xpilot]

Yawn. I'll bet there'll be lots of comments on how this is the prototypical example of good technology outdone by better marketing, and an example of a company being stupidly obstinate about wanting to own a system, and shooting themselves in the foot.

Oh wait...

In the foot?

[M-G]

shooting themselves in the foot.

I'm not sure that Sony shot themselves in the foot with Beta. Sure, it never really took off in the consumer segment, but it was the basis for years of professional equipment. And during all that time, Sony was perfectly happy to sell the consumer VHS VCRs.

There are lots of technologies that are used in professional settings that differ from consumer grade products. Creating a good and profitable professional product without a corresponding product for the mass market doesn't make it a failure.

What about SuperBeta?

[Tin Weasil]

Years ago (1991-1993) I was working for the Navy Broadcasting Service in Keflavik Iceland. Every week we would receive a shipment of three large containers. Each container was packed with video tapes containing content for us to play the following month on our base-wide television station. The tapes came in "SuperBeta" format from Sony. Basically, the tapes were some version of "BetaMax" but on tapes that were almost twice the width of the standard beta tape. Each tape could hold about 90 minutes of programming.

The format was great. It produced very nice resolution (which is needed for any kind of broadcasting, due to signal loss.) There are still television stations out there (particularly entertainment for military audiences) that still use the SuperBeta format. I'm wondering if Sony is going to force these stations to upgrade their facilities or if they will keep producing SuperBeta after the demise of Betamax.

Re:What about SuperBeta?

[sunspot42]

That's not SuperBeta. SuperBeta was a slight refinement to the Beta format released in the early to mid-1980's, providing a slightly improved picture quality while remaining compatible with existing Beta players. It did *not* use a different format or type of tape. I had a SuperBeta Hi-Fi deck around 1985, made by Sanyo, which blew any consumer VHS Hi-Fi recorder away.

What you were seeing sounds like Betacam studio tapes, which were produced both in a smaller, Beta-sized form factor (30 minutes max) as well as a larger one that held up to 90 minutes. Betacam was a professional/industrial version of Beta that Sony introduced in the late 1980's I believe. It was based loosely on Betamax, but was not backwards compatible nor would it ever have been suitable for home use due to the short running time of the tapes - especially the smaller ones (though it was perfect for recording news stories).

Beta*CAM*

[ArcSecond]

I said it once, I'll say it again: BETAMAX != BETACAM. If you worked in video, you would know that. Max was a market failure, period. BetaCam is an industry standard. They have nothing to do with each other.

duh...

[artemis67]

ok, that'll teach me to proof...

should be less than $100, not great than.

duh.

One other thing: more licensing

[MtViewGuy]

I think another thing that killed the Beta format was the fact that the originator of the VHS format (JVC) is a subsidiary of the giant Matsushita Electric electrical-goods conglomerate, and that meant Matsushita's powerful marketing muscle was able to convince the majority of Japanese electronics manufacturers to support VHS and to get licenses for the format; this is a huge reason why VHS prevailed.

Small wonder why Sony decided to de-emphasize the fight with JVC/Matsushita over home VCR formats and concentrate on the 8 mm and MiniDV videocassette formats for camcorders, where Sony had much more marketing success.

I do agree that VHS' longer recording times was a big factor in VHS' favor; remember on a T-120 tape VHS got there first with four-hour (LP mode) and six-hour (SLP or EP mode) recording. That proved to be a huge boon for folks who wanted to record an entire sporting event (baseball or American football) on one tape or record a whole week of shows on one tape (just in time for the rapid rise of David Letterman; NBC's Late Night with David Letterman was one of the most recorded-shows according to the Nielsen ratings during the 1980's).

Need some NFO?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously there aren't many videographers on /.

http://www.dvcentral.org/DV-Beta.html

Sony Corp.'s Betacam SP format is the standard of comparison of video tape recording formats. According to Sony Europe, more than 350,000 Betacam SP devices have been sold world-wide. The majority of broadcast electronic news gathering (ENG) operations currently use Betacam SP camcorders and VTRs. Virtually all broadcast stations require (or at least strongly prefer) Betacam SP source footage. Most clients of professional video production firms specify Betacam SP for industrial shoots and are likely to require videographers to use Sony or Ikegami camcorders. Although the M-II format from Panasonic Broadcast and Digital (formerly Television) Systems Company (PB&DSC) offers about the same performance as Betacam SP, Sony and Betacam SP are untouchable when it comes to brand recognition and status. As a result, all other video recording formats are ranked as "not up to Beta SP," "equal to Betacam SP," or "better than Beta SP." These comparisons, based on the beholders' perception of image quality, are reminiscent of the meaningless "broadcast quality" and "studio quality" bullet points on advertisements for consumer and low-end prosumer video gear.

The advent of the Digital Video (DV) format has ignited a controversy among current and prospective users of DV gear. Initially, arguments appeared regarding the "legality" of broadcasting NTSC DV's 480 instead of 483 active lines of video. Obviously, if broadcasting less than 483 active lines was illegal, all U.S. stations transmitting letterboxed movies would have by now lost their licenses. The subsequent controversy, DV's 4:1:1 vs. ITU-R BT.601-4 (formerly CCIR-601) 4:2:2 sampling, has generated thousands of messages in on-line forums, newsgroups, and listservers. This paper represents an attempt to dispel the rumor and innuendo surrounding the 4:1:1 versus 4:2:2 issue, especially as it relates to the "Is DV better (or worse) than Betacam SP?" controversy, and DV compression artifacts.

JVCs Open Licensing v. Sony's Obstinance the Key

[FreeUser]

here's [urbanlegends.com] a link that might help you. Essentially, Beta was first and had most of the innovations, but VHS won out overall. Betas quality was, as everyone will state, better but the record time and lack of pre-recorded media helped to kill it.

Pre-recorded media wasn't a factor until long after the VHS-Beta battle was over. Almost no one was buying movies back then ... the big rage was the ability to record your own movies and material, directly off the television transmission.

The urbanlegends link portrays one perspective (and is quoted as an authority, although in truth it is no more authoritative than any other perspective), however, other early players in the consumer video market have argued a much different perspective.

At any given point in time, Beta was noticably better than VHS in features/quality (recording length excepted, although almost no one uses the 8 hour super-slow really-crappy record mode that I know), so saying "VHS caught up" really sidesteps the entire question of why VHS won, given that at any point in the battle VHS was on the losing side of the "technically better" argument.

What really killed Beta, according to some players at the time, was Sony's asinine licensing, or rather, the lack thereof, in direct contrast to JVC's willingness to license VHS to pretty much anyone willing to write a check. The entire event is very analogous to Apple undercutting other power-pc manufacturers, or Sun undercutting other sparc manufacturers, Sony was very stringent in who they would license Beta to.

The result was that there were four or five competing VHS brands, against Sony's Beta. Consumers correctly perceived a competitive market on the one hand, and a Sony proprietary market on the other, and as they did with Intel vs. Everyone else (remember, Intel allowed for competing motherboard and computer manufacturers, IBM notwithstanding), consumers went for the format that had clear competition.

The other factor of having multiple VHS manufacturers is the perception that VHS was already a standard catching on, while Sony was the sole promoter of Beta. Whether consumers chose VHS because they saw competition, or because they perceived it as having caught on (since there was competition), or simply because of price, the fact remains that the deciding factor was licensing and the presence of multiple vendors, not the quality of the underlying format.

In a sense that could be called 'marketing', but more correctly VHS's success is attributable to its 'licensing.'

Once and for all...

[excaliburdj]

First off...BEFORE YOU POST EVERONE STOP AND READ THIS COMMENT!!!

From the Yahoo! 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.

GOT IT? Good. Don't post any more about how the broadcast industry is being hurt by this, or they're pulling the rug out from under them blah blah blah blah.

Now....on to the purpose of my post. We actually had a couple of Beta VCR's at my house for several years. My significant other enjoyed the format because...ready for this??....the tapes were smaller and took up less storage space (Groan..) But I liked the format because initially it did have better quality than VHS. And, with the evolution of the format, you could record nearly 2 hours of video on a tape, more than enough for a standard movie (Titanic fans, please don't flame me!!!)

On a little different note...Sony has a little present history doing this. Let me see by a show of hands (wait...no...that won't work)...uh...a show of posts, then, how many people own and operate a MiniDisk player on a regular basis? Anyone following the standards debate on Blu-ray?

Re:Once and for all...

[karnal]

I use minidisc every day. Instead of loading up a company machine with mp3's (we've had issues with people being... ahem.. let go....) I use it at work for those times when I just can't get away from my desk.

Like right now, posting on Slashdot.

I also use it when I exercise... very handy device. Especially the 1$-2$ for 74 mins of music storage.

Betamax not Betacam

[FattMattP]

Yes, they were successful in broadcast...

I think you are confusing Betamax (consumer format) with Betacam (broadcast format). Betacam is very much alive while I don't think Betamax was ever used for broadcast work. The quality is too low.

You mean Coke II?

[yerricde]

Coca-Cola, Inc. announces it is discontinuing its "New Coke" line of products.

New Coke was renamed to "Coke II" in 1990. Apparently, Coca-Cola Co. still sells Coke II in some metropolitan areas.

--
ENJOY COCAINE!

Noooooooo! Or wait...

[decipher_saint]

No more new tapes for me I guess, thank God for that bulk tape eraser I bought then!

Screw VHS, screw mpeg and screw "PVR", I record what I want when I want.

What I noticed

[Newer Guy]

Was that in the '80's the Beta/VHS battle was more of an east coast/west coast thing..with the east firmly in the VHS camp and the west going for beta. Betamax was always a superior format picture wise too...proof of this is the fact that Betacam always outsold (and continues to outsell) the M format in broadcast/pro use. The beta/VHS battle is a model for marketing.,.in that the technically superior format lost to the better marketed one...

The final blow: Super VHS

[MtViewGuy]

The Urban Legends page mentioned by other /. posters has a good overview on why VHS prevailed.

One thing the Urban Legends page forgot to mention was the fact that it was the VHS camp that produced the first major improvement in picture quality for home VCR's with the Super VHS format in 1987; in SP mode it had a resolution of over 400 lines, far better than broadcast quality and almost as good as Laserdiscs. Sony's attempt to fight back with the Beta ED format flopped because no one outside Sony produced Beta ED machines and Beta ED tapes were quite expensive--far more so than Super VHS tapes.

Today, new Super VHS machines are still being produced, and you can easily buy S-VHS tapes.

In other news...

[deander2]

ATTENTION: In other news today...

DR-DOS is canceled because of increased competition from MS-DOS!
Coca-Cola cancels their production of "New Coke"!
and... (wait for it!)

Russia admits they lost the cold war! ;)

clarification...

[edrugtrader]

BETA != BETAMAX

Betamax was an excellent format for broadcast quality on site cameras (as stated in the article)... Beta is also a good format, but not nearly as good as betamax

Re:clarification...

[blincoln]

Actually, as others have posted, this turns out not to be the case.
Betacam is a broadcast format. Betamax (AKA "Beta") is a home format. They have little in common other than both being made by Sony.

Something I Didn't See

[carrier lost]

I had always understood that part of the reason Sony lost the "format wars" was due to their fumbling introduction of two-hour Betamax machines. Supposedly, these machines would not play tapes recorded by the previous generation Betamax machines. I seem to remember that Sony got all huffy about complaints, which drove annoyed consumers looking for longer-recording times to buy VHS purely out of spite.

On another note - Does anyone remember the tape-stackers that you could buy for Betamax? They would allow you to stack four or so tapes into a cartridge that hung on the outside of the machine and then somehow rotate themselves in and out of the recorder! Can anyone say "Rube Goldberg"?

:)

MjM

I only mod up...

Re:Something I Didn't See

[Pope]

Betamax had 3 different recording speeds, Beta I, II and III, analogous to VHS' SP, LP, and EP.
The only Betamax VCR my family owned was a Toshiba, and it recorded in II and III, but would play back all 3.
Ever check a VHS these days? You can't choose LP anymore!
And for the record to above posters: we generally used 750 tapes, and they clearly showed how much time one could record in each of the three speeds. No fractions needed. But, yes, selling tapes based on length and not recording time is pretty dumb.

Cowboy Bebop

[overlord]

Remember Cowboy Bebop ;-)

OverLord

FYI

[ZanshinWedge]

Long after betamax died in the consumer market it continued very strong in the professional market. Up until very recently quite a lot of TV studios (especially local stations) used betamax equipment. The reason it is being discontinued now is not because of obstinance but because of the switchover to digital camcorders, and video editing.

MemoryStick?

[n-baxley]

Let's hope it doesn't take this long to get rid of MemoryStick!

Probably BetaCam

[zenyu]

This is the format used for old school digital editing cuz it lets you timecode, and has decent quality. It will probably continue to be used for archiving and broadcast for some time to come.

Basically, these a days you transfer your source material onto beta, then into the editing station, then you edit, then you transfer onto another beta for distribution and delete the material from the editing station. You don't delete the edits so if you need to tweak it later you can get it back from the source material beta. In the olden days you'd to the edits on a low res-version on the computer, then use the edits to stream the right frames from the source beta to the final beta.

You can use DVC but it is significantly lower quality in my (limited) experience. DVD-R makes more sense for the final these days though. The disks are cheap and play in many more places. I saw a BBC pilot distributed that way a few weeks ago.

Obligatory Simpsons Reference

[hndrcks]

Oh no! Beta!

-- Snake inspects his haul, ``Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie'' (episode 9F03)

In the words of Snake...

[FakePlasticDubya]

The inevitable Simpsons quote,

"Oh No! Not Beta!"

Beta was King in Southern Wisconsin

[jdcook]

I and almost everyone I knew as a kid had Beta machines. Why? I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin which was home to American TV (a giant consumer electronics / ugly furniture store). American did "Buy X get Y free" promotions. (Sidenote: For years American's buy X get a bike free promotion made it the largest single outlet for bicycles in the US even though they didn't sell them directly. If you've ever seen an ugly-as-sin, piece-o'-crap "Firenze" 12 speed, it almost certainly traces its lineage back to American.) For a while they did "Buy X get a VCR free." Naturally, these were Beta machines. Beta rentals were available long after they disappeared everywhere else. At the peak of this distribution, one of the trades published a map of the US showing VCR usage by type. The whole country was blue (indicating VHS usage) except for some lonely circles of red in Wisconsin each centered on an American TV store.

time to convert for a/v companies and broadcasters

[CowbertPrime]

I used to work for a certain A/V company and regularly used betamax for raw footage and portability. Some masters were also on beta. At the time, we used 5 formats: 1" (reeled) for editing, 3/4" for mastering, beta for aforementioned reasons, 8mm for footage (some cameras used 8mm), and of course 1/2" (VHS) for end-user products.

I guess they'll have to convert all the remaining betamax over now. It would really suck if in the process, the machine broke due to the increase in useage... :) Fortunately, as I last heard, most things were done digitally, so hopefully they can avoid the generational degradation associated with magnetic media.

2000 more

[cr@ckwhore]

Sony will only manufacture 2000 more betamax machines... wouldn't it be cool to get the last one off the line, and be able to proclaim, "I have the last betamax"?

Don't forget the porn angle, too...

[kriegsman]

I've read several times now that because VHS tapes themselves were cheaper than Beta tapes, the suddenly-revitalized (due to VCRs in general) porn industry had a preference for publishing on VHS tapes. With more porn titles available on VHS, VHS quickly became the format of choice for home VCRs.
(Check out the book "Obscene Profits" by Frederick Lane.)

-Mark

Tecnology - Corporate R&D vs. Proprietary

[lanalyst]

I never owned a Betamax but was involved up close and personal with similar technology model: IBM's Microchannel (introduced mid 80s - same timeframe as Betamax). Superior technology or so they said. IBM sold the PS/2 line with no ISA slots - only MCA. Ethernet was expensive - token ring was cheap (an IBM technology)... once IBM 'had' you, you were at their mercy. Few 3rd party companies would pay the IBM licensing fees for MCA cards except for the server market. Non-IBM token ring cards were like hen's teeth (Madge was one) so moving away without rewring the network was a tough call. EISA and PCI finally put an end to all that nonsense. After that, I never again heard 'no one was ever fired for recommending IBM'.

After that, I rarely got into RWARs over a vendor's technology. I try to keep my loyalities to myself and my company

As for Sonys' Betamax, the consumer market is similar in some respects and the network can be an analogy to tapes: If you own 100 beatamax tapes, what are the implications of switching to VHS? VHS is substandard! (I'm thinking about the IBM rep saying ethernet is collision detect - collisions! oh my!)

I own quite a bit of Sony A/V equipment, including a tv, receiver/amp, minidisk, dvd, camcorder and even a DAT recorder (nice white elephant, that). I went that way because of their single remote technology and s-link. None are propietary formats (despite other posts here, sharp, jvc, kenwood and others manufacture MD). In retrospect, I would have probably been better off with a portable MP3 player.

Only question is why did they carry BetaMax for so many years? For those with a tape investment, I really think Sony did them a big favor. Not many companies will support their loyalists like that.

why my friends care...

[sckeener]

The only people I know that love beta are a bunch of guys with classic p0rn that can't be replaced....

(don't ask)

Close to the truth

[JudgeFurious]

The simple fact is that VCR's (of whatever format) were expensive and so were the tapes and they needed a "killer app". enter porn. Sony, which controlled the whole ball of wax where Beta was concerned wanted nothing to do with porn. No licensing, no interest, no nothing. They didn't ever want to see the word Betamax on the cover of a porn movie and it seemed like a good idea. Trouble was that porn was the killer app for video recorders.

Rebuffed by Sony the guys who wanted to sell porn tapes for people to view in their homes (visionaries that they were) turned to VHS and the rest is history. Sure after the fight was over Sony went ahead and let porn movies be released on their precious tapes but it was too late.

That's the way it happened from someone old enough to remember it.

Re:Betamax-Betacam ALSO:

[flimflam]

Someone mentioned IMX. In addition, HDCAM uses the same transport and tape format as well.

It's interesting how Sony has kept the same basic mechanics in use for so many years through so many formats. I guess it saves them a ton of time and money on R&D, and they're pretty reliable now, but it's also kind of outdated in a lot of ways as well. Everything's a compromise.

Re:Betamax-Betacam ALSO:

[tsangc]

It's interesting how Sony has kept the same basic mechanics in use for so many years through so many formats.

You'll find JVC has done the same with the VHS shell as well, with consumer variants like SVHS, WVHS, and DVHS as well as professional formats like DigitalS (50MBps 3.3:1 compression over WVHS tape). All the DigitalS transports are based on the earlier SVHS generation edit decks.

Calum

Minidisc

[achurch]

how many people own and operate a MiniDisk player on a regular basis?

Um, how about a majority of Japan's teens/twenties population? MD players are literally all over the place here. They're way smaller than CD players, they don't skip (okay, maybe that's just that my CD player is too old), they're rewritable, 320 minutes per disc, no worries about discs getting scratched . . . need I say more?

Not this crap again.

[Space Coyote]

This guy basically takes way too long to explain that BetaMax had was by far the better product, but then simply states that, despite all of its advantages, VHS is still better because it's more popular.

And he minimizes the difference in image quality between the two formats, wihch is a mistake. BetaMax's image quality was, and is, much better, both initially and especially after multiple passes.

To quote a fellow Farker on this guy: I think I'll go out and purchase a cheap but popular car.

Re:Not this crap again.

[buggy_throwback]

I thought the guy basically said that betamax videos were too short, 1 hour, meaning that people couldn't record a movie. Still, he does go on a bit as he often does. And he has a pop at linux, but linux isn't meant to be a whole product. Since the majority of people who make it better do so without trying to make money from it, they aren't too bothered about the "whole product." Linux will just keep getting better and better until no other system can touch it...

Re:Not this crap again.

[melonman]

but then simply states that, despite all of its advantages, VHS is still better because it's more popular.

There whas a bit more to his argument than that:

VHS offered a bigger choice of hardware at lower cost, the tapes were cheaper and more easily available, there were a lot more movies to rent, and so on.

Those sound like three quite important arguments to me, unless money is no object, you like buying hardware from a de facto monopoly, hunting for media is your idea of fun and you don't actually want to watch movies, just admire the spec.

A bit further on, he points out another specific flaw in Sony's market research:

Sony got one simple decision wrong. It chose to make smaller, neater tapes that lasted for an hour, whereas the VHS manufacturers used basically the same technology with a bulkier tape that lasted two hours.

Now I don't know a lot about the details, but would it have been that hard for Sony to provide essentially the same technology with a larger box and a longer tape? As the article continues:

Their spouses/children/grandparents and everybody else would quickly have told them the truth. "We're going out tonight and I want to record a movie. That Betamax tape is useless: it isn't long enough. Get rid of it."

And that's the basis problem with the general population who decide which products succeed by their purchasing decisions: they see technology as a means to an end, not as something to admire for its intrinsic cleverness.

Re:Not this crap again.

[MoFoYa]

He does explain though, that what consumers wanted was to record a whole movie unattended. VHS provided the 2 hour record time to do that.
also, he later points out that consumers were more interested in longer recording times vs. higher image quality.

Re:Not this crap again.

[reallocate]

Did you read it? I don't recall an explanation of BetaMax's supposed superiority. In fact, the statement that it wasn't better is at the top off the piece.

He says BetaMax's supposed edge was discernible only in the lab, not by people watching a tape, and that Sony's decision to package it in one-hour lengths made it unusable for movies.

Re:Not this crap again.

[nehril]

I think the image quality differences are a big deal only to a very small segment. The difference between VHS's "good" and BetaMax's "great" is lost on most people. good is good enough. people will opt for lossy "compression" for the sake of more content (witness the MP3 format's success.) consider that even with vhs most people will record at whatever level gives them the longest record time, sacrificing quality.

Ask the average tivo owner what quality level they select for their seinfeld reruns. VHS won because it gave people more of less, in a way. Just like McDonalds makes money hand over fist serving "food" that would make a french chef gag. :)

Re:Not this crap again.

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

But none of those are technological reasons. It had shitty marketing, bad support, but based purely on tech merit, it was better. No one claimed it was better on any field other than technically. Basically,
Betamax:VHS::OS/2:Windows

Re:Not this crap again.

[melonman]

But none of those are technological reasons.

I would have thought that the storage capacity was quite an important technological criterion for a storage medium. If the technology is for home recording, and the tape it too short to record what a lot of people what to record, ie full-length films, isn't that a bit of a drawback? I have to say that I'd rather see all of a film at less than perfect quality than all but the last 20 minutes of a film at wonderful quality.

Re:Not this crap again.

[roybadami]

And he has a pop at linux, but linux isn't meant to be a whole product

Well, not directly. He does say that Wintel is the best whole product, and for many classes of users it currently is. That doesn't mean we can't change that, though.

It's also interesting to apply the whole product anaysis to infrastructure services. For many services, Linux or UNIX of some flavour is clearly the best whole product. It comes with the infrastructure services you need as standard (mail servers, DNS servers, etc), and there's a huge support network of people out there using these UNIX tools in a native UNIX environment. Yes, you *can* run these tools under Wintel, but Linux/UNIX is the best whole product.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Diamondback]

"And that's the basis problem with the general population who decide which products succeed by their purchasing decisions: they see technology as a means to an end, not as something to admire for its intrinsic cleverness."

Well, I suppose that's a problem, except that technology - no matter how intrinsically clever - is useless as an 'end'. Technology is a means to an end; your mom does not care how beautiful the DeCSS algorithm is when written in three lines of Perl. That is not a bad thing. I don't care, either. Does it WORK? Quickly? Do what I want? that's much more important. Idolizing the intrinsic technological beauty of things while discounting their actual use is a grave mistake. Look a supermodels; they're 'hot' and have great tits or whatever, but do they do anything? NO.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Nickovsky]

Those models can do more for you than you can imagine my friend ;)

Re:Not this crap again.

[kmellis]

"...except that technology - no matter how intrinsically clever - is useless as an 'end'"

A meaning of "technology" beased upon its Greek roots might be "the meaning of the making of things". "Techne" itself can be a creative work, and "creative work" is anything made by man--including both art and functional items. Note that the tools of creation are also themselves creations. "Techne" can also be the art or craft of creation--a meaning very close to our "technology".

My point is twofold. First, that tools are as fully "techne" as the things they produce. (It is arguable that they are moreso by virtue of their inherent abstracted rationalism.) Second, that "techne" includes both art and non-art.

So why can't technology also be art? It can. And when it is, it is closest to being "an end unto itself". Whether they realize this or not, it is from this perspective that many enthusiasts of various technologies understand these technologies.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like McDonalds makes money hand over fist serving "food" that would make a french chef gag. :)

And a good number of other people... :)

Re:Not this crap again.

[reallocate]

While it's tempting to argue that "Good is the enemy of the best", it should be apparent that a successful product will, by definition, do what it's buyers want it to do. Capabilities or attributes that aren't wanted won't help sales. In fact, adding on capabilities that people don't won't or can't discern (like high-falutin' specs) will drive the price up.

Re:Not this crap again.

[orthogonal]

Those models can do more for you than you can imagine my friend ;)

<mindset='slashdot geek'>
You mean like they can install BSD and go a-war-chalking with me? Neato!! I mean, 133t!

Now that I know this, I'll clean my Mom's basement and invite one over.

No, wait. I might get cooties. And she might want to go outside. Nevermind.

But I'd be happy to frag her if she plays EverCrack.
</mindset>

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kind of like saying the true product of two times two is five is you take the "whole product", which includes and extra amount for popularity. Pure crap.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Lemmy Caution]

The problem for Linux advocates (specifically, those people who for some reason or another are either trying to get other people to run Linux, or at least convince other people how clever they are for running Linux) is that they don't get what you said. When the choice comes between acknowledging and addressing the problems in user experience or calling the user a moron, too many soi-dissant advocates choose the latter.

Re:Not this crap again.

[wcb4]

no, its not like that at all, its like saying:

Product 1 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10
Product 2 = 1 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 6

the second product is not better just because one of the factors is a three whereas its only a 2 in product 1. the first factor might be price, the second factor might be the specs, the third availability of media, the fourth, third party add-on availability. According to the average geek logic, the spec in number 2 is better, that makes product 2 better, but when you take the longer total product view, product 1 is better OVERALL even though in one aspect (the tech spec) its slightly lower.

The fact that you don't get it just proves his point.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Lurkingrue]

Just like McDonalds makes money hand over fist serving "food" that would make a french chef gag.

Just two points:
1) McDonald's posted a loss this quarter, and is planning on closing over 500 branches -- sometimes people, it seems, don't forsake quality for lower cost. Even with a world-wide economic downturn, McDonald's doesn't seem to be making money "hand over fist" right now.

2) It is commonly accepted that McDonald's french fries are a culinary miracle -- delicious, cheap and quickly made. Even such a famous chef as Wolfgang Puck acknowledges how McDonald's has managed to make an exceptional product so readily available to so many. True, it is perhaps the only item on their menu that could be considered "good", but I think that in this case "familiarity breeds contempt".

Re:Not this crap again.

[Afrosheen]

I guess the author can argue with all the media outlets (your local TV news, etc) when it comes to image quality. They're the ones who did (and continue to, to some extent) buy into Betamax technology. Why? It was broadcast quality and continued to be broadcast quality after being copied or played many, many times. VHS can't hold a candle to it's staying power.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Technolgy is art. Sony Beta systems, like art, can be found in museums.

Re:Not this crap again.

[vsprintf]

I thought the guy basically said that betamax videos were too short, 1 hour, meaning that people couldn't record a movie.

Those would have been the very first tapes, and I doubt more than a very few rich people bought those machines. By the time VHS was declared the winner, there wasn't much difference between the two types - IIRC, six hours for VHS and about five hours for Betamax tapes (and of course the Betamax tapes were smaller).

Most of the rest of the author's claims were a load of bull as well, like his claim that there's no difference in picture quality. I owned both types of machines at the same time because I bought the Betamax before VHS became more popular and I then had to buy the second machine. The picture quality of the Betamax recordings were obviously better than recordings made on the newer VHS machine.

Re:Not this crap again.

[vsprintf]

VHS won because it gave people more of less, in a way. Just like McDonalds makes money hand over fist serving "food" that would make a french chef gag. :)

Thanks for that enlightenment. I think I now understand Microsoft's success. :)

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just "more content" - although that is a big factor. It's the fact that for some users, time is a big factor. Downloading a ~60mb WAV file is impractical for most. The user may only want 2 songs - but dosen't want to wait for 100mb of data to come in at 8kb/s on Kazza et al. I think most people would just get pissed off and head to the store at that point.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

MacDonalds fries are neither Cheap, delicious nor quickly made. At least not anymore. Like with everything else at McD's the quality has dropped far below what I remember from my youth -- which admittedly was about 10 years ago.

First, there are many mom&Pop restaurants capapble of producing *home-made* french fries at the same price point.

Second. The taste of the McD fries are something of an acquired taste, and while McD's corporate quality control spies do their best to ensure otherwise... The taste, and texture of them do vary from store to store, and amount of time under the heat lamps.

Third. Depending on whether you order at the beginning of a "fry cycle" or not, you might be waiting some time for your fries. There is definitely no miracle in their cook times. They take just as long as any other restaurant cooking shoestring fries -- sometimes longer, if the goofie in training screws up.

Salt them AFTER they come out of the fryer, dude...

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's the basic problem with the general population who decide which products succeed by their purchasing decisions: they see technology as a means to an end, not as something to admire for its intrinsic cleverness.

I'll take this one step further and say that the exact same thing holds true not just for the general population, but also for geeks. The technology is a means to an end for them too. The only difference is that the end is is to get enjoyment out of the coolness of the technology.

The implication, by the way, is that lots of geeks will buy the product which has the highest technological "wow" factor, not necessarily the product that is engineered the best. In a lot of cases, it's not about having the best product. Instead, it's about having the product that does the best job of making you feel like you own something cool. That's why so many electronic items have so many blinking lights on them, and that's why BMWs come with rechargeable flashlights that snap in to a special spot in the glove box (or so I've heard -- I don't own a BMW).

So, to put this another way, both normal people and geeks skew product development toward things that are pretty pointless if what you really want is the product that's best at doing the job we all say it's supposed to do.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

McDonalds fries have also forced thousands of potato farmers worldwide to grow monoculture, pesticide-dependent crops of Russet Burbank potatos (the only variety long enough to cut those fries). I was actually surprised to read about this because I always figured McDonald's fries were reconstituted, like Pringles chips. But they are cut, and the Russet Burbank will eventually go the way of the Irish Lumper (the potato that was extinguished in the Irish potato famine). McDonalds will undoubtedly shrug this off and move to a different potato, while the farmers will be destroyed. Some have moved to a genetically engineered version of the Burbank made by Monsanto, but this too will succumb to some new disease as all intense monoculture eventually must.
Why do people think things can scale infinitely?
There are lots of other excellent reasons to boycott McDonald's, of course (not least of them your own health and well-being). I haven't been inside one for at least ten years - I don't even see them any more, like the damned guy in a Larry Niven story (Infinite Series?) who couldn't find a church. Of course, that's unlikely to make up for the damage I did to myself when I worked there as a teen and ate the "free" in-shift meals every day (as well as inhaling that miasma of grease and chemicals).
As for the taste of the fries having dropped since your youth - maybe, but it also seems possible that they were always bland and sucky and you simply have more developed tastes. Consider most people's reaction when they sit down and really watch a TV show episode from their youth. Or hear an eighties tune. ;)

Re:Not this crap again.

[AlanSmitheeX]

Exactly.

That is why S-VHS serves only a small part of the market.

That is why many people who buy DVD players mistakenly hook them up through the composite video cable even though their receiver can handle component video cable.

Re:Not this crap again.

[buggy_throwback]

You do know that treating people differently because their blind and stupid is prejudice dont you?

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anne Thwacks]

AFAICR, in reality, Betamax had longer playing times than VHS. Longer VHS times only happened AFTER Betamax extended times to beat the original VHS spec.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a dipshit. If you don't know the difference between broadcast quality BetaCAM and consumer-crappy BetaMAX, why are you posting?

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm prejudiced against people who can't fucking spell, bitch.

Re:Not this crap again.

[swimmar132]

So they expanded a little too much. That doesn't mean that they still aren't very successful.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it more likely that people hook it up via composite video because their TV lacks component video in.

Nobody that goes through the effort (not to mention the added expense) of buying a component video capable A/V reciever, and a component video capable Television set, is hooking up the DVD player via composite.

It's almost always the result of an input shortage.

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, this sounds suspiciously like Microsoft Versus Linux.

One is a limited technology parceled out to just a selected few for an awesome price and the other is an open standard that everyone can participate in. Never mind the problems with user interface, it's open, so it wins popularity.

Right?

Re:Not this crap again.

[Anonymous Coward]

So by that logic, Microsoft Windows is better than Linux.

Re:Not this crap again.

[FatalTourist]

The larger physical size of VHS is easier for my chunky fingers to grip.

"To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm... now."

What a load of crap

[UrGeek]

I own my second S-VHS because I cannot stand the lousy quality of VHS. The point of this article is if everyone buys it, then it must be better. What a load of crap. Popular has never meant better - not if you are talking about true quality.

The majority of people are just plain STUPID.

Re:What a load of crap

[reallocate]

>>"... point of this article is if everyone buys it, then it must be better...

To the contrary, the point of the article is that technological quality is only one of the attributes that affect sales of a product. Price, convenience, ease of use, suitability for purpose are others. Technological advantages that can only be seen in a lab test, not subjectively by people using the product, don't carry much weight in the mass market.

doomed.

Re:What a load of crap

[bobcox]

I still use a Sony C20 Betamax which I bought brand new some, er, probably 18 years ago.

The picture quality is still embarrassingly better than our nearly new Panasonic VHS. ISTR that the Betamax has a technically superior tape path and is a sort of scaled down version of the U-Matic.

(The U-Matic was an industrial and ENG standard format some years ago and used 3/4" tape in a large cassette).

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

It reminds me of a T-Shirt:

"Eat shit - 50 billion flies can't be wrong"

Re:What a load of crap

[jo_ham]

Very bloody large casettes!

A U-matic 60 minute tape (as big as you can get) is about 9" wide, 1" high and 6" deep.

A small U-matic deck is 19" wide (rack mount), 5U high, and god knows how deep - about 24" I think.

We have them. They're huge, they're noisy, they're heavy, but we love them.

Re:What a load of crap

[alchemist68]

Popular has never meant better - not if you are talking about true quality.

This is absolutely true from a geek/technical perspective, but from a busniess model perspective, it IS superior, ultimately, VHS was the product the consumer decided offered the most value for the money. This is absolutely the case with Wintel PCs today. Most people here on Slashdot would never want Wintel PC, sure, they'll have a "Lintel" (Linux/Intel) or a "LAMD" (Linux/AMD), or perhaps even Mac OS X like myself, and that's because we know that a bug-ridden security-flawed Borg mother ship-contacting OS is coupled with the cheapest metric assload of hi-tech chinese commodity PC parts inside. The consumer doesn't know or care about true technical details, the only process affecting the purchase is that the product has ALL these features, functions, and holy Batman, look at that low LOW price. What a bargain! I get an HP Pavilian with a built-in graphics card, built-in sound card, M$ Windows XP Home Edition, a free printer and monitor for $649 after rebates. The wife and kids will love me, and besides, PC programs are everywhere, on every street corner. You see? Cheap Wintel PCs are not technically superior to Linux PCs or Macs, but from the busniess model perspective, the consumer saw the most value in the Wintel PC, even if it does crash twice a day, that's what everyone is used to experiencing. The consumer, from his or her perspective, isn't missing a thing, and more importantly, it's become part of their way of life, they just press control-alt-delete when the need to, it's what they're used to doing.

Re:What a load of crap

[nicodaemos]

Mmmm.... that's interesting. After reading your post, it occurred to me that Windows is the mp3 of the OS world. Sure mp3's do not have the same audio quality as SACD's, DVD-A's and CD's, but they're convenient. Windows is not as fast, robust or easy to use (for advanced users), but it's preinstalled and supports most mainstream hardware.

So perhaps the Linux camp needs to look inside themselves at why they use mp3 or Ogg Vorbis instead of CD's or the even higher quality SACD's and DVD-A's. The insight gained may help understand why the average user is using Windows, as opposed to any of the superior alternatives.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

you have some points - but none apply to the Beta vs. VHS. The fact is any one with decent eyesight can see that that VHS sucks. And I don't recall that the consumers voted on it. It was the Content Kartel that made that choice for us. But the majority of the population are a bunch of sheep who just don't give a damn.

And something like that is why Japan has had HDTV for about 10 years before the US.

Re:What a load of crap

[jdanna]

i still have my betamax deck and a pair of U-Matic edit decks ;)

survival of the fittest

[Interfacer]

a lot of people are confused about this phrase, thinking of 'fit' as being technical superior.

in fact the term fit does have nothing to do with that, but should be interpreted as 'fitted for a certain purpose'

for example one of the reasons that windows version whatever is so popular with computer iliterate persons is that it takes you by the hand to do a lot of things, which can be a pain for power users, but not for newbies. in that sense windows is most 'fitted' for that situation, just as linux is for power users, server systems, or as BSD on powerful stable systems with 1000's of connections at a time.

other examples are software programming where C++ can be the best solution for developing algorithms, and VB for simple DB connected user interfaces.

the 'fittest' solution survives in the place where it is used at its best. C is not 'better' than VB. it is fit for other purposes than VB.

you can only talk about 'better' when two things are designed for the exact same purpose.

Interfacer.

Re:survival of the fittest

[MasonMcD]

And Darwin's concept was done a great injustice by bandying about the phrase "survival of the fittest," when it should have been merely, "survival of the fit."

If you find a niche, it doesn't matter that there are successful predators out there that eat you, you merely must reproduce, faster than they can, and faster than they can eat.

In the case of the mac (which is what we're really talking about here, huh? VHS vs. Betamax! Pshaw! THoS EaR COdE WeRdZ!), Apple just has to watch Dell, HP, Compaq (oops!) et al figure out who's the Alpha Male of the dinosaur VARs, and let them gobble each other up. See http://www.mammals.org.

Re:survival of the fittest

[Annoyed Coward]

Very nicely written. :-), though I am not convinced that the anology fits with languages (to some extent OS, yes).

Re:survival of the fittest

[Phouk]

other examples are software programming where C++ can be the best solution for developing algorithms, and VB for simple DB connected user interfaces

You don't know a lot of languages, do you?

Re:survival of the fittest

[NoMercy]

I'm sorry, but i'll be a cold day in hell when I let a VB is good for anything but the rubbish tip comment slide :)

It's BASIC butchered in hidious ways :)

Re:survival of the fittest

[praetorian_x]

[qoute]you can only talk about 'better' when two things are designed for the exact same purpose.[/quote]

I agree with most of your post, except this statement, which, in fact, contradicts the rest of your post. You certainly *can* compare technologies designed for different. You do so in your post: VB would be a better choice for a simple database front app than C.

So I would say, and I believe you mean to say:

"You can only talk about 'better' regarding a particular application of two technologies. No technology is going to be the wrong or right choice in all cases."

The only exception to this rule I've ever seen: the AS400 is *never* the right choice...

[ducks/]

Cheers,
prat

Re:survival of the fittest

[Gumshoe]

a lot of people are confused about this phrase, thinking of 'fit' as being technical superior. in fact the term fit does have nothing to do with that, but should be interpreted as 'fitted for a certain purpose'

Hey! That means I'm fit. After all, my purpose is to simply sit in a big comfy chair, drink coffee, smoke cigarattes and hack away at a keyboard. :-)

Re:survival of the fittest

[mixmasta]

Darwin never said or wrote that phrase, which has been used as an excuse to wipe out the weak.

You can blame Herbert Spencer for that.

Not at all...

[Jayson]

He argues that Betamax was actually more popular when it began, and they had a "defacto monopoly from tape incompatabilities." The author says that the reason Betamax lost the market was that it didn't do what the consumer wanted, to be able to record an entire movie unattended due to their one hour tape versus the VHS two hour tape. He has some other arguments, such as the Betamax was originally higher priced (and was cheaper, but only after losing market too much market share to matter).

His point wasn't that you can look at a single factor (e.g., popularity), but you have to weight products more holistically.

Re:Not at all...

[orthogonal]

The author says that the reason Betamax lost the market was that it didn't do what the consumer wanted, to be able to record an entire movie unattended due to their one hour tape versus the VHS two hour tape. He has some other arguments, such as the Betamax was originally higher priced....

Hmmm. Makes me think of MP3s versus CDs. I listen to all of my music on MP3, despite having a (Sony, ironically enough!) 50 CD "jukebox".

Why do I sacrifice quality by listening to MP3s rather than CDs?

• Convenience: I can easily set up arbitrarily long, arbitrarily ordered MP3 playlists, and without the time it takes for the "jukebox" to physically chnage CDs.
  
• Greater selection at cheaper prices. While I do not and will not download MP3s to which I don't have a license, I can and do subscribe to emusic.com. This gives me an excellent selection of medium quality (128 kbps) MP3s, far more than I could afford as CDs -- and far more than I'd be tempted to "try out", buying CDs I might later find out didn't justify a $10-$20 price tag.
  
• Portability: Carrying around a portable CD player generally resulted in my listening to a single CD, over and over, as carrying additional CDs was inconvenient (see reason #1, above) and resulted in losing numerous Cds. carrying around my Archos MP3 player gives my my entire music collection (currently about 14 GBs in MP3 format) in my pocket.
  
• Quality: I can't easily hear the difference in quality between a CD and an MP3, even when the MP3 is piped through the (now empty) "jukebox"'s speakers. To the extent that I can hear the difference, I prefer to indulge my eclectic musical taste in quantity rather than fewer selections in quality. Your mileage will undoutedly vary.
  

Quality's important, don't misunderstand me. But let me chicken out by closing with a few choice cliches: Often the best is the enemy of the good, and enough (quality, ironically, not quantity) is as good as a feast, and more than enough is as bad as a surfeit.

Re:Not at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which still doesn't make MP3's "better" than CD's, just "better for some uses".

Re:Not at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Greater selection at cheaper prices. While I do not and will not download MP3s to which I don't have a license, I can and do subscribe to emusic.com. This gives me an excellent selection of medium quality (128 kbps) MP3s, far more than I could afford as CDs -- and far more than I'd be tempted to "try out", buying CDs I might later find out didn't justify a $10-$20 price tag.

You are full of shit

Re:Not at all...

[orthogonal]

Greater selection at cheaper prices. While I do not and will not download MP3s to which I don't have a license, I can and do subscribe to emusic.com. This gives me an excellent selection of medium quality (128 kbps) MP3s, far more than I could afford as CDs -- and far more than I'd be tempted to "try out", buying CDs I might later find out didn't justify a $10-$20 price tag.

You are full of shit

I probably shouldn't feed the troll, but I don't steal music -- I don't even copy friends' or my family's music. I just don't feel comfortable doing it.

Maybe it's because, in writing code, I'm something of a creative artist too, and I like to get full credit -- both the words of praise and the crisp folding kinds.

But I know it's impossible to convince a thief that you're an honest man, because all thieves presume -- in fact cling to the belief -- that everyone else is as much or more venal than they are.

Re:Not at all...

[iocat]

eMusic.com isn't stealing. It's a $10/month service that lets you *legally* download .mp3s from probably thousands of albums in dozens of categories.

Like you, I also refuse to steal music, but I enthusiastically signed up for, and use, eMusic.com, especially since it has deals with a lot of the independent labels whose music I like the most (Lookout, Taang, etc.)

Artists get paid, labels get paid, emusic gets paid, and I get to listen to way more different stuff than I ever would have otherwise.

In the future, before you get sanctimonious on the original poster, and start calling others theives, it would probably be a good idea to make sure you're clear on the facts.

Re:Not at all...

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

In the future, before you get sanctimonious on the original poster, and start calling others theives, it would probably be a good idea to make sure you're clear on the facts.

Um... the person to whom you were responding WAS the original poster, unless /. is rendering things very strangely tonight.

The only convincing bit was...

[Anonymous Coward]

When they were released, betamax had only 1 hour tapes.. VHS had two hour tapes...

You could record a film onto VHS... which you couldn't do with beta unless you were sitting in front of it to change the tapes halfway through.

Re:The only convincing bit was...

[MasonMcD]

And maybe this should be a warning to those companies that want to accommodate DRM into their products: you will marginalize your widget. I'm sure Jack Valenti preferred beta to VHS.

Re:The only convincing bit was...

[rknop]

And maybe this should be a warning to those companies that want to accommodate DRM into their products: you will marginalize your widget. I'm sure Jack Valenti preferred beta to VHS.

Jack Valenti hated them both. (cf: "Boston Strangler" comment.) If he had his way, the only place we could see movies now would be in the theaters, and it would be illegal to descrbe what we'd seen to other people. The only ones allowed to openly describe scenes from movies would be licenced reviewers (who paid an annual licencing fee, a fraction of which went to the MPAA becasue of the excessive use of their intellectual property).

Re:The only convincing bit was...

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Source is the guillotine, Linux is the blade; IBM gives it weight and Apple sharpens it.

And only stupid companies put their head in it.

Re:The only convincing bit was...

[starling]

VHS had two hour tapes...

Which, as far as I'm concerned. made VHS technically better.

Re:The only convincing bit was...

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie recording time problem was solved with Beta II speed and the L-750 cassette size. Long movies like "The Right Stuff" were on 2 tapes. Most fit on a single L-750 tape (and during the time of the move from B-I to B-II, you had the problem of compatiblity).

Of course, there were machines that would only play B-II and not B-I and the B-II machines wouldn't record B-I (and there were multiple versions of BI later...)

Don't forget that the Laser Disc systems were also around (with all the Alfred Hitchcock movies you could want...)

VHS was also the first format in 4 hour mode (see RCA VBT-200).

This when RCA was a powerhouse in consumer electronics - spending time on a video disc system (with grooves...the SelectaVision CED system) and outsourcing the video tape supplier (to have a product to sell against Sony's Beta system until the video disc system would clear the field of tape -- something it appears is being done by DVD.)

many comments seen here talk of movies, but at the time, the concern at RCA was recording football games and other sporting events that would run about 3-1/2 hours.

So both the 1 hour Beta and the 2 hour SP VHS system weren't up to it.

IIRC, it was either Hitachi or Toshiba that produced the LP machines initially (something JVC resisted and maybe still does - the early Sony VHS machines were also lacking LP record and some won't *play* LP!). RCA brought those here, selling VBT-200's for $999 (and when I got mine, they'd sweetened the deal with a black and white camera and a wired remote pause button.)

And lest we forget, the bulk of pornography seemed to come out on VHS in the late 70's, so that would tend to make the viewer's machine choice for him.

Sony was also tied up in court with the copyright infringment cases that also let some in the VHS camp claim that you wanted VHS because they *weren't* being sued by the movie studios....of course, if Sony and others had lost at that time, going after VHS should have been a slam dunk.

From the standpoint of the Videophile, though, the SuperBeta SLHF-900 and SLHF-1000's were probably one of the finest consumer video tape recorders ever made.

Re:The only convincing bit was...

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this a bit academic, but nice article which makes some analysis on Beta vs. VHS: http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/paths.html.
Larger physical size of the cassette was important decision (compactiness usefullness).

good article

[riaa]

if i remember correctly, greedy sony refused to license the technology to anyone else, wanting all the profit for themselves. instead they got nothing.
also didnt know beta could not record a whole movie (never owned 8 trach either). what were they thinking? they must have known tv shows were 1/2 and 1 hours long, and that movies were longer. im sure they were not afraid of copyright violations, as they took the movie industry to court for 'consumer' rights an won. dont think they are so generous now that they own a record label.
these days sony is a grimy, sleazy company with very little to offer besides hype. i cant think of one product they have that someone else doesnt make better.

Re:good article

[jo_ham]

They didn't exactly get nothing - their groundwork with betamax enabled them to develop their professional video systems.

I think Sony have done rather well out of U-matic, Betacam and DigiBeta.

No longer are these machines changing hands for five figure sums - well, exceptthe most expensive DigiBeta deck, the DVW-A500, which is £24,995, excluding VAT (at 17.5%).

Sure, Sony sells consumer products, but the margins are so much lower - something I'm all to aware of since I'm buying A Sony DSR-11 DVCAM deck for our Media 100i non linear edit suite. This is the cheapest of all the DVCAM decks, and it retails for £1495 excluding VAT.

Re:good article

[thechink]

if i remember correctly, greedy sony refused to license the technology to anyone else, wanting all the profit for themselves. instead they got nothing.

That's a myth, Sony did initially try to license Betamax to JVC and Matsushita. JVC refused because they were preparing their own technology (VHS).

http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/beta_vs_vhs.h tml

Re:good article

[crimson30]

Good thing Sony doesn't do that anymore... why you can use these memory sticks in every... uh... nevermind.

This will continue

[indigogorge.net]

As long as some companies try to make everyone buy proprietary products, this will happen. VHS was not better than BetaMax. Sony simply did not want to share. Hence, VHS was more widely accepted because everyone could buy a VHS player, and not a very pricy BetaMax player. If you looked at minidisk 12 years ago, when CDs where starting to come out, they offered the same capacity, and so many more features. But in the End, it was cheaper for people to buy CDs, instead of buying proprietary expensive Sony only players and products. Same thing with sony memorystick. Make it an open source product, and just collect license fees, or what have you. Then everyone will use it if it is a good thing. I'm sure there are a lot more companies like this, but I just picked on Sony because it is their original product.

Re:This will continue

[onion_cfe]

It suprises me how often people ignore the fact that Minidisc is a lossy compressed storage medium. Its not really comparable to CD audio.

Re:This will continue

[belroth]

From the article:

Other elements of the oft-repeated Betamax story are also wrong. For example, while Sony was certainly slow to bring in other manufacturers, it had tried to license it to rivals such as JVC before VHS was even launched.

Doesn't sound like not wanting to share to me (depending upon the terms they wanted of course) - they weren't averse to sharing the CDA format either that they developed with Philips.

I agree about memorystick, it seems superfluous when SD is around, but Mini-disc isn't quite comparable to CD as it's lossy, like MP3. Sony used to make some nice kit, these days I'm not too impressed.

Re:This will continue

[indigogorge.net]

Actually, I do know the fact that it is a lossy comprssion. As I recall it is around a 12 bit compression scheme. I also bought a minidisc player years ago, so I could have good tunes when I jog, without the player constantly skipping. HA! The original skipped and stopped constantly. The point is, that although the quality wasn't the same, the majority of the population probably would not have known the difference because they would have played them in their car, or at work, or any number of noisy places, where ambient noise was a factor. If sony was to license the technology, I feel they could have had a much deaper market penetration in the US and other countries.

It's interesting how these basic topics on slashdot can go in any multiple tangent discussions. :)

Re:This will continue

[Anonymous Coward]

and it's such a shame that interesting tangents get slapped down as offtopic! GRRR! It makes me mad!

Citizens of Slashdot, if you agree, please show it in metamoderation. More interesting stuff has been lost to "offtopic" than we will ever know.

Re:This will continue

[Jeff DeMaagd]

According to the article, Sony DID try to licence out BetaMax, and did get a few other companies on board.

Sony also licences out MiniDisc tech too. Just about every media company makes the blanks, and a lot of electronics companies made the players. Pioneer, Aiwa and other companies make or have made MD units, I've seen them for myself.

They also licenced out Memory Stick too, as a lot of other companies make and sell Memory Sticks and readers.

Re:This will continue

[gidds]

MD is not a good example. The MD format is licensed; Sharp, for example, make some very good MD kit, and there are many makes of blank MDs.

One of the reasons MD hasn't caught on in the USA is that it was hastily pitched against DCC, and while everyone was waiting to see which would win, CDR and MP3 players sneaked in and stole some of the market. DCC has just about died a death, while MD is actually quite popular here in Europe and especially in Japan. Not so much for buying prerecorded music, but MD hifis, car units, and MD blanks are available everywhere, and many folks use them. They're ideal for carrying music about, for cars, for recording concerts, &c.

MD also wins over CD-audio in some areas: smaller, more robust (no need for cases), stores text info/titles, editable (merge/split/move/delete tracks), 161-minute mono mode, much more skip-resistant...

And to answer other comments; while the quality of early MD compressors was lousy, recent compressors (ATRAC 5) have a sound that's effectively indistinguishable from CD. (I believe the raw bitrate is about 280kpbs, and that ATRAC 5 compression beats MP3 bit-for-bit by quite a lot.)

It's still an argument against proprietary formats, of course; if Sony had opened up the format more, especially w.r.t. data MDs (which were made deliberately incompatible and hugely expensive), then it might have become more popular much more quickly...

Re:This will continue

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the reasons MD hasn't caught on in the USA is that it was hastily pitched against DCC, and while everyone was waiting to see which would win,

Not to mention that both MD and DCC were introduced right on the heels of DAT - which despite it's failure in the consumer market, was fairly successful in the Pro/Prosumer market.

Personally, I known more people with personal DAT equipment than MD and DCC combined. Amateur musicians, people who trade bootlegs, people doing interviews for research -- that was all DAT in the 90s.

Even though MD is still on a long run as a consumer format, it always had that unqualifable "Stench of Death" that seemed to prevent it from breaking through. Sorry if that sounds lie FUD, but because (USian) consumers always had real fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the format, it never really got successful in the DVD/MP3 sense.

Sony had opened up the format more, especially w.r.t. data MDs (which were made deliberately incompatible and hugely expensive)

Not likely. Iomega Zip beat them to market and had twice the capacity.

Re:This will continue

[Anonymous Coward]

Not likely. Iomega Zip beat them to market and had twice the capacity.

BS!, Data MD was/is 140MB vs Zip's 100MB, a hell of a lot smaller (physically) too... They also developed a 650MB 4x density version in 1996, but nothing much ever came of it.

But yes, overpriced and badly marketed.

Re:This will continue

[Anonymous Coward]

I stand corrected. I recalled 52MB for some reason.

Re:This will continue

[DavittJPotter]

And your comment that was rated (+5, Insightful) is repeating the exact urban myths that the article's author was talking about. "Greedy Sony" notwithstanding, did you even RTFA? You're perpetuating the problem that this whole article was addressing.

The "whole product" concept is interesting, and one that I will keep in my foreground memory for some time to come...

Re:This will continue

[DWIM]

VHS was not better than BetaMax. Sony simply did not want to share. Hence, VHS was more widely accepted because everyone could buy a VHS player, and not a very pricy BetaMax player.

Hence, VHS was better than BetaMax -- the entire point of the article. VHS brough the appropriate level of technology to solve the problem to the most people at the most acceptable price. It is a combination of qualities, technical merit being just one, that determine what product has the most utility (i.e. best bang for the buck).

Re:This will continue

[Kanasta]

Sounds like the lesson is being missed by many here.

It's actually that fact that Sony innovations are doomed to be taken over by competing products. First BetaMax, then MD... now what DVD camp were they in? DVD+RW or DVD-RW....

Re:This will continue

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi. CDs are a proprietary format. VHS is too.

what was your point?

A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[rufusdufus]

The value of a product is not defined by its creators. It is defined by its market. Meaning its users and customers.

Linux is doomed to be a niche player until this fact is more widely accepted. It doesn't matter what geeks think about the product if the end user is not satisfied, overjoyed even.

As it is today, woe to any newbie who wants to jump on the linux bandwagon; all they get is name calling and static when they have real problems. The overall experience can be very unpleasant.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[reallocate]

True, true. I'd add that most geeks also seem to expect computer users to progress from a newbie state (Windows) to a "power user" state" Linux. In other words, they expect the customer to change rather than the product.

What they seem to fail to understand is that many, if not most computer users, aren't that interested in computers, no more than they have an abiding interest in how television works. Its "what" it enables them to do, not how it does it, that counts.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[indigogorge.net]

I tend to agree. I myself am stuck in a Windows only world, only peering into the world of Unix, Linux, BSD, or what have you.

I have tried to get into these other operating systems, with a response from my freinds as "well, just start using it. Its not so hard." They of course started when they where 12 years old, and now I am 28. And eventually I ALWAYS ask for help, and they always never have the time. I have tried posting on slashdot, but never get responses as well for help. SO I simply abandoned the task.

I have too many other things to do than try to learn a completely new OS. Hence the Windows shackles. Ho hum.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[aanantha]

If you want help, Slashdot is not the proper place to find it. Your coumment will very quickly be marked Offtopic. You'll have much better luck on Linux IRC channels for newbie questions and on Usenet for more advanced ones. Most often a question has been asked before so you'll want to use Google Groups to search Usenet.

That said, it's still not going to be easy. The learning curve is steep and there's very little help to be found. For most people, it's a waste of time.

I think a major reason people are willing to put up with it is because the easy to use proprietary operating systems can be impossible to troubleshoot when they fail. Everything is hidden. Given enough knowledge, you can always troubleshoot a problem in an open source UNIX. Every layer can be debugged because each layer is visible and accessible.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[m3573]

And eventually I ALWAYS ask for help, and they always never have the time. I have tried posting on slashdot, but never get responses as well for help.

I think the best place to look when you're stuck are mailing lists of the distribution you're using and related newsgroups. I usually find posts from people having the same problems i have, with helpful followups.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[Paul Neubauer]

And if any proof of that attitude is needed, just look at that nasty responses jwz got for speaking out for usability...

There was an earlier media format that one company came up with, and wanted adopted so badly that they pretty much gave away the licensing for it. It worked. And the 33-1/3 LP caught on quite well.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[lth]

Why do you assume, that the highest calling of any opensource developer is to have a huge userbase?

If the user doesn't like the product, the user is free to:

a) Modify the product. (Ta-daa! It's Open Source!)
b) Pay someone else to modify the product.

The Linux companies, like Red Hat, have to worry about user acceptance. Unpaid developers are not, and should not, in any way feel obligated, to make their free software commercially succesful.

When that's all said, I do agree that the Linux Companies need to understand mainstream customers better, and offer better solutions for those users.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is doomed to be a niche player until this fact is more widely accepted.

Ah, but there are two points to that: a) it doesn't matter to the (current) core constituency, and b) even a virtual monopoly can be thrown down and destroyed.

Are you paying attention, (License 6) Microsoft?

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[SN74S181]

There, you've summed up why Linux will do one of two things:

It will remain a cool and highly useful geek tool.

or it will be killed by the people kludgeing it up to make it a happy-shiney newbie desktop.


Every time I hear someone saying [insert suggestion to cripple Linux down and make it less like Unix] I wince.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll have much better luck on Linux IRC channels for newbie questions

You haven't been in one of those lately I can tell.

Wise ass know-it-alls with the maturity of a 10 year old telling you to RTFM, and why did you chose THAT distro, everybody knows THIS distro is sooo much better. No it isn't, another one says. Yes it is. No it isn't. Get GCC 3.x. No don't do that because . And why do you use a USB mouse anyway. (Umm, it's the only one I have, works like a charm in Windows?) Then go back to Windows you n00b/M$ lover.

The learning curve is steep and there's very little help to be found

Amen to that.

In my experience *nixers are eliteist bastards the lot of them, no wonder people still use Windows.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[TeknoHog]

> It doesn't matter what geeks think about the product if the end user is not satisfied, overjoyed even.

Do you think Windows users are satisfied and overjoyed with Windows? Not in my experience. Still it's the most popular (i.e. "best") platform today. Individual users didn't choose Windows, the decision was made by big organizations for historical reasons.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[Anonymous Coward]

28 was about where I started using Linux. Of course, it was 1992 at the time.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[NoMercy]

Why do we care for popularity, why do we care to have every computer illeterate running Linux instead of Windows.

oss doesn't need fame or fortune to survive it only needs the geeks, if the rest of the world wants what we have, they can come and join us, otherwise they can just stay in the stoneage :)

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[jellybear]

Wrong.

Linux is doomed to be a niche player because it is not commercial. The only reason Windows is targeted to the masses is because the masses pay the programmers. In the case of linux, a wider user base would not result in more money. Companies who contribute money to Open Source development do so in order to fill specialized needs. Thus, linux will always be a niche player.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[starseeker]

Frankly that attitude, that users aren't interested in computers, is quite dangerous. Let's look at cars as an analogy, and note the parallels. It's quite surprising how many there are.

Cars are a powerful, universal technology. A huge percentage of the US wants/needs cars. But you can't just go out to the store, buy a car, and drive away with it. You must have a drivers license, a certificate of at least minimum skill in operating the car on a road where other people are also driving and your mistakes can have adverse impacts on others. No skill, no car. Then there are mechanics, who not only can operate the car but know what goes on under the hood. These people are in the strongest position, since they control the technology.

Now think about networked computers. Powerful, universal technology, just like cars, and now essential to the way our society operates. But you don't need a license of minimum competency to purchase a computer and put it on the network. Anyone can, whether or not they know a CDROM from a coaster. The problem is, the analogy holds. People operating computers on the network without minimum ability are a hazard, because their computers can and often do become the tools of people interested in causing trouble. Granted that can happen to people at lots of skill levels, just like accidents happen to good drivers. But the greater the general skill level, the fewer accidents on the highway. Likewise, the more intelligent/educated the community on the network, the stronger the network will be.

Linux nerds are like mechanics - they know the guts and control the technology. But so many people on the net know absolutely nothing about what they are doing, and they represent a danger to the general network community. The solution is education, as usual. Since no basic training for using a computer on a network is mandated, I think the expectation for users to progress to a "power user state" is a reflection of the educated computer users' reactions to what happens when ignorance and technology collide on the net. The infastructure is not robust enough to operate without some active help from its users. Just as cars can't go from a to b safely without a reasonably educated driver. Yes, the car might make it, and the ignorant user might be fine on the net. But the odds against it are much higher, and multiplied by thousands those conditions spell trouble.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[oconnorcjo]

What they seem to fail to understand is that many, if not most computer users, aren't that interested in computers, no more than they have an abiding interest in how television works. Its "what" it enables them to do, not how it does it, that counts.

It is not only "average users" who just want things to "just work"....

I am a computer programmer and year after year Linux disappoints me on the usability front. I have a "Linux server" for my internet connection (that is also used as a desktop machine) and a "Duel boot" machine (Windows 2000 and RedHat 8.0). The "Duel boot" machine is almost always in Win2000. One reason is that my wife prefers 2000 (though she spends quite a bit of time on the server machine when we both want to use a computer). The other is that too often Linux is just too much of a hassle. Installing a piece of software in Linux, still too often means compiling and then in the middle of compiling, it might say it needs to compile or upgrade xyz other things. I have done it but I don't LIKE it. I don't like spending a couple of hours figuring out how to get some basic functionality of my computer working when in Windows, it takes just several seconds to click on "Setup.exe" and a few seconds later, I am playing with what I installed.

I used to think that I would switch completely over to Linux but for five years some usability fundamentals of software installation are still just not there. RPMS only work if it is compatible with your version of Linux, Apt is the same way, individual installers don't know if you have another version of software on the system and so on. Even after installation, many things need far more configuration to just tell it where other things are on the system.

Linux can be the most beautiful desktop in the world but if you still have to compile "frozen bubbles" from scratch which asks you to upgrade perl and compile/install SDL_perl and a few other packages and for which one needs to comb the internet to find (something I recently bothered to do), most home users will say it is not worth it.

I love to play with Linux and I feel it is an excellent server operating system but this article explains very neatly why Linux is not being adopted in droves by the average "man on the street" despite the many strengths Linux has.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[reallocate]

I'm not promoting computer illiteracy, but I do believe that it is as unreasonable to expect ordinary users who do not find computing technology interesting in its own right to be motivated to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to undertake the same kind of analyis and action you imply we'd see from most Linux users. An example: An experienced Linux user might build a firewall from scratch. tuning it to meet every contingency. A regular user, on the other hand, might be expected to understand that a firewall is a "good thing", but need to purchase and install a commercial product.

It's analagous to a typical driver knowing that the brake pads might need replacing, but taking the car to a mechanic for the work. We should be happy that the driver recognize the need for the maintenance.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[reallocate]

Sounds familiar. FWIW, I switched to Apple's OS X 6 months ago after a number of years with Linux. Why? I decided I was spending too much time tweaking things, rather than using them. Tweaking can be addictive.

Unix was my first OS, way back when. Linux attracted me because it was a Unix-style OS I could afford to run at home, not because I wanted a Windows replacement or because it was open source. But, after editing my umpteenth config file, or chasing down some library so I can compile some app that I might not like anyway, or banging at X so I can stand to look at it for more than a few minutes...well, it all took on a "been there, done that" tone.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[vsprintf]

...and now I am 28. And eventually I ALWAYS ask for help, and they always never have the time. I have tried posting on slashdot, but never get responses as well for help. SO I simply abandoned the task.

I have too many other things to do than try to learn a completely new OS. Hence the Windows shackles. Ho hum.

I think you've identified your problem - attitude. Although older than you and, like you, with way too many things to do (like post on slashdot?), I can still pick up a book and use a new OS when necessary. You need to put a *little* bit of effort into it. You're not likely to get responses to questions that are covered in the *nix for Dummies books.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[IamTheRealMike]

You haven't been in one of those lately I can tell.

They vary a lot. FreeNode is normally pretty civilised.

and why did you chose THAT distro, everybody knows THIS distro is sooo much better. No it isn't, another one says. Yes it is. No it isn't.

In my experience that's usually caused by somebody deciding they'll use what their hacker friend uses, or their friend recommends Debian or Gentoo to a newbie. Then, they come onto IRC wondering how to make X work, so people say "you're a newbie, try Redhat or SuSE or Mandrake", because they know that'll probably give them a much smoother experience.

But of course, all it takes is 1 person out of the 150 in the channel to say "actually i started with debian and I made it, you should to" to start a mini debate.

Then go back to Windows you n00b/M$ lover.

I've never seen it put in those terms, but occasionally yeah people get pissed off and tell people to go back to Windows. Normally it's their own fault, comments like "God why is this sooo hard, on Windows it's easy, Linux really sucks" obviously isn't going to get a good response, yet I have seen people say that.

Obviously most people can't be bothered dealing with visitors who have attitude problems, helping people who want to learn is one thing, helping people who just don't give a damn and expect it to be delivered to them on a plate is something else.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[IamTheRealMike]

The value of a product is not defined by its creators. It is defined by its market. Meaning its users and customers.

Yeah. Linux vs Windows is a classic VHS vs Betamax.

The thing that really killed Betamax was that it was mostly proprietary. The tapes were Sony only, the machines were Sony only. Windows is the betamax, and Linux is the VHS.

In Linux there is competition, in Windows there is not. So, maybe when people will look back in the future they will say things like "Well, FreeBSD had a better kernel but Linux won, or MacOS had a better display system but Linux won, or Windows had a better component system, but Linux won". Just like they do with Betamax. At the end of the day though it's just market economics.

As it is today, woe to any newbie who wants to jump on the linux bandwagon; all they get is name calling and static when they have real problems. The overall experience can be very unpleasant.

*shrug*. I guess peoples experiences are mixed. I know many people who were introduced to Linux by good people, and were happy as clams. One guy started on Redhat 7.3 about a month ago and has already ditched KDE and moved to Blackbox, and is even learning emacs! Then there are people like me, who somehow avoided the flames on IRC and got a lot of quality support out of it. Now there are forums like linuxquestions.org as well.

So I think it's like any new things. If you got "name calling and static" then really that's an issue with either who you asked or the way you asked it. I mean sometimes there are questions on the forums or on IRC where somebody comes in and says "I've spent hours trying to make this work, Linux is seriously not impressing me. It works on Windows, if I can't get this working I'm just going to give up, this is stupid" or whatever, and obviously that is the wrong way to ask.

So yeah, the experience can be unpleasant, but it doesn't have to be. Like that guy earlier in the thread who said he asked questions on Slashdot, and was annoyed because he never got a response. Well, surely that would have told him something, like maybe Slashdot is the wrong place for tech support? If people have real problems then they are basically expected to put in a bit of effort to at least find the correct forum to ask questions.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[reallocate]

Your family's skills are commendable. The previous discussion, though, was looking at dangers posed to a network by users of computers on that network. Within that context, I'll stand by my assertion that it isn't reasonable to expect mainstream computer users to develop the skills many Linux say they have. That's neither a slam on Linux or on "mainstream computer users". It's possible for Linux to be easier to use, and it's possible for ordinary folks to use it.

But, mainstream users -- of any OS -- shouldn't be expected to be motivated to develop the savvy needed to discover, diagnose, and treat dangers to the network posed by their machines. For example, users should be aware of the benefits of using a firewall. They ought to be able to acquire and install one as easily as they install a game. But they don't need to know how a firewall really works, any more than they need to know how that game really works at code level.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[yeOldeSkeptic]

Linux is doomed to be a niche player until this fact is more widely accepted.

In a way, you are correct, however realize that server and enterprise systems were considered niche products until it became obvious that IBM was making billions of dollars a year on that niche. Now, every serious software company (including Microsoft) aims to have at least a presence in that sphere.

The same thing will happen with home systems. Linux on a home system is a niche product but Linux on high availability, business-oriented, mission critical systems less so. Note that I am not saying Linux is not a niche product but seeing as Linux is a natural path from Unix, Linux has the potential to be at least a major player in the latter.

Whoever wins in the business segment has the potential to expand into the home segment. The IBM PC took that path and eventually took over the home and small office market from Apple; leaving Apple with the niche product despite it being first on the market!

The critical question that must be answered is whether home systems will continue to look and be made the same way it has been since the 1980's. Apparently, even Microsoft doesn't think so. Witness their putative expansion into home console systems via the XBox. If the PC takes a drastic change in technological direction, the advantages of Windows in terms of infrastructure will evaporate. Witness again the imminent demise of VHS due to the onslaught of DVD!

In fact, if, or perhaps I should say when, home systems migrate from the general purpose computers of today to the console oriented systems of the future, Linux will be more than ready to take whatever Microsoft will hurl at it.

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[Anonymous Coward]

What this also hints to is *If* windows was given away (ie for free), Linux would loose the one thing that JOE PC USER sees as the big advantage that Linux has over Windows. PRICE

Linux was built for Gearheads by Gearheads.

Apple is very-very strict on look and feel.
MS is flexible on look and feel but has a standard.
Linux has a different look and feel for each distro, version and Windows Manager! The only thing that is somewhat consistent is kernel.

If linux was VCR it have no cover, 5 remotes, 3 slots for different tape formats and 2 power cords. It would also come with a bunch of spare parts and soldering iron! The manual would decribe how to build the VCR from a pile of parts and how to test it but never how to use it!

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[LilJimbo]

"As it is today, woe to any newbie who wants to jump on the linux bandwagon; all they get is name calling and static when they have real problems. The overall experience can be very unpleasant."

{nods} I see this type of treatment happening to other people often(usually not coming from me ),
mostly in this campus setting I'm in it has more the sound of people who know somewhat whats going on talking down to those who are having some problem problem. {offers a utopian view} wouldn't it be better if people with the knowlege instead talked these people up, often their lack of knowlege is due to an (often false) feeling that the issue at hand is something they could never handle or understand......but once someone talks with them and is able to communicate with them in terms they understand (woa concept: apply what they are good at to the problem at hand) and watch their face glow as they realize they can and do understand what is going on

{smiles}ok I'm done with my lilRant

Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn

[ivan256]

I agree that the market is defined by the customers, but I disagree this is not widely accepted among linux developers. Linux developers know who their customers are, and they cater to their wants. It just so happens that the "mainstream" computer user doesn't fall into that category. Sure you here people talking about how they want linux to take over the desktop, but these people aren't linux developers. As for newbies who want to learn linux, perhaps they shouldn't ask their questions on development lists, or in slashdot comments, or (heaven forbid) on irc.slashdot.org. There are plenty of people willing to help. If you don't want to figure out what the rules of the forum you choose are, there are plenty of companies you can pay not to flame you while they help you. They probably won't tell you to reinstall when you have a problem like microsoft will, either.

I write kernel code 60 hours a week. I could care less if anybody other than me considers linux a worthy desktop OS. As long as our server and custom engineering customers keep sending the checks, and as long as I can continue to use XFree86 without some silly desktop environment, I'm perfectly happy. If somebody else wants to make linux into a mainstream desktop operating system they are perfecty welcome, but as far as I can tell linux has been about filling the niche that microsoft and the commercial unix vendors couldn't fill. That's why it was written, and the people doing the work are still driven by the same desire. They want to solve their own problem. That same spirit is present in the people who pay me to write code. They don't know how to do it themselves, but they want linux to scratch their itch, so they pay me to do it. In fact, I'll bet that untill somebody is willing to pay to make linux into a desktop OS it won't completely happen, because the people who know how to write the code to make a great desktop OS know enough to feel constrained by typical desktop features. Remember, linux is 'free' as in freedom, not 'free' of charge.

Stupid wordplay

[Anonymous Coward]

He redefines "best" as "most popular" and then concludes that VHS is the "best". Well, *duh*.

But let us not forget one thing: there was lots of pr0n on VHS format, and *THAT* and nothing else is what made VHS so popular. I guess we can conclude that pr0n makes something "best".

As for other "best" products: the PC, despite its awesome power, excellent tools, and fabulous games, still sucks conceptually. There were a great many computers that were in many ways far, far *better* than the PC, but failed to make it in a world dominated by Microsoft and IBM.

And Windows, despite obviously being the "best" (most popular), still sucks badly.

Re:Stupid wordplay

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite "most popular" as best, he's saying "best consists of a somewhat subjective inner product of "greatest usability" for the "core product" X greatest support infrastructure for the user base. (and there is some overlap between the two).

The latest distros of Linux are nearly there for the "usability" for even the marginally adept computer user, but what is holding Linux back for the desktop is the lack of the support infrastructure. Jane User can always find someone who can help to some extent with her windows box problems, but she can not yet count on having someone she knows and trusts to help with a Linux box.

Both components will/have follow a geometric growth within the general computer user population starting initially with geekdom and growing outward (until saturation, nowhere near yet achieved), but the "usability" factor grew fastest because it was driven by the geeks and the corporations (NOW) jockeying for market share. The support base factor grows more slowly because it depends on the Linux inept becoming Linux adept which will only happen by familiarity and time.

-- TWZ

Quick summary

[Espen]

VHS was better because it became more popular.

Next week we will be arguing that the best music ever composed is that which has sold the most, and that the best movie is the one which has been the highest grossing.

In summary, the best approach to creating the best new and exciting products is to recycle old ones in new packaging and market the hell out of them.

Re:Quick summary

[TommyAquinas]

Like, say, Lindows (tm)?

"fast follower" is a highly effective marketing strategy. In the context of the article, 'best' implies market acceptance, not quality.

RB

Re:Quick summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"VHS was better because it became more popular."

For all intents and purposes, this is completely true. "Better", for a commercial product, is that mix of things which causes that product to sell in larger quantities that the competition. In the marketplace, the "best" product is simply the one that sells the most. It's largely self-referential.

Technical superiority doesn't mean that the average purchaser will buy the product, because most consumers want the best deal (ie low cost, easy support, etc), even at the expense of being bang up to date on the clever bits. Technology, for most people, IS a means to an end, not an end in it's own right, and for most people this is the right attitude. Video recorders are just a tool after all, and you should use the right tool for the job. In this case, the job is recording the maximum amount of usable video at the lowest cost. Thus VHS is (or at least was) the right tool.

V2000 was a vastly superior system to either VHS OR Beta, (8 hour tapes 4 per side, no noise bars, much higher bandwidth and so on), but died commercially for several reasons, not the least of which was cost. VHS won largely because it was 'good enough', cheaper, and had better recording time than Beta. It sold in large quantites due to low cost, and had low cost because of the large quantities sold.

"In summary, the best approach to creating the best new and exciting products is to recycle old ones in new packaging and market the hell out of them. "

Sad, but in many cases true. Look at the modern music or film industry. This approach is still used because of one overriding factor, IT WORKS!

Re: Quick summary

[Sighm]

But why was VHS supposed to be better?

The reason why VHS has won from BetaMAX was simply because of one thing: pr0n! The pr0n industry embraced the VHS technology because the tapes were fairly cheap. Because lots of pr0n was available on VHS, people bought a VHS recorder!

Simple network effects at play here: do NOT underestimate the power of pr0n, really!

-- JaWi

Re:Quick summary

[Jonathan]

For all intents and purposes, this is completely true. "Better", for a commercial product, is that mix of things which causes that product to sell in larger quantities that the competition. In the marketplace, the "best" product is simply the one that sells the most. It's largely self-referential.

You are referring to "better" from the standpoint of the seller. The more controversial opinion that the author was making is that popularity also makes it better for the *buyer*.

Re:Quick summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"You are referring to "better" from the standpoint of the seller. The more controversial opinion that the author was making is that popularity also makes it better for the *buyer*. "

In many cases this is also true. For instance, if I'm a customer who has amassed a large library of tapes over the years, I want to be able to continue to play these tapes into the future. If my VHS recorder dies, I can simply go out and buy another one, ANY other one, and I can play the tapes in a viewable manner. How likely is it that I could do the same with Beta or V2000? Therefore, I picked the best format for me as a consumer.

Popularity tends to assure compatibility in this sort of product.

Re: Quick summary

[DaBj]

I guess the same can be said for CD-ROMs, DVDs and the internet.

That's why the floppy, LaserDisc and BBSes failed... =)

Re:Quick summary

[falafelJones]

I agree. 'People don't want the best. They want the standard.' -A woman in a documentary re:monopolies, and talking specifically, of course, about microsoft. Although IMHO in this case some technical aspects did help win this 'standards' (hint) war, when dealing with the general public convincing them that this is what other people are *going to buy* is half the battle. Ahh, marketing... fJ

Re: Quick summary

[vsprintf]

At the time of the Betamax/VHS war, both tapes were priced pretty much the same. Most of the cheap pr0n was on Betamax tapes - you could find them in a bargain bin in the local tape rental store. Try again with a better argument.

My dad worked for Philips...

[AndrewHowe]

... So we had a V2000 system. Actually it was a Grundig machine. But anyway, V2000 was better than VHS/Betamax technically. It soon became pretty hard to find prerecorded tapes for it, though.

Re:My dad worked for Philips...

[vistic]

Wasn't V2000 the format that basically looked like GIANT audio cassettes?

My aunt and uncle had a CED player (I don't think it was RCA SelectaVision though, but I could be wrong). When I worked for a market research company, we used Umax (the big cassettes that I believe Beta was based on).

Re:My dad worked for Philips...

[samael]

My family had one of those. 4 hour tapes, double sided, displayed the current position in hours and minutes.

Pretty sweet. Shame they never caught on.

Re:My dad worked for Philips...

[jo_ham]

My grandad had a V2000 machine. It's still sitting next to the TV in his living room along with all the original tapes he bought at the time. Obviously, he hasn't been able to find many places that sell new blank tapes.

The biggest benefit was being able to record three hours per side on a tape that was the same size (or nearly) as a VHS tape.

Re:My dad worked for Philips...

[JaredOfEuropa]

I had a V2000 recorder and loved it. Brilliant quality and the tapes could be flipped over and recorded on the other side like audio cassettes. IIRC you got 2x4 hours on one tape. Also, the players were quite easy to operate by non-techies.

The refusal of Philips to allow the release of pr0n on V2000 may have contributed to its demise, but I think it was more due to the idiotic Philips marketing department. Philips V2000 entered the consumer market quite late and was still priced at "early adopter" prices when VHS and Betamax prices were already coming down. Why? Because Philips, in all their wisdom, decided that consumers weren't interested in recording video. Why would anyone want to record TV shows? Instead, they aimed their marketing primarily at companies and schools and such, and priced the units accordingly.

Re:My dad worked for Philips...

[sheimers]

V2000 cassettes are symmetrical, you can flip them and record a max. of 4 hours on each side. There were even longplay machines with 2x8h.

Re:My dad worked for Philips...

[sheimers]

Did you ever open one of these V2000 recorders? They were so expensive because of the way they were built.

They are much more complicated than VHS because of their dynamic track following mechanism. Recording heads in the head drum were moveable, which made them following the tracks more closely than VHS, which allowed for thinner tracks, thus double the play time.

The problem was, there were no highly integrated control circuits for that in the beginning of the 1980es. The result: V2000 recorders were huge and completely filled with analog and digital electronics.

And the picture quality is not that good as many state here. It's very sharp, but quite noisy on my two machines.

BTW, V2000 had dynamic track following in the early '80es, why did hard drive/floppy manufacturers continue to use old fashioned stepper motors until the end of the 80es, if better technology was there for at least 5 years?

Stefan

He's right... He's wrong...

[Jayson]

He says that geeks don't understand about the total package and that technical ability isn't the only thing. He's right in that is what geeks say. However, geeks do realize this, but they just don't know it.

From an example taken from The Other Site in the last day: programming languages. People will willingly use broken languages, not as superior, because they interface to more things, can be applied to more general purpose situations (even when they shouldn't be), or have bigger libraries. You only need to look to Perl and C.

Perl is an attrocious language judging on purely technical merits, however CPAN and all the sugar it has are what give people reason to use it. You will often hear the C or Perl apologist say, "it does what I need good enough" or "I get work done in it." This is almost the same decision calculous that the author is expousing: people chose VHS because it did what they needed (recording a two hour movie unattended) and it did it well enough (they couldn't tell the difference in image quality).

Re:He's right... He's wrong...

[ek_adam]

mySQL doesn't even have subselects, but it's open source & cheaper so we'll use it instead of Oracle. Granted the difference in price between Oracle & mySQL is div0 greater than the price difference between Beta & VHS, but some of the same logic applies.

Re:He's right... He's wrong...

[belroth]

You will often hear the C or Perl apologist say, "it does what I need good enough" or "I get work done in it."

I would think that would please Larry Wall- his object seems to have been to create a usable tool, not a CS project.
Perl seems to be a wonderful example of reality - rather than trying for technically superiority it aims for utility. I'm no great perl hacker, I just dabble occasionally to get something done and it suits that purpose very well.

Re:He's right... He's wrong...

[kmellis]

"You will often hear the C or Perl apologist say, 'it does what I need good enough' or 'I get work done in it.'"

Yes, but even in this context there's a vocal minority of programmers that loudly advocate a language (and denigrate others) based upon its intrinsic technical merit.

I think that this fact that you point out--that programmers (who form a subset of the tech geeks that are picky about what they consider superior technology) also display this pragmatic evaluation of a technology (in this example, computer languages) as opposed to the techno-esthete oriented appraisal--and my point that a further subset of them do the opposite, together indicate what's really going on. And that is whether or not one has the luxury of chosing the aesthetic point of view over the pragmatic. For most people, most of the time, technology is a means to an end, not an end itself. It doesn't matter if it's ugly on its own terms (and its own terms would be its technical "beauty"), if in most other ways it's superior. However, if the tool's use is sufficiently restricted as to make most of those other factors irrelevant, then the tool's beauty becomes quite important to those so inclined to appreciate it. Often in technology, a tool's beauty is directly associated with it being engineered to do one particular restricted thing very well. So for those using such a tool in this restricted fashion (what it was deeply designed to do, not what it merely can do), form and function merge into technical perfection. The problem here is that the people that fall in love with their tools in this situation tend to forget that outside that narrow context, its value is diminished.

For me, these two viewpoints are not opposed. Given what I just wrote, it is probably clear that "best" to me is dependent upon whatever set of criteria that I think are relevant to a specific evaluation. To continue your example, in the realm of scripted languages I find both Perl and Ruby to be "beautiful". Perl because it seems beautiful to me in Wall's relentless pragmatism; and Ruby for its clean abstraction. In general, I'd use Perl because in the land of pragmatism, Perl is king (even if it's one-eyed and four-armed). But, given the right project, I'd prefer Ruby.

Re:He's right... He's wrong...

[Hubert_Shrump]

Perl is an attrocious language judging on purely technical merits

Fitting, as Perl has great concision, which is really more an artistic quality, no?

Hazzah!

Re:He's right... He's wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perl is not "an attrocious language judging on purely technical merits" by any means. You might be an attrocious programmer, but that can hardly be blamed on Perl.

Re:He's right... He's wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're both atrocious spellers.

real cameras

[lobsterturd]

Have you seen real TV cameras? Usually they say "Digital Beta". I've never seen "DVHSC" or "SVHSC" on professional camcorders used by TV crew

Re:real cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

Betacam is not the same as Betamax. It was a totally different technology, as is digital. So the "Beta" thing is nothing but brand naming.

The reason why you don't see "DVHSC" is because there is no such thing. There was a S-VHS-C format, but it was for consumers, and is obsolete now. There was a competitor to Betacam; it was called M-II. So Betacam vs. M-II was roughly analogous to Betamax vs. VHS. Both formats were made for ENG use more than quality. The hands-down quality winner in the analog age was the 1" open-reel tape format, which used direct color recording. Betamax, VHS and U-Matic (a predecessor to Betamax, using 3/4" tape cassettes) used an encoding technique called "color under", which was technically inferior to direct color.

Re:real cameras

[jo_ham]

Well, actually, they do.

Pannasonic's professional video system is called DVC-Pro, and it is rather good. It uses the same size tapes as Sony's Pro format - DVCAM so there are machines that will play back both formats, but woe betide you try to mix them since they're not really compatible for reasons I won't get into here.

Sony has another professional format, the Betacam series, and this is the most widespread at the moment because a) Sony cornered the pro market a very long time ago with U-matic (3/4"), which while not compatible with Betacam, was very good for its time so TV companies and editing houses bought back into Sony when Betacam was released.

b) Betacam started as an analogue technology with Betacam Pro and Betacam SP and Sony evolved it into it's current incarnation, Digital Betacam. The important thing is that Betacam SP is compatible with the Digital version if you have one of Sony's editing recorders so you don't have to throw out all of your analogue cameras and VTRs, which cost tens of thousands of pounds/dollars/money to buy.

DVCAM is becoming more popular in non-linear systems because it's cheaper than DigiBeta and Sony's pro DVCAM decks will play and record consumer DV and MiniDV tapes, although obviously the quality is lower than DVCAM.

Err, back to the topic now..

Re:real cameras

[m3djack]

Don't forget about Betacam SX, which was the basis for the new line they're pushing: MPEG IMX. MPEG IMX is supposed to play older Betacam formats as well as this new digital format, part of an initiative to bring the broadcast industry into an all digital environment.

No, MPEG IMX doesn't sit above Digi Beta, but it is an important format. ... right, back to the topic though ;)

Re:real cameras

[jo_ham]

Wow, I'd forgotten about M-II.

The ITV series The Bill was shot on M-II and then all the tapes were copied to Betacam SP before editing. I have no idea why they didn't shoot on Beta SP.

Oh, and for the record - don't snigger - we still master to U-matic SP from a Media 100i edit suite. Yes, we are buying a DVCAM deck to go with our camera, but one thing at a time!

We slung the rest of the U-matic suite into a cupboard to make more space. No more video mixer, separate edit controller, three giant U-Matic decks heating up the room during edits. *sigh* I did shed a little tear, I cut my teeth on that linear system, but it's just blown away by a Media 100i system that cost us £20,000 - less than the cost of just the BVU-950P edit VTR when it was new.

Re:real cameras

[jo_ham]

Ah yes, hence the Sony J-3, which plays all 1/2" pro formats, including Beta SX.

If we'd have had more money we probably would have gone down that road. As it is, we started anew on DVCAM, from shooting to editing and hopefully, when we get round to buying the DSR-11, mastering.

Re:real cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually only low-end stations use Digibeta any more and even lower end use betacam... DVcam or hard drive cameras are the norm.... and the modular camera with camera that locks onto a recorder is going away, only really dumb studios want to use that 10 year old camera body with a new digital format... the newer CCD's are 900,000,000 times better than the old and can use tons less light to get an awesome picture...

but you are right... beta was always tons better than VHS.... the porn industry picked VHS for it's format of choice and that is what sealed it's fate... no matter what other tell you... what you see the porn industry adopt will become the de-facto standard.

Re:real cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

I may be nitpicking but miniDV, DV and DVCAM are actually the same digital format and thus the same quality. The only diffrence is DVCAM runs the tape faster (twice the speed from memory?) thus possibly avoids more drop outs than DV.

Re:real cameras

[HereAllNight]

I still have a U-matic deck around here somewhere. {I'm the AC you replied to, BTW.) My TV career got started about the time U-matic came out, in the early 70s, and most of my work was done on 3/4" tape. When the formats wars were raging, I had U-matic, Betamax and VHS at home, so I could take my pick. I wanted a 1" C VTR too, but couldn't afford one.

Naturally I used my U-matic deck mostly for professional work. I've always found VHS decks better for timeshifting. Panasonic had the best ergonomics for that IMHO. Betamax tried to be all things to all people, and weren't very good for the things I wanted to do at home.

My station didn't use any of the 1/2" formats, so I was a spectator, except for the occasional job the IBEW local threw my way. The engineers that had to work on them full time weren't terribly happy with them IIRC. They needed constant recalibration, and went haywire on-air a lot more than U-matic.

I didn't hear too many complaints about M-II, although to be fair the station that used M-II was a NABET shop, so I didn't have as much contact.

Re:Help

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll help.

Start by slimming down. Go do some sports. Try brisk walking as a start. Eat a balanced, healthy diet. Greens are tasty if you cook and mix them right.

Acne, seek a good dermatologist's help.

You can use linux and still have a fruitful life.
Linux User (not=) No-life geek

Tip: the more effort you invest in searching for a girlfriend, the less likely you are gonna get one. Expand your social circle (join clubs etc)and let nature take its course.

If you build it they will come

[ageOfWWIV]

A great deal of this article spends its time talking about the "whole product" and applying it to everything from software to cars.

He says when consumers buy a technologically inferior product, they are really buying the ability to chooseand buying product support/longevity

Really? I thought the success of competing standards has always been based on two things: clout and marketing, not technical specifications. Your average consumer will choose brand X not because they've carefully weighed the benefits of it over brand Y but because they saw a really funny ad on superbowl sunday about it. Don't overestimate the average joe since what he will always buy into, is the hype.
___

Re:If you build it they will come

[GauteL]

This is oversimplification to the extreme. What really matters is wether you think the product will succeed or not. As opposed to chocolate or candy bars, it really, really matters what technology "everybody else" chooses.

People generally look at themselves as superior to most of their peers. And it might just be that average Joe is saying EXACTLY what you are saying, but because he thought VHS would succeed and Betamax would not (possibly because of other peoples stupidity), he chose VHS.

This is of course a self-fulfilling prophecy, and one of the things that tip the scale is good marketing.

Missed one.

[grub]

Kind of explains what happened to the Atari Lynx and Jaguar, dunnit?

Atari Lynx, Jaguar and *BSD you mean. Netcraft doesn't even have Lynx and Jaguar on the radar!

Re:Missed one.

[Pius II.]

While I don't completely understand what Atari Lynx and Sega Jaguar have to do with the BSDs, "Jaguar" (Mac OS X.2) is indeed on Netcraft's radar :-p
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?mode_u=off& mode_w=on&site=www.apple.com

Hosting your website on mid-90s consoles OTOH probably wouldn't quite survive a decent slashdotting...

Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

Off-topic I know but I need to get this off my chest. I'd love to get some of the Sony Digital stuff but I dislike memory stick. 128M is just not enough capacity and Sony is not keeping up with its competitors. Also, it's more expensive for the same capacity and not many people make it. My guess is that it probably isn't tops either in the write speed area. After Beta, Sony should learn how to recognise a loser technology earlier and dump it. Am I the only one bypassing Sony equipment because Memory Stick?

Re:Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta

[m3djack]

Sony recently announced high capacity memory sticks. In 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB flavours. Of course, the 1GB costs $880.. but at least the capacity is getting there. Granted, I wish it weren't so proprietary. Only reason I use it is for my Sony Clié :\

Re:Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta

[jgennick]

You aren't the only one. The memory stick, IMHO, is a bad idea. All Sony did was to add yet another memory card into the game. And for what? Because of the "not invented here" syndrome?

I try to keep all my devices on the same memory standard. The last thing I want is to have to buy and keep around two or three different types of memory cards. At the moment, if it doesn't support Compact Flash, I try to buy something else that does.

Someday I'll probably be forced to change. Compaq, I notice, doesn't support Compact Flash in their iPaqs.

Re:Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta

[smittyoneeach]

No' so fast. If Sony gets enough products on the market that support the Memory Stick, and sales are sufficient, they might create a 'standard' that forces everyone to play along by sheer gravity.
Had I piles of cash and wanted I a shelf of gadgets with a single medium for moving information between them, I'd be hard pressed to find a better answer than Sony's.
Bluetooth or something else wireless, sure, but you like solid state media from time to time.

Re:Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta

[arkanes]

You must be thinking of some other ipaq - mine supoprts it just fine. You do need an adapter, though - there's no port built in.

Re:Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta

[hyeh]

The iPaq h1910 doesn't support CompactFlash at all. In fact, a lot of newer devices don't support CompactFlash.

It is my belief that CF is on the way out, and will gradually be replaced with SecureDigital. Everyone (except Sony, Fuji, and Olympus) seems to be jumping on the SD bandwagon. With SDIO WiFi adapters just around the corner, I think SD will win the flash media wars.

Re:Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

I bypass Sony's products (consumer electronics and computer periperials) because of their crappy quality.

Re:Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just like compaq and their LS120 drive...

I loved the LS120, but they were FRICKING stupid to not let everyone and their brother copy it...

now we're stuck with the horribly crappy Zip drive... the lowest reliability on the planet and slower than a turd.

I remember EVERYTHING from compaq came with ls120.... all of the laptops at work have ls120 drives.. and it still failed because of the immense stupidity ingrained in company greed.

Re:Memory Stick Should Go the Way of Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

To the extent that 'what ifs' matter, if Apple had learned the architectural 'lesson' of IBM, would they have escaped the niche?

Its not just the technical

[locarecords.com]

I think this is an important point when creating technical projects - it is not just the technical specifications that sell a product (well for non-slashdot readers anyway ;-)

I don't know if anyone has come across the writer Bruno Latour but he argues convincingly that we need a more complex understanding of the way technology projects are started, run and completed in order to understand why certain technical decisions are made. Afterall there can be cost constraints, efficiency constraints, material constraints, management constraints, organisational constraints (ie we don't do it like that here) and so on and on.

The phrase heterogeneous engineering is a great term that refers to the way technical people have to engineer not just, say, the software, but also the managers, other people, organisational lethagy and so on just to get the thing out of the drawing room (let alone the door).

I remember working for a very prestigious and large media company who could not see the value of the Internet whatso ever. No matter how much I banged on about it. In the end I left as it was clear the managers and company were still living in the land of VAX/VMS... Shit they were *still* worrying about X25!

But it is interesting how we as engineers have to have the social skills as well as technical skills in order to move a project forward... and that can be much harder than the technical!

About Time!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Betamax vs. VHS myth has been a favorite straw man argument of Mac-heads for a long time. It's nice to see that someone with a column has exposed this myth.

The "killer app" for the VCR was the movie, and Betamax was unable to run it. Betamax was a closed, proprietary platform that lost out to superior open standards. Beta's only claim to superiority was a couple more lines of horizontal resolution. But it wasn't a difference that you could actually perceive, like the difference between a 2.2GHz machine and a 2.4GHz one. And by 1985, that lead was gone.

Re:About Time!

[jo_ham]

The VHS standard isn't open any more than Betamax's is - you still have to pay royalties to use it and you can't change it.

So if I released a VHS recording deck that ran the tape at twice the speed to half the time but increase the quality, or I added a feature that allowed the drum to be adjusted to either shorten or lengthen the path of the heads on the tape to adjust quality then I'd be in violation of the VHS standard, and JVC would be on my ass.

Sony, rightly or wrongly in the "nice" stakes, kept Betamax to itself, and experimented with all these things and more and evolved Betamax into something much better than it was. They then sold it to the professional community for $5,000+ per VCR

Re:About Time!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of BetaCAM. Similar brand name, totally different technology.

Yes, VHS was an open standard. Anybody who wanted to subscribe could, and non-standard additions like LP mode, Hi-Fi audio, different head configurations and S-VHS were permitted. In contrast, Sony did something similar to Apple's treatment of the Mac clone market.

Re:About Time!

[tgibbs]

The "killer app" for the VCR was the movie, and Betamax was unable to run it. Betamax was a closed, proprietary platform that lost out to superior open standards.

Wrong on both counts. Both beta and VHS were proprietary standards (and both were licensed to multiple companies). And both played movies just fine (very early beta tapes weren't long enough to record the average movies, but this was rectivied well before VHS captured a significant lead)

Re:About Time!

[Anonymous Coward]

And both played movies just fine (very early beta tapes weren't long enough to record the average movies, but this was rectivied well before VHS captured a significant lead)

VHS held a lead during the critical year of 1977. First with the two hour tape, then the four hour tape. Everytime Betamax caught up but the message was now clear in the mind of the consummer.

VHS = longer recording time.

By 1978 VHS had overtaken betamax...

Re:About Time!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Very nice. VHS was a better way to timeshift and pirate video. Maybe Palladium will give that straw man some legs or at least a scarecrow's hat.

ps
Your horizontal lines vs GHz statement still has me smiling.

Re:About Time!

[vsprintf]

You are so clueless. What moron modded that AC up? The original movie rental business was based on Betamax. Duh, they rented whole movies on a single Betamax tape. VHS came later. There was nothing about "superiour open standards" to do with either format.

Re:About Time!

[Anonymous Coward]

any of the betamax machines i had (including top-loaders) could always record a movie (2 hrs). recordings were always very good quality given the hardware, cable signal, etc. one of the things that really pissed me off about vhs machines (even with ones less than a year old) is that deep blue colors ended up with shimmering red areas.

at the time sony was an innovator; the first one out to the north american market with a reliable consumer vcr that could record entire movies. those things had festuresets that took the vhs people 10 years to match in some cases (clear pause, backwards frame increment, pre-load for quick play, fucking real-time tape counter, and the list goes on...) jvc just came out with an extremely simple design that obviously cost less because over half of the necessary ciruitry was not included.

i can't say i blame people for buying something $200 cheaper, but really folks, the price is what killed beta not any superiority thing. now...

what killed the dat? scms and fud

what killed the md? scms and lack of interoperability between audio and computer eqiupment. sony really missed the boat on the md... they could have taken the entire market away from syquest and iomega's bloated floppy disk.

the elcaset? nice idea, but no real target market and baaad timing. :P

Re:About Time!

[HereAllNight]

The VHS standard isn't open any more than Betamax's is - you still have to pay royalties to use it and you can't change it.

You're missing the point. Sony dictated what Betamax was, and other companies were only able to buy licenses. JVC formed a consortium with several other companies to draft the VHS standards. So if you were a contributing member, yes you could change VHS. The smaller companies that just wanted to license the technology could do so for a lot less than they could from Sony.

Sony, rightly or wrongly in the "nice" stakes, kept Betamax to itself, and experimented with all these things and more and evolved Betamax into something much better than it was. They then sold it to the professional community for $5,000+ per VCR

Are you implying that only Sony improved their products? Not so.

Re:About Time!

[HereAllNight]

I could ask who modded your flameage up. Learn the meaning of "analogy" and try again, k?

Re:About Time!

[vsprintf]

Umm, nobody modded me up. Apparently you don't understand how things work here. And you obviously don't understand the difference between a claim and an analogy. First, check dictionary.com for the difference, then read the FAQ here for your edification on posting, karma, and moderation.

Tomorrow on Slashdot

[SlashdotLemming]

Why Iron was better than Bronze

Re:Tomorrow on Slashdot

[Absurd Being]

Iron's not better than bronze. For instance, in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, when the two women were fighting, the only weapon that wasn't being snapped by the green destiny sword was a large bronze stick. It was iron's tendency to fracture that made the other weapons of less use. It was bronze's tendency to bend that made the bronze rod an effective weapon for a short while. Each thing has its own use. I suppose we need value considerations, but they must be put in their proper context.

Re:Tomorrow on Slashdot

[Oneflower]

While fighting the Gauls the Romans were astonished to see them run off the field at regular intervals to hammer their bronze swords straight again. The Romans' *steel* swords didn't get bent and guess who won the battle.

Steel can be brittle, it depends on the carbon content and crystal structure. Damascus steel (or wootz or bulat) was very tough despite it's high carbon content (~1 to 2%), but that's because the crystals had been broken down by careful forging.

Re:Help

[Anonymous Coward]

Acne, seek a good dermatologist's help.

Nah, don't do that, take vitamin A & E supplements (they will come seperately packaged) - don't over do it, and DO NOT eat potato chips, biscuits and any of that other overly starchy junk "food", eat lot's of fresh greens and a small amount of meat.

Better

[uspsguy]

I guess it really boils down to how you define better (thank you, Bill Clinton). Beta had much better quality, VHS had better length. As usual, the public went for quick and dirty

Re:Better

[vsprintf]

That is the best summary I've seen of this whole holy war.

The article misses the point entirely

[iamdrscience]

The whole significance of "Betamax vs. VHS" and why it's remembered is because it shows that a technically superior product won't always be the most popular. Without this point there is no significance of the events, all the author does is restate what's been said a thousand times. This is a terrible article.

Re:The article misses the point entirely

[seanslater]

Agreed. I hope Sony learned something from this, although as someone else pointed out, maybe not - Memorystick could be Beta all over again. yeah, gw Sony. And to clarify someone else's post, Betamax did have tapes longer than 60mins. They were just labelled so badly that nobody knew how long they were. The L-125 lasts 30 mins, the L-250 etc. VHS had a much better idea using the minue duration as the model, or type label. One thing VHS never got into was the broadcast video market - sure it's a long way from Betamax but Digital Betacam & Betacam SX is still being used today with new products based on the old design being created on a daily basis - they all use the same shell and structure as the original betamax tape. Sony invented VHS then junked the idea and sold the plans off to JVC while they created their new desing. JVC flogged off the plans like a $2 whore and dominated the market with saturation. SOny on the other hand have a technically superior product but they can't match the VHS now because the prices are down, people are buying what their friends have - it was a downward spiral. Lastly, even after all these years JVC still gets royalties for every single VHS cassette produced. I have no idea what the individual figure is but I'm sure it's quite a nice yearly income for them.

Re:The article misses the point entirely

[Tim Browse]

I hope Sony learned something from this, although as someone else pointed out, maybe not

I think they learned something. They learned that if you don't have software/content available on your format, people won't buy the machines.

This is (apparently) why Sony started buying content production companies (Columbia, Tri-Star, various expansion of their music publishing empire). Much of this was driven by the desire to be able to make a new format succeed by having the clout to publish lots of material on the new format. In other words, they didn't want a Betamax fiasco all over again.

Of course, they got it to a certain extent with Minidisc, but there you go. I've never quite worked out why MD isn't popular in the US. I can see the advantages of mp3 players over MD now, but back then they didn't exist. At least, not when I bought my MD walkman, and I wasn't much of an early adopter when it came to MD.

Probably price. The hardware was fairly expensive, but the blank discs were cripplingly so - about £5 each at the time, IIRC (they're sub-£1 level now, I believe).

Tim

Re:The article misses the point entirely

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. By the authors definition the better product always wins, regardless. There are so many things that can tip scale in favor of one product over the other in any market. Price/cost is a big one and some peoples choices are determined by what the guy next door/friends buys. I purchase a VHS deck because it was what the videos stores where renting not because it was superior. It was a choice the market made for me not one that I choose myself. The market is ruled as if it was mob and history tells us that mobs don't necessary make the right choices.

Random VHS fact!

[iamdrscience]

Ever wonder what VHS stands for?
It stands for Vertical Helix Scan

now you know and knowing is half the battle...

Re:Random VHS fact!

[Anonymous Coward]

T always thought it stood for Video Home System

Re:Random VHS fact!

[Tim Browse]

I think you spelled 'helical' incorrectly :-)

But yes, try convincing the average person that it doesn't mean 'Video Home System', and you're onto a loser.

Tim

Re:Random VHS fact!

[iamdrscience]

you're right, it is helical, my mistake. Try to convince the average person that DVD stands for "Digital Versatile Disc" and not "Digital Video Disc"

Re:Random VHS fact!

[hobo2k]

Well, when the DVD was created it did stand for 'Video', right? The 'Versatile' was a latter name change once support for it was added to computers.

Re:Random VHS fact!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tim --

JVC has several products that were some form of "home system" at the time.

Video Home System was video tape. VHD was a video disc system.

Re:Random VHS fact!

[suss]

Ever wonder what VHS stands for?

Video Home System...

Re:Random VHS fact!

[scottgfx]

Hmmm, If it's "Vertical" why are the tracks on the tape at a diagonal and nearly horizontal??? VHS does use a "Helicial" scanning system, very much like Betamax. The closest thing to a "Vertical" scanner is they nearly 50 year old 2" Quadruplex format invented by Ampex. It had a scanning "disk" that scanned transverse to the tape.

Perhaps you ment "Video Home System"???

No! You're Kidding, Right?

[kmellis]

"...the author then makes a pretty convincing case that viewing something's success or failure purely on technical merit is not an entirely accurate way of looking at things."

This just makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. I mean, to the larger portion of the educated population, this is so obvious as to be not even worth mentioning.

To a portion of the population--strongly represented here in Slashdot and probably among whom there's an elevated rate of Asperger's Syndrome--this must surely seem heretical.

I recall a time a few years ago when a fellow software "engineer" tried to express to me his irritation that multinational executives still flew around all over the world to have face-to-face meetings when teleconferencing VR rigs would be cheaper. I said, well, maybe it's the big, ugly, uncomfortable headgear that puts those executives off of such a cool technology. Among other things. "It just doesn't make sense", he replied.

No, I guess it doesn't make sense to people like that. Every time a clearly superior technology doesn't succeed in the market place, it must be the result of insidious forces acting in conspiracy to thwart the will of the smart and rational people. They say. "Linux is clearly the superior operating system. When will people wake up and realize that?" When, indeed? Maybe when it is?

The "Single Flaw" Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

A "Single Flaw", like having tapes that only last one hour, can doom an entire product.

No matter how well thought-out/designed/engineered everything else about the product may be.

It was the pr0n that killed the V2000

[Anonymous Coward]

or better yet: the absence of pr0n.

Popular mythology describes the failure of V2000 as a result of Philips prohibiting the release of porn tapes. In the eaarly days.

The failure of V2000 was a humbling experience for Philips. After that they never tried to impose their own standard on the mass consumer market.

Still, V2000 was (and is) vastly superiour to all the other systems. Double sided tapes (2x4 hrs), better picture quality, etcetera. Therefore more expensive. Which not a plus when you want to gain a foothold in a new mass market.

All in the past

[LinuxPunk]

Seriously though, who really cares which technology *was* better? that is all in the past... We should be concentrating on the present and future technologies, such as DVD and possible other digital record/playback media.

BTW, Beta *was* better tho...

Consumers define Quality.

[AftanGustur]

For better or for worse, success of new products and technologies is determined by a broad range of factors that make up "the whole product", quality being only one, and possibly a minor one at that.

A very important point is that "quality" of a product is not defined by the producer but by the consommator.

This also means that what one consumer is ready to pay 100 euros for, another won't buy it for more than 80, and others not at all (latest edition of Italian-Spanish dictionary f.ex.)

What happened with Beta/VHS was that the VHS specs were made available to various constructors who competed between themselves to produce cheaper units.

Cheaper price was simply "higher quality" factor to consumers that beeing able to record on both sides of the casette. (and other features).

It is therefore just silly to say that "Quality" is a minor factor in a product's success. (Unless some monopoly company had f.ex. made deals to pre-install a VHS unit in all televisions manufactured)

You sure about that?

[forty_two]

Let's take a simple example: digital audio tape (Dat). Get someone to compare Dat with a humble C90 compact cassette and they will find Dat to be technologically superior, especially for recording music. However, if you consider "the whole product", Dat is vastly inferior for most people most of the time. This is why people still buy millions of cassettes, while Dat has virtually disappeared from consumer use.

Er...I thought the RIAA effectively taxed DAT out of the reach of consumers? Dat is only inferior because it's so damn expensive.

Re:You sure about that?

[Meowing]

DAT wasn't all that expensive. Consumer versions of it (and other digital tape and disc formats of the time) were all hobbled by SCMS. This is a lot of what prompted the *AA to lobby for mandatory copy protection; given a choice, the marketplace shunned it.

V2000

[adelayde]

Ahem, V2000 was better than both of them :)

Re:V2000

[eddie can read]

"Sony [...] wanted twice as much for the Betamax system. Although market forces may have had an effect, surely VHS's success was more to do with the bigger profit margins it made for the manufacturers?"

You just described market forces, namely: lower cost of production (specifically, cheaper license). That usually translates to: lower cost for the consumer. That tends to translate to: greater popularity among consumers. That is a straightforward example of market forces at work.

"Bigger profit margins" is unlikely. In a competitive market, competition brings prices down forcing the makers to pass on the cost savings. High profits are associated with market dominance and monopoly, not with competitive markets with different manufacturers competing for the customer's dollar. So it is more likely to apply to the early, Betamax- and Sony-dominated period of the VCR market.

Re:V2000

[suss]

Philips V2000 format was better than the both of them. It had double sided tapes, supeior picture quality, embedded timecode and really long tapes.

Yeah, but appearently philips wouldn't allow pre-recorded pornographic material to be distributed in that format, so video rental shops weren't that interested in it...

Re:V2000

[NewtonsLaw]

The V2000 may have been theoretically better but Philips' own player was fraught with problems.

It used a piezo-electric system to adjust the tracking/azimuth of the head assembly and this was one of the main weaknesses -- it just never worked very well.

There were a number of other problems too. I think it was just too far ahead of its time to become a commercial success, since the price was incredibly high at a time when few people could justify such a novel device in their homes.

One important thing...

[inode_buddha]

about VHS and BetaMax in this day and age which I think the author missed, is that there doesn't seem to be any discussion of DRM surrounding these technologies, being essentially analog formats. For myself, VHS is the way to go, simply because it's cheap and available everywhere, with few or no restrictions for personal use. And yes, I remember when *both* of them were invented; this was at about the same time that Xerox copiers began to show up in public. You should have heard the content creators screaming about piracy.

Re:One important thing...

[Meowing]

The DMCA does require new VCRs to use Macrovision. This isn't digital rights manglement, but it's still a pain in the ass.

VHS better than DVD

[primus_sucks]

VHS tapes don't get scratched and skip like DVD's. You can fast forward through copyright notices at will.

Re:VHS better than DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

In the year I had a DVD player, renting no more DVDs than videotapes in the same period of time, I had more bad DVDs than videotapes. I still rent DVDs because I'd rather see better quality and risk a DVD that doesn't work half way through the movie.

An interesting thing to note, however, is that if the rate gets much worse, I will only buy the occasional movie (and reduce movie watching), since I cannot go back to VHS and renting a DVD won't be worth it. I never liked VHS even when it was the only thing to rent and I just can't bring myself to go back now that I had a taste of something better.

Re:VHS better than DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting thing to note, however, is that if the rate gets much worse, I will only buy the occasional movie...

Not that anybody would note what I, personally, will do :), but I wonder how many people feel the same way.

Re:VHS better than DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, VHS tapes do wear and can "skip" when the tape gets damaged. Also play quality and wear is highly dependent on the tape player you use with the tape. DVD players are much more consistent.

Re:Not this crap again.... Macintosh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Those sound like three quite important arguments to me, unless money is no object, you like buying hardware from a de facto monopoly, hunting for media is your idea of fun and you don't actually want to watch movies, just admire the spec."

Let's subsititute the above statment's "watch movies" with "run programs"... and let's see what we get .....

"Those sound like three quite important arguments to me, unless money is no object, you like buying hardware from a de facto monopoly, hunting for software is your idea of fun and you don't actually want to run programs, just admire the spec."

Macintosh!!!!!

V2000

[grundie]

To hell with Betamax and VHS. Philips V2000 format was better than the both of them. It had double sided tapes, supeior picture quality, embedded timecode and really long tapes. It was years ahead of both Betamax and VHS. I'm surprised the author of the article didn't llok in to V2000 as it was quite popular in Britain for a while, before losing the marketing battle.

As to the comparisons between VHS and Beta, I think the author makes a big blunder about VHS's success. I recall a TV interview with Alan Sugar, the founder of Amstrad which is a UK stack em high, sell em cheap electronics manufacturer. In the interview he said that his decision to make VHS machines in the early 80's was down to the fact that JVC offered him much more attractive licensing terms to use VHS as opposed to Sony who wanted twice as much for the Betamax system. Although market forces may have had an effect, surely VHS's success was more to do with the bigger profit margins it made for the manufacturers? Thus causing VHS to be promoted more at the expense of Betamax.

The NFL and Betacam SX

[Anonymous Coward]

If Betamax was supposedly so bad, then why is the NFL currently standardizing on a derivative of the format? Betamax is alive and kicking and making a ton of money. It'd sure be nice if folks who write garbage like the article in The Guardian would at least try to research the info first.

Re:The NFL and Betacam SX

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article. The author doesn't say Betamax was technically worse... only that it was a worse choice for most consumers.

His point is that the market made the wrong choice. What consumers needed was a 2 hour videotaping system.

Betamax (by design) had more lines of resolution and a physically smaller cassette. These things are advantageous in their own way. But the tradeoff is decreased recording length.

Having a long enough recording length was the killer feature for VHS.

Re:The NFL and Betacam SX

[trash eighty]

i get the feeling you totally missed the entire point of the article

Re:The NFL and Betacam SX

[HereAllNight]

It'd sure be nice if folks who write garbage like the article in The Guardian would at least try to research the info first.

How ironic. If you had bothered to do a little research, you would have noticed that Betacam is a different word than Betamax. Betacam SX is 4:2:2 digital, while Betamax is color-under analog. As different as night and day.

OTOH, all I have to do to beat you at your own game is mention that JVC makes a HDTV deck, so therefore all VHS is superior. Take your pick.

Re:The NFL and Betacam SX

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not quite the whole story of Betacam.
Although Betacam SX is indeed a digital format, the original Betacam, and Betcam SP, were
analogue formats, using separated luma (brightness) and chroma (colour) tracks, as well as enhanced audio. It also used
something like 6x the normal speed of Betamax tapes. As others have said the tapes were physically similar to Betamax tapes.

Analogue Betacam is clearly related Betamax.

Re:The NFL and Betacam SX

[Ambient Sheep]

Analogue Betacam is clearly related Betamax.

Not very much though - really only as far as the name of the manufacturer and the cassette shell (which you did say).

The composite colour-under system with (sort of) separated luma and chroma, which you claim for Betacam, is not used on it. It's only used on Betamax, VHS and U-Matic (and probably other more obscure formats).

Betacam & Betacam SP are component (YPbPr) machines that record Luma, Blue Colour Difference and Red Colour Difference separately (like RGB but with the benefit of single-channel monochrome compatibility). Very very different and MUCH better quality.

Argh

[5lash]

Too many technically superior standards aren't popular. Ogg Vs Mp3, Jabber Vs MSN/AIM. Not nearly enough people use IRC. Anyone care to list more?...

Re:Argh

[Anonymous Coward]

Not nearly enough people use IRC.

In my experience, the quality of the conversations on IRC has steadily gone downhill since 1993.

Re:Argh

[5lash]

Yeah, I agree. the only people that seem to use it now are geeks (not that I have anything wrong with that...). Most "normal" computer users tend to use MSN Chat or something. My point is IRC is technically *far* superior to MSN Chat or any other web-based chat system. And its not that hard to use at all with mIRC.

Me TOO!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I find myself in the same situation. I've wanted to switch to linux for a long time, but I don't see it happening until it reaches the interface smoothness of windows. I don't ever want to compile the kernel or do anything technical besides boot it up and start using it.

Not correct

[nordicfrost]

Indeed, the main thing that didn't fit was the idea was that Betamax was "technically superior". Standing in a shop at the time, there was absolutely no visible difference in picture quality, and some reviews had found that VHS's quality was superior.

This is simply not correct. At work, we have several VCRs for professional use, and the Betacam SP rox in picture quality, sound quality and durability in comparison with SVHS. There is a VERY good reason for the Betas use in professional enviroments since long ago, and the superiority in all-over quality is one of them. If you can't see any difference in picture, you're either colour blind for severely seeing impaired. Or maybe two and a half glances at the screen in a videostore 15 years ago isn't enough.

As for the one hour tapes, this is flat out wrong. Sony did introduce longer running tapes, when the tape technology got better. But in contrary to its competitor, the tapes maintained the Beta quality and seldom broke down as the VHS E120+ tapes have a tendency to do. Especially the E240, don't store any valuable memories on them!

Re:Not correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Betacam is overwhelmingly used in studios that haven't made the switch to digital, but you're missing one factor. Betacam IS NOT Betamax! The only real common factor is the physical tape format. There's a good reason why Betacam systems are sodding expensive, even now, and it isn't simply down to much smaller production quantities.

Re:Not correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this idiot down. Betacam != betamax.

Re:Not correct

[Anonymous Coward]

You think so? Then why was our old betamax vcr able to play studio tapes of the late 1980s?

Re:Not correct

[nordicfrost]

Yeah, I realize that my thoughts did not quite make it to the screen. What I tried to illustrate was that The development of Beta (U-matic -> Betamax -> Betacam -> Betacam SP -> Betacam Digital) has always been on a higher level than VHS. Betamax had stereo in the very, very early 80ies (For consumer products in 1982) while VHS couldn't get their shit together to make a stereo player until the late 80ies. I'm also surprised to see that Betacam SP kicks SVHS' ass big time in colour, sound and durability. SVHS, after all, was supposed to be vastly superior to Betacam...

Re:Not correct

[HereAllNight]

Gawd are you dense!

Repeat after me: MAX != CAM, MAX != CAM, MAX != CAM...

Somebody mod this guy down to "Emily Litella". No, even lower; at least Emily said "never mind" after she was corrected!

Re:Not correct

[scottgfx]

You are comparing a consumer product (S-VHS) to a professional (Betacam-SP). I would assume from this that you are too young to have ever seen a BetaMAX machine. Note the MAX not CAM.

The proper type of machine to compare a S-VHS machine to is the SuperBetamax or the Betamax-ED formats.

Re:Not correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Ad hominim.

Re:Not correct

[Ambient Sheep]

You think so? Then why was our old betamax vcr able to play studio tapes of the late 1980s?

Assuming this isn't a troll, then either your "old betamax vcr" was an "old semi-professional betacam vcr", or your studio was a VERY small and VERY rural one that used Betamax. This I doubt, it's more likely the former - second-hand Betacam (not Betacam SP!) machines can be picked up for a few hundred pounds/dollars these days.

A Betamax machine couldn't possibly play a Betacam tape as although the tape shell may be the same, the way the picture information is laid down on it is entirely different (Max = composite colour-under, Cam = component YPbPr) not to mention at a different speed.

As someone else mentioned on this or another thread, you might get some linear audio six times too slow though.

Re:No! You're Kidding, Right?

[nathanh]

This just makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. I mean, to the larger portion of the educated population, this is so obvious as to be not even worth mentioning.

Of course, it's obvious. I don't see any posts on this channel to suggest otherwise. Pretty much all the posters are saying "well DUH, everybody knew this about 20 years ago". Certainly nobody has warranted your own sarcastic abuse of their practicality.

To a portion of the population-strongly represented here in Slashdot and probably among whom there's an elevated rate of Asperger's Syndrome-this must surely seem heretical.

I don't think the majority "portion" of the Slashdot population is anything like the strawman you have presented. I believe most people are more practical than that. I honestly believe the majority "portion" of the Slashdot population recognises there are Linux shortcomings and they are working to resolve them.

No, I guess it doesn't make sense to people like that. Every time a clearly superior technology doesn't succeed in the market place, it must be the result of insidious forces acting in conspiracy to thwart the will of the smart and rational people.

The best engineers are always the most practical people. Engineers don't ever design things based purely on technical merit. They are holistic designers who consider appearance, maintenance, decommissioning, and all associated costs. That's what distinguishes an engineer from a prima donna coding monkey or a glorified fitter and turner.

Of course, it could be the case that you're just trolling. Otherwise why would you throw in words like "conspiracy" and "insidious forces". If that's the case, why can't you get a life?

another cool use...

[inode_buddha]

for VHS and BetaMax technologies: data backups. I don't have links at hand, but is's similar to using a modem to pipe your backup onto tape. It's fairly easy for the electronically clueful to figure out; the main question is to get your analog output (from the modem) "into band" for the video inputs of the VCR (so you can use *all* of the helical-scanned tracks...) or else you lose a bunch of the formats' native capacity. On the basis of price alone, I imagine it's fairly competitive with CD-R and DVD.

Re:another cool use...

[TeknoHog]

Similarly, VCRs have been used for digital audio recording before the emergence of DAT. You couldn't use audio cassettes for that because of their limited bandwidth.

Re:another cool use...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you could do that with 8mm video tape.

Like I do when I use my Exabyte 8200 tape drive to write 2.3GB to a 8mm video tape that cost me maybe $3 at Wal-Mart. If I had an Exabyte 8500, I could write 4.6 GB to the same tapes.

CDRs and CDRWs are now cheaper per byte (although 650MB is TINY!), but I used to love to laugh at people who bought these Travan tape drives and then had to spend something like $100 for a tape that would hold 3 or 4 GB. Yeah, they saved a few bucks on the cost of the drive, but once they've bought 5 tapes...

Anyway, the point is that Exabyte did exactly what you're talking about -- they converted a video format tape into a data format, and it works just great.

Newspaper rehash of well-known "Worse is Better"

[michaelmalak]

The article is just a newspaper rehash of what should be well-known to Slashdot readers, but perhaps isn't since I didn't see mention of it before I hit "Reply."

Section 2.1 of Richard Gabriel's Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big is called "Worse is Better." Those with shorter attention spans may enjoy his later presentation Models of Software Acceptance: How Winners Win, which explicitly mentions VHS vs. Beta.

P.S. Beta was much better than VHS at keeping vertical lines straight, especially over multiple generations.

Atari Lynx

[smittyoneeach]

Right. I was envisioning a primitive WebTV with an Atari 2600 and a cartridge with an phone jack, Linux, and a Lynx browser, and someone writing email with an old joystick.

Are you kidding?

[phr2]

DAT wasn't all that expensive?! Look at where most of the analog cassette players are... walkmans, car radios, portable players, answering machines, etc. Those machines are generally about 200 bucks tops, and most of them are under $100 or even under $50. I've never seen a DAT deck that was under $500 list. Yeah, DAT has better audiophile sound, but most people don't care. Analog cassettes are perfectly listenable and most stereo systems won't get anything extra out of DAT. So hardly anyone was willing to pay for DAT.

Re:Are you kidding?

[Meowing]

I didn't really have in mind something you'd throw into your dashboard. The DAT Walkman models are really nice for taking out and recording new material, as opposed to copying or playing back prerecorded stuff. Really nice stuff for indy musicians who can't exactly afford the heavy duty toys. (Bootleggers love 'em too, more power to them.) PC-based recording is almost catching up, but the machines are still way too bulky and fragile for taking out to shows. Fair enough, they're sold as computers, not recorders!

Traditional compact cassettes lose big time once you start worrying about mixing and dubbing later, unless you want to buy something a lot more expensive, bigger and with less recording time than that little DAT thingy.

The big drawback as mentioned earlier is that you tend to be stuck with analog output if you want flexibility, but it's a lot less hassle than trying to compensate on the fly.

Re:Are you kidding?

[dachshund]

I've never seen a DAT deck that was under $500 list

DAT decks never really got produced in large enough numbers to compete with CD players or other consumer goods. That certainly isn't the only reason they were more expensive, but it's a big one. Same thing for the Minidisc and other technologies.

Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

To sum up - the original article's entire argument is based upon a logical fallacy. (Actually, his argument is THE logical fallacy.)

Yes, folks, I'm talking about "appealing to authority". i.e. Just because X many people say so, must mean it is.

So using this theory...

[Delusion-]

...the marketplace should never be open to formats which are almost direct replacements for previous formats.

In 1973, when the Compact Disc was introduced, the "infrastructure of capabilities, services, and support" for analog audio cassettes - prerecorded and otherwise - was vastly superior to that of the audio cassette. The CD prevailed despite the fact that there was no ability to record - analog cassette recorders are now most often encountered as unused legacy devices on multi-function audio hardware.

This "whole product" theory is an unenlightening justification for the emerging popularity of specific standards - it's the best product because it's the one most people buy? While there's truth to this, this fact is often less interesting than examining WHY this is the case.

If the technical standards of Betamax were superior to VHS - and they were - it's more useful to examine why these did not produce the dominant product than it is just to hand-wave the issue by saying that the best product is that which everyone else ended up buying. Any discussion of VHS versus BetaMax that doesn't discuss the fact that Sony wouldn't license its format to adult video studios misses another important aspect of why formats emerge and gain dominance over existing formats - the 'killer ap'.

The fact that he dismisses DAT audio with his "whole product" argument does not strengthen it in the least. The DAT cassette was a product the market was eager and ready for, and the more passive segment of the consumer base would have eventually caught up with the geeks, audiophiles, and techs. The RIAA crippled the format before it reached the consumer by disabling digital-to-digital copying, which given the dominance of the audio cassette DESPITE noted technical deficiencies (fragility, sound quality on normal-bias cassettes, less convenience for liner notes than vinyl), would have been an easy sell to a consumer base used to direct copying. Score one for the RIAA.

Enter MP3s. I've argued that the MP3 format is the just revenge of the marketplace against the deliberate crippling of DAT audio by the RIAA. The MP3 format became popular for technical reasons and became ubiquitous because the "whole product" was exactly what the marketplace had wanted and needed ever since the pre-recorded music industry moved to a read-only CD format - a high fidelity means of audio dubbing free from the limitations and physical fragility of analog cassettes. Had the RIAA had computer audio formats on its radar before it became a consumer reality, have no doubt that it, too, would have been a great idea that never made it to the broader marketplace.

The argument isn't, and never has been that BetaMax was the "better" format or that it was more suitable for the marketplace - the argument is that, based on wholly technical anaysis, it delivered a better performance than VHS. The VHS standard won out because RCA didn't keep their product a proprietary standard subject to its licensing regieme, because of porn as the 'killer ap' among early VHS adopters, because it was a cheaper product to adopt for end-users as well as studios (related to the license issue), and because as more manufacturers developed for what was effectively an open standard, they developed features to get their products noticed which in many cases became standards - multiple recording speeds, for instance. There's no reason why, if the BetaMax standard were open, a savvy competetor in the market could have developed multiple recording speeds. Sony felt it had a say in this matter, RCA didn't.

While the "whole product" isn't a completely invalid method of analyzing competing formats, it is as narrow a look at a larger issue as solely focusing on the technical specs, and is particularly poorly-suited toward determining why a particular format bucks the trend of the status quo and gains market dominance.

If "whole product" were the whole story, we'd probably have never gotten to VHS or BetaMax, and Laser Disc and DVD would have been relegated to a curious historical diversion like the Ford Edsel, 3D cinema, or - more to the point - the DIVX DVD format... ...and the BBS versus MiniTEL.

Re:So using this theory...

[Anonymous Coward]

"In 1973, when the Compact Disc was introduced, the "infrastructure of capabilities, services, and support" for analog audio cassettes - prerecorded and otherwise - was vastly superior to that of the audio cassette. The CD prevailed despite the fact that there was no ability to record - analog cassette recorders are now most often encountered as unused legacy devices on multi-function audio hardware"

Yes, but CDs were a replacement for vinyl, not cassettes, and you can't record to that either. (without the right equipment, just like CDs)

Re:So using this theory...

[alangmead]

1973? I think you are off by a decade. 1983 sounds about right.

Beyond that, the compact disc, when introduced, was promoted to be the successor to the LP, rather than the cassette. Battery powered handheld devices and devices to be installed in automobiles came a bit later.

Over the LP, the compact disc had a noticibly higher sound quality. It had better durability. It had a better ability to skip to the next track. It had the ability to fastforward within a track. Notice that the CD has replaced the LP, but has been less successful in replacing the audio cassette.

Compared to the audio cassette, the CD has little or no ability to record. The CD is more sensitive to motion during playback. And the CD is less durable. On the other hand, the CD is easier to move from track to track. The CD is easier to store. And the CD does not have to be rewound before reuse. Its a bit of a toss up.

Re:So using this theory...

[otis wildflower]

The argument isn't, and never has been that BetaMax was the "better" format or that it was more suitable for the marketplace - the argument is that, based on wholly technical anaysis, it delivered a better performance than VHS.

If you include 'the ability to play a 2 hour movie on a single tape', and make that a high priority since customers would demand it, that skews even the technical argument, since play length is an technical parameter.

The VHS standard won out because RCA didn't keep their product a proprietary standard subject to its licensing regieme, because of porn as the 'killer ap' among early VHS adopters, because it was a cheaper product to adopt for end-users as well as studios (related to the license issue), and because as more manufacturers developed for what was effectively an open standard, they developed features to get their products noticed which in many cases became standards - multiple recording speeds, for instance.

So it basically comes back to a definition of 'better', and in particular, whose definition it is. For the most part, in at least the consumer market, better is defined by success: most people use it, therefore it _must_ be better. It takes a lot to break through this, not the least of which being that your replacement had better not only be technically superior, it must be at least as easy to use, have the same features (or a radically different, and better, set). If it doesn't interoperate with stuff you (or your friends) already have, it had better be so much better that your friends all switch over to it as well, and incur the costs and hassle of repurchasing all the little bits that were compatible with the old thing.

Now, if your goal _isn't_ to be 'better' from a consumer standpoint, that's ok, but just don't expect "justice" on technical merit. If you build it, they won't necessarily come, unless they know you built it, and it is more suitable to their comfortable use than what they're already using.

There's no reason why, if the BetaMax standard were open, a savvy competetor in the market could have developed multiple recording speeds. Sony felt it had a say in this matter, RCA didn't.

That's a lesson, but a different one. Openness is a contributing factor to VHS' success. Keep in mind though that it was the effect of openness that consumers really cared about.

While the "whole product" isn't a completely invalid method of analyzing competing formats, it is as narrow a look at a larger issue as solely focusing on the technical specs, and is particularly poorly-suited toward determining why a particular format bucks the trend of the status quo and gains market dominance.

That depends on your definition of "whole product" as well, and whether lobbying, regulation, coercion, etc. are key parts of the "whole product".

If "whole product" were the whole story, we'd probably have never gotten to VHS or BetaMax, and Laser Disc and DVD would have been relegated to a curious historical diversion like the Ford Edsel, 3D cinema, or - more to the point - the DIVX DVD format... ...and the BBS versus MiniTEL.

I don't see what you mean. New things _can_ be better, and be "whole products" and win. DVD is exactly the case in point: it offers many more features than prerecorded VHS, is fairly easy to use, DVDs cost _LESS_ than first-run VHS movies, no rewinding (regardless of those smartasses at Blockbuster), random chapter access capability, multi-angle (for the pr0n industry ;) and superior video quality and audio quality. It was a better mousetrap that had support enough to get started, then as it developed into the "whole product", it became 'better'. Now, you could say it was better all along, but if a tree falls in the woods, and noone's there, does it make a sound?

There were a number of video-disc formats prior to DVD, but they didn't offer the value proposition that could drive them to a mass audience. We know this because of history: they didn't because they didn't.

The point is, it would be really useful for those who wish to bring Linux and OSS to a wider audience for them to study things like this. Why Betamax failed. Why DVD succeeded. Much of this is done in places like business school, while engineers tend towards technical analysis of technical failures.

Re:So using this theory...

[Anonymous Coward]

[So using this theory]...the marketplace should never be open to formats which are almost direct replacements for previous formats.

Right. It is best to think in absolutes. Everything is either black or white.

The longer recording time helped VHS

[MtViewGuy]

You are correct that the biggest factor helping VHS was the fact it could record longer than Beta.

Right from the start, VHS had a time recording advantage over Beta--the T-120 tape could record 120 minutes in SP mode, 240 minutes in LP mode, and 360 minutes in EP/SLP mode. At 360 minutes per tape you could easily record six 60-minute episodes of your favorite TV series or a full sporting event complete with overtime!

Beta's visual quality advantage also vanished when Super VHS arrived in the late 1980's--I've seen S-VHS recordings done at SP mode and the picture quality is outstanding; the only better widely-available home consumer videocasette formats today are the MiniDV/MicroDV digital camcorder formats that have a resolution of just over 500 lines, almost as good as a professional studio TV camera.

I believe that another huge factor was that because VHS was invented by JVC (a Matsushita Electric subsidiary by 1977), it had the backing of the gigantic Matsushita Electric corporation. That meant companies around knew the VHS format could survive using Matsushita's huge worldwide marketing muscle with the Panasonic brand name.

Re:The longer recording time helped VHS

[RadioTV]

The NTSC spec only allows for 480 lines of resolution to be displayed on the screen. The total lines are 525, but that includes 45 in the VBI (vertical blanking interval). That said, a good standard VHS deck (not S-VHS) uses ~180 lines.

The high end ($45,000 for the body, not including the pedestal and lens) Sony cameras we use at work only output ~350 lines.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Marketing success

[Veteran]

In a fight you pick strong and ugly over elegant and beautiful. If you put a super model in a boxing ring against Mike Tyson she is not going to do very well.

Another example of strong and ugly vs elegant and beautiful in a marketing fight: Windows 95 vs OS/2 Warp. OS/2 was a far superior operating system to Windows 95 but it lost the marketing fight.

The proof of Beta's technical superiority is that most of the professional broadcast which is done with 1/2 inch tape is done with Beta format cartridges. There was a real attempt to use VHS in professional equipment but it was just too crappy a basic design to be successful.

Amateur video doesn't generally require the quality which is possible with the basic Beta design. In the amateur world the length of recording is more important than the quality.

Because of the Yin and Yang nature of reality the one place that the above is not true is the one place that you would least expect: elegant and beautiful fighting systems win over strong and ugly systems. High tech fighting equipment wins out over larger quantities of low tech. The elegance of a gps guided bomb makes it more effective against a given target than the ugly technique of throwing a bunch of unguided gravity bombs toward that same target.

Engineers pick the elegant and beautiful ways of doing things because we want things to work better; managers pick the strong and ugly ways of doing things because they are clueless twits who only understand strong and ugly.

Management understands that the general buying public are also mostly clueless twits who see the world like they do. Once things turn from the beauty contest of spec sheets into the ugly world of a marketing fight the management view is the marketable view; most people have no clue what it takes to make something work properly and pick the ugly tech as the way they would do things.

Microsoft is the master of the strong and ugly product. Access is a prime example of that. Access is the shotgun of the database world. Access gives you enough general purpose features that often one of them will hit the target you are aiming at. The 'sniper rifle' approach would be to aim a custom program directly at your application target; that requires more time and expense and skill than blasting away in the general direction with Access.

By the way, coming up with reasons why you did something - after the fact - is rationalizing. That is what this article is: a rationalization.

Re:Marketing success

[HereAllNight]

By the way, coming up with reasons why you did something - after the fact - is rationalizing. That is what this article is: a rationalization.

Yeah...speak for yourself, foo'. Your "proof" of Betamax's alleged superiority is based on you confusing two similarly-named, but radically different product lines. All you're proving is that you'll accept anything that you think supports your prejudice. That is precisely why the "Betamax is better" myth has persisted.

Another example of strong and ugly vs elegant and beautiful in a marketing fight: Windows 95 vs OS/2 Warp. OS/2 was a far superior operating system to Windows 95 but it lost the marketing fight.

First of all, what you call "elegant and beautiful" is purely subjective, and only your opinion. OS/2 had already failed in the marketplace before Windows 95 ever came out. The fact that Warp 3 didn't even come with a networking stack at a time when the Internet was exploding, and the fact that it couldn't run Win32 programs sealed OS/2's fate.

Re:Marketing success

[scottgfx]

For the last time... There is almost no relation between the consumer Betamax and professional Betacam formats. In 1982 the only relation between betacam and betamax was the size of the cassette shell and the tape formulation. Everything has changed since then. Please Everyone, stop comparing Betacam to the crappy JVC home video system. (VHS)

Unmentionable history

[neongenesis]

The basic premise of the article, that overall survival depends on more than technical merit is accurate. However, the author omits one important factor that is also seen in the internet of today.

P0rn!

Sony was hesitant to license, or make available, the format to major porn makers. VHS was chosen. The main initial market for those $1500 players and $100 tapes was that normal horney people could finally see adult content in the privacy of their own home. Go check out some of those 1979-1980 Penthouse magazines on eBay and look in the back at the first tape advertisements. All VHS!

Those recording the history of the internet are hesitant to document the importance of adult content e.g. to developing secure credit card mechanisms. This was critical to the rise of the internet we know today.

If one is to learn from history, the history must be available in a complete form.

Re:Unmentionable history

[Anonymous Coward]

^ The Porn Factor is more urban legend bullshit on this topic.

Hollywood was committed to not "picking a winner", and released all of their movies on VHS, Beta, and LD, even though it was completely clear that VHS was winning. But if you were a beta user, maybe everything looked hunky-dory.

Porno dudes didn't have the constraint of fairness and didn't want to bother supporing a loser format, and didn't have the capital either.

So they released VHS only. But only after VHS took the lead.

The main initial market for those $1500 players and $100 tapes was that normal horney people could finally see adult content in the privacy of their own home.

I'd bet that sales figures for Hollywood movies vs porn tapes would easily disprove that.

Re:Unmentionable history

[ChaoticLimbs]

So sad. So true. I remember that it wasn't really Sony trying to limit p0rn per se, but that the license fees even applied to content producers, and since p0rn outfits are small-budget, they themselves decided on VHS, which didn't have a licensing fee for content providers. I could be way off base here, especially considering the urban-legend aspect of this story. Let me know where I can find the ACTUAL story with links if you got them.

n factors

[Hethcox]

The point of the article (and the referenced book) was that a variety of factors working interdependently affect the success of most products - especially consumer products. The interplay of these factors cannot be predicted and that's why capitalism is fun. Too much of this thread has centered around one single factor or another and, by my lights, misses the point.

I'm re-evaluating my media choices, now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Following this writer's logic, my former employer's archival choice of Magneto-Optical Low Expansion glass media is inferior to ordinary tape, because it's not "popular." It's not really technically superior, either. It may be 5-10x more reliable for long term storage (and not subject to stray magnetic fields or EMP pulses ---primary consideration for the company), but it just doesn't store nearly as much data as an SDLT, and you can't find the media at Staples.

Re:No! You're Kidding, Right?

[kmellis]

No, I wasn't trolling. I was being excessively acerbic, but what the hell.

I agree that engineers are practical. But they also tend to have relatively narrow fields-of-view. That's a good thing, it's an asset in their occupation.

A difficulty, though, I think, is that in their drive to whittle down a problem set to something well-defined (and solvable) they can easily (and often) abstract themselves far away from the real-world problem(s) their product will eventually be expected to solve. Also, in the context of advocating and criticizing, they also evaluate technology from the same narrow perspective. Why? Because that perspective is both where they are most comfortable and where they have the most expertise.

Now, I think that this sort of tunnel-vision is highly variable, both across the population of technical types and within individuals. There are outliers that either rarely display this attribute or rarely fail to display it. Most of us are in the middle. But there is a correlation, I think, between the most narrowly focused and the most vocal advocates or critics; and it was at they I was most aiming my ire.

in the immortal words of Snake...

[RocketRay]

"Oh NOOOO! Beta!"

In other Slashdot news...

[Steve G Swine]

For better or for worse, success of new products and technologies is determined by a broad range of factors that make up "the whole product", quality being only one, and possibly a minor one at that.

Also, actual girls have been discovered to be more complicated than jpeg files...

Posts Reflect "Better 'Cause I Use Linux" Syndrome

[reallocate]

The JWZ piece was on target, and the reaction here predictable.

A pair of insupportable assertions runs through many posts attacking anyone who suggests that the reason for Linux's limited popular success rests with Linux, not with people who don't use it.

The first assertion: I figured out how to use this thing the hard way, so everyone else should as well.

The second assertion: People don't use Linux because they're either too lazy to figure it out or too stupid. Either way, I'm better than they are because I use Linux.

In truth, there's much about Linux that's a waste of time: multiple installation routines; conflicting packaging "standards"; hazardous library seas; etc. Even for professionals, learning about these things is just annoying. Someone with a commitment to the open source philosophy behind Linux may be accept these annoyances. The rest of the world will just avoid Linux.

Re:No! You're Kidding, Right?

[nathanh]

Your clarification is far more reasonable. However I would like to comment on this:

There are outliers that either rarely display this attribute or rarely fail to display it. Most of us are in the middle. But there is a correlation, I think, between the most narrowly focused and the most vocal advocates or critics

Those people who shout the loudest often have the least to say. Ignore them.

confused timeline

[tgibbs]

He has a lot of the timeline confused. He makes a big issue out of the difference in tape length, but by the time VHS started to pull ahead, the difference in length was small. He insists that "Sony cut prices" and that there was no difference in cost, but in fact that was fairly late, when Sony was already in trouble--through most of the competition, the cheapest VCRs available were VHS. As far as the quality is concerned, Sony pretty much had a lead throughout in some aspect of quality--tape transport speed and reliability, picture quality, sound quality--but VHS always caught up, usually within 6 months (although they didn't catch up on tape transport until fairly recently). Super VHS was never really competition for beta's higher picture quality, because until recently Super VHS tapes and players were extremely expensive.

A little test

[dachshund]

In other words, they expect the customer to change rather than the product.

Try the following. Grab a computer and install a version of RedHat linux from 1999. Now install the latest version. You'll notice a phenomenal difference between the two products.

The more recent version will have a simple, pretty graphical installer that recognizes just about any hardware and self-configures. It'll have a nice desktop interface that's clearly modeled after Windows/Macintosh. It'll have an office suite designed to be comfortable for someone who's used to MS Office. Almost all of the day-to-day configuration issues (think editing text files) from the 1999 version will have been moved into simple-to-use control panels accessable from the desktop.

Sure, the current version isn't perfect, and it may not be enough to convince most users to switch. But to claim that Linux "expects the customer to change rather than the product" is to set up a strawman that has little to do with reality.

Re:A little test

[reallocate]

>> ...Grab a computer and install a version of RedHat linux from 1999. Now install the latest version. You'll notice a phenomenal difference between the two products.

I haven't installed the current version, but I installed and used several Red Hat releases through 7.3. Yes, the later releases have better installation routines. No, like all installation routines, they can throw a hissy fit when something unexpected happens.

>>... It'll have a nice desktop interface that's clearly modeled after Windows/Macintosh. It'll have an office suite designed to be comfortable for someone who's used to MS Office

True, but if you already have Windows or a Mac, and nothing compels you to abandon it, why would you spend money and time converting to an OS that merely tries to mimic what you already have?

Anyone who wants to see Linux become a mainstream consumer product should try to answer these questions: If Windows/Mac reliably meets your needs, and you aren't interested in open versus proprietary software issues, and you buy shrinkwrapped software rather than do installs off the net, why would you want Linux?

>>....>But to claim that Linux "expects the customer to change rather than the product" is to set up a strawman...

I didn't assert that "Linux" expects anything. It can't; it's just an inanimate bunch of code.

Re:A little test

[dachshund]

I'm no Linux zealot, I'm just trying to explain why the "Linux expects the consumer to come to the product" argument is crap. However:

if you already have Windows or a Mac, and nothing compels you to abandon it, why would you spend money and time converting to an OS that merely tries to mimic what you already have?

You pose your argument as though Linux is asking users to throw out their perfectly good machine and set up a brand new one. That's not it at all. Computers and OSes are an inherently short-lived product. All the Open Source movement needs to do is convince you to make your next one Linux, rather than paying a bunch of money for something with essentially the same features.

I just helped a friend of mine buy a laptop for grad school. With XP and the latest version of Office, she wound up paying several hundred dollars-- more than 25% of the price of the machine itself! Linux and OpenOffice aren't good enough yet that I would really recommend them to my friend, but in five years they probably will be. Why in god's name should she pay that much money for something that she could get for $50 on a CD with a support contract?

I'd say this argument is particularly compelling if you run a business. When Linux gets "good enough" to replace Windows on the desktop (and I don't think it's quite there yet), it'll be awfully hard to justify spending thousands to millions on commercial licensing fees when you could get the same thing for free (or cheap, with a support contract).

I'm thinking particulary of all of those industries where each of ten-thousand employees sits in front of Windows box doing basic word-processing, data-entry or web-browsing. If Linux becomes as easy-to-use as Windows, sending million dollar checks to Microsoft will be increasingly difficult to justify for this purpose (not to mention the hassle from MS licensing). And employees tend to get used to the OS they use at work, which often encourages them to use it at home.

Anyone who wants to see Linux become a mainstream consumer product should try to answer these questions: If Windows/Mac reliably meets your needs, and you aren't interested in open versus proprietary software issues, and you buy shrinkwrapped software rather than do installs off the net, why would you want Linux?

Again, you could flip this the other way. If Linux reliably meets your needs and is cheap or free, why would you spend a lot more money on a commercial OS?

I imagine the reasons are a) inertia, and b) compatibility with existing apps. Inertia's a really weak premise to base superiority on, and comptibility might well be fleeting. As the above article points out, Beta once had 100% of the market, but something cheaper and more convenient came out and knocked it down.

Re:A little test

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers and OSes are an inherently short-lived product.

The average age around here is about 22 and don't know anything past the latest video game, so I expect that most people believe this falsehood.

Look around at the applications that people run in corporations -- 30 year old COBOL apps, 10 year old UNIX apps, 15 year old XBASE apps that have been ported to the latest Visual FoxPro, 7 year old Visual BASIC apps that may or may not have been rebuilt with a recent version, DOS applications from the 80s, things that use BTrieve. All of this stuff is very real and in production.

The fact is that you just can't throw out 20 years of Microsoft-centric backwards compatibility.

I'm thinking particulary of all of those industries where each of ten-thousand employees sits in front of Windows box doing basic word-processing, data-entry or web-browsing

I can't even think of a 5 person business that doesn't rely on at least 1 vertical or custom applicaton. A 10K business will have THOUSANDS of such apps. The off-the-shelf browser/email/office suite solution only applies to college students.

Re:A little test

[Anonymous Coward]

"Other examples of Microsoft's deliberate breaking of past applications"

The use of the word 'deliberate' is FUD and untrue. Microsoft understands this point better than you.

I'm sorry that your app didn't work. The 16-bit apps I have run fine under W2000. I know of a company that ran their business using a DOS app (c)1989 on W2K until last year, and another that uses a VB3 16-bit app on W2K and NT4. I see numerous apps in the field that are FoxPro or Borland DE based, and you can bet that all of were migrated from earlier DOS apps.

Wine would be great if it worked. The sad fact is that most Wine engineering is going into games and not business applications. If Windows 2000 isn't good enough at backcompat for you, then Wine is a joke.

Re:A little test

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, RedHat 8 didn't autorecognise my HP Pavilion's Realtek 8139 (A common, albeit crappy, chipset on the OEM PCs) network card. That alone almost made me go back to Windows and ignore linux for another year or two.
I could go on about the various problems with every linux distro I've used, but I don't feel like wasting the time. Most of them are just little things (poorly labeled controls & control panels, lack of clear documention that doesn't require typing "man", most program's tendancy to simply quit when an error occurs, rather than popping up an error box telling me that there's something wrong and it's not just taking a few seconds to do something, fonts STILL look like crap 80% of the time [yeah, you can fix them, but you shouldn't have to. they should just work], etc). I don't really care too much about another web browser, or another half-done GUI frontend. Just get the little things right that Mac OS and even Windows have gotten right for years and I'll be happy.

Heck...

[Aknaton]

What's better does not always win, for example:

Betamax over VHS
Windows over Macintosh
Internet Explorer over Netscape
Linux over BSD

Re:Heck...

[Anonymous Coward]

"What's better does not always win, for example:
[...]
Linux over BSD"

Because no one ever made a distribution with GNU userland and the BSD kernel.

Re:Heck...

[Aknaton]

I normally don't respond to ACs but I have to admit to having a fondness for the GNU userland tools. Maybe its because I started out with Linux in the beginning?

Even on my NetBSD box, I still use the Bash shell. And I miss the GNU's date command, which has plenty of nice switches for things such as the Julian date.

An execelent book on this topic

[reg106]

is Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology by Robert Pool.

Pool started out to write a book on nuclear technology for the Sloan book series, but ended up with a very broad case study that includes betamax vs. VHS, internal combustion vs. steam cars, and AC vs. DC power (i.e. why DC power was in use as long as it was.). Nuclear technology is still a running theme in the book.

Completely Wrong

[jimlintott]

With Tivo like machines for time shifting and DVD for movie playback, the writing is on the wall for VHS. Sales of VHS machines are way down. Betamax is the choice of professionals for electronic news gathering and such. Betamax is hardly dead it just turned pro. In the end it may be Betamax that is the survivor here.

Re:Completely Wrong

[Delusion-]

For what it's worth, this is the state of DAT audio.

Consumer DAT was stillborn, and instead became the de facto standard in the recording industry.

Other markets too

[A nonymous Coward]

Boeing camne out with their model 247, I think it was, in the 1930s, the first "modern" airliner, but United had a lock on production for the first long batch, and all the other airlines could see they were in trouble any of their own, so they got Douglas to come out with the DC-2 and DC-3, which proved to be a better model, and Boeing ended up with a short production run. It's not quite like Beta and VHS, but still, sometimes being exclusive and greedy fails pretty spectacularly.

Re:Recording times

[tgibbs]

Both systems could record a movie at "less than perfect quality" The very earliest beta tapes were not long enough to record a movie at the highest quality speed, but movie-length beta tapes became available well before VHS captured a major lead.

The Truth: Wrong Patent Strategy

[seschmi]

While his considerations might be partially true, in fact Betamax is a good example for a wrong patent strategy. Sony tried to establish a monopoly by not licensing the patents to competitors.
As a result, the competitors successfully "invented around" and produced VHS. The VHS-patents were licensed at reasonable rates, and so a lot of companies entered the market with own VCRs, tapes and "infrastructure". Their competition made prices lower, and their combined salesforce did the rest to kick Sony out of the market.
Years later, when Sony's researchers invented the compact disks (for the younger readers: devices used to store music before MP3 was invented), Sony and Philips decided to license the technology to everyone at reasonable prices - and the few cents per disks later added up to billions of dollars.
In fact, "Apple and IBM" was the same story - Apple tried to dominate the world with a proprietary system and failed, while IBM "only" took a few dollars for every PC build...

Re:The Truth: Wrong Patent Strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

Also the manufacturers didn't have a problem making private label machines for everyone.

I don't think JCPenney ever had a factory for VTRs but they sold VHS systems, for example.

Re:No! You're Kidding, Right?

[dachshund]

This just makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. I mean, to the larger portion of the educated population, this is so obvious as to be not even worth mentioning.

Actually, most of the people here are making a valid point, which is that this columnist totally misses the point. He's trying to take geeks to task for focusing on technical superiority... and then he's going on to focus on what? Technical superiority, just in a different aspect (longer tapes, which IIRC, were also eventually available for Beta.)

Quite clearly the issue here was cost, which was largely driven by Sony's "no-license" business model. If you're going to write a snotty article deriding geeks for looking at too narrow of a picture, it really doesn't help to be guilty of the same.

Same tired arguments...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same tired old "because there's more of them out there" argument.

Re:Recording times

[melonman]

OK, thanks for the information. But while the movie-length tapes may have appeared before VHS had taken a lead, the fact that they weren't available from day one may well have encouraged manufacturers to opt for VHS: I would expect the time between the decision and the appearance of the machines in the shops to be at least 6 months, probably nearer 12.

First impressions are hard to shake. I still meet people who don't think that Linux works with a mouse... the only company I can think of that gets three bites at the cherry is Microsoft, eg with Windows, but then they already had a stranglehold on the PC OS market. Sony didn't have that advantage in the VCR market.

By comparison, Philips famously chose the storage capacity of their CD to fit the longest common piece of classical music around, and it wiped the competition out. It wasn't the best solution in many ways, but it would record any symphony out there, from day one.

Ask experts : Betamax audio head TOO FAR APART!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask experts : Betamax audio head was TOO FAR APART from video head for efficient tape path!

It was a mini form of UMAT 3/4 inch crap and unsuited for VIDEO CAMERAS and unsuited for user wanting to hit REWIND + STOP + PLAY + FAST FORWARD + STOP +PLAY.

Why? Because the excessive disatnce between the linear audio head (used in prerecorded movies and part of standard) and the distance from the helical scanning head was WAY too far apart comapared to logical and efficient and non-retarded VHS.

Nobody seems to remember this or know this.

I and maybe a handful of other engineers seem to remember how painful it was to fast forward and rewind on ANY betamax deck.

They all sucked.

Them VHS got an exotic M-Format ultra hirez by running tape at 4x speed for pro highend cameras and then the betamax tape had no advantage. VHS at quad speed was unbeatable even if it only held 30 minutes.

Eventually S-VHS came out, allowing 120 minutes at qualities exceeding betamax.

But nobody remembers that Betamax sucked for fast forward and rewind and was unsuited for good hand held cameras all because of its asinine huge distance between audio head and helical hed.

I bet, without even reading the article, that the author overlooked the truth and these facts.

read and learn.

Re:Ask experts : Betamax audio head TOO FAR APART!

[scottgfx]

I don't think you know what you are talking about.

Sony beat JVC and others to market with a consumer camcorder. (Betacord?)
As far as pain in shuttling tape, Sony would usually unwrap the tape from the helical drum before rewinding and fast-forwarding to reduce wear on the tape and the drum. VHS would un-tension the tape, but did not completely remove it from contacting the drum.

The "beta" tape wrap was noted as being less stressful to the tape. Panasonic used the "M" wrap in it's first attempt at a professional 1/2" cassette. (M-Format) They later went to something like the "beta" wrap for M-II (circa 1986).

M-Format only shared the cassette, tape formulation, and transport with VHS. It recorded a component signal where VHS and S-VHS are composite Color Under systems.

S-VHS had a luminance bandwidth of around 400 lines (Standard VHS is around 240)to would compare to Betamax but it's color bandwidth was not much better than standard VHS. S-VHS (Which was used by a local broadcaster for news) looked like shit on-air and according to the engineers that worked there, they were hard to maintain. JVC, which marketed S-VHS to broadcasters has a terrible reputation in this industry.

Re:good article - BAD ARTICLE (beta tape path)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask experts : Betamax audio head was TOO FAR APART from video head for efficient tape path!

It was a mini form of UMAT 3/4 inch crap and unsuited for VIDEO CAMERAS and unsuited for user wanting to hit REWIND + STOP + PLAY + FAST FORWARD + STOP +PLAY.

Why? Because the excessive disatnce between the linear audio head (used in prerecorded movies and part of standard) and the distance from the helical scanning head was WAY too far apart comapared to logical and efficient and non-retarded VHS. (Each ff or RW required tape path to be placed back into cassette for high speed motion, and threading took AGES in betamax crap).

Nobody seems to remember this or know this.

I and maybe a handful of other engineers seem to remember how painful it was to fast forward and rewind on ANY betamax deck.

They all sucked.

Them VHS got an exotic M-Format ultra hirez by running tape at 4x speed for pro highend cameras and then the betamax tape had no advantage. VHS at quad speed was unbeatable even if it only held 30 minutes.

Eventually S-VHS came out, allowing 120 minutes at qualities exceeding betamax.

But nobody remembers that Betamax sucked for fast forward and rewind and was unsuited for good hand held cameras all because of its asinine huge distance between audio head and helical hed.

I bet, without even reading the article, that the author overlooked the truth and these facts.

read and learn.

Re:The only convincing bit was... (WRONG!) FF prob

[Anonymous Coward]

REWIND and FAST FORWARD were practically impossibly lagging tasks and that is why betamax died.

Ask experts : Betamax audio head was TOO FAR APART from video head for efficient tape path!

It was a mini form of UMAT 3/4 inch crap and unsuited for VIDEO CAMERAS and unsuited for user wanting to hit REWIND + STOP + PLAY + FAST FORWARD + STOP +PLAY.

Why? Because the excessive disatnce between the linear audio head (used in prerecorded movies and part of standard) and the distance from the helical scanning head was WAY too far apart comapared to logical and efficient and non-retarded VHS. (Each ff or RW required tape path to be placed back into cassette for high speed motion, and threading took AGES in betamax crap).

Nobody seems to remember this or know this.

I and maybe a handful of other engineers seem to remember how painful it was to fast forward and rewind on ANY betamax deck.

They all sucked.

Them VHS got an exotic M-Format ultra hirez by running tape at 4x speed for pro highend cameras and then the betamax tape had no advantage. VHS at quad speed was unbeatable even if it only held 30 minutes.

Eventually S-VHS came out, allowing 120 minutes at qualities exceeding betamax.

But nobody remembers that Betamax sucked for fast forward and rewind and was unsuited for good hand held cameras all because of its asinine huge distance between audio head and helical hed.

I bet, without even reading the article, that the author overlooked the truth and these facts.

read and learn.

Re:Not this crap again. - FAST FORWARD better VHS

[Anonymous Coward]

REWIND and FAST FORWARD were practically impossibly lagging tasks and that is why betamax died.

Ask experts : Betamax audio head was TOO FAR APART from video head for efficient tape path!

It was a mini form of UMAT 3/4 inch crap and unsuited for VIDEO CAMERAS and unsuited for user wanting to hit REWIND + STOP + PLAY + FAST FORWARD + STOP +PLAY.

Why? Because the excessive disatnce between the linear audio head (used in prerecorded movies and part of standard) and the distance from the helical scanning head was WAY too far apart comapared to logical and efficient and non-retarded VHS. (Each ff or RW required tape path to be placed back into cassette for high speed motion, and threading took AGES in betamax crap).

Nobody seems to remember this or know this.

I and maybe a handful of other engineers seem to remember how painful it was to fast forward and rewind on ANY betamax deck.

They all sucked.

Them VHS got an exotic M-Format ultra hirez by running tape at 4x speed for pro highend cameras and then the betamax tape had no advantage. VHS at quad speed was unbeatable even if it only held 30 minutes.

Eventually S-VHS came out, allowing 120 minutes at qualities exceeding betamax.

But nobody remembers that Betamax sucked for fast forward and rewind and was unsuited for good hand held cameras all because of its asinine huge distance between audio head and helical head.

I bet, without even reading the article, that the author overlooked the truth and these facts.

read and learn.

I always use EP mode anyhow!

[Theovon]

A great point is made by the author of the article. I NEVER use SP mode on my VCR. The loss of quality in EP mode has never been a problem, although I do have a newer Sony with the 19 micron head which does EP vastly superior to my older VCR.

And the loss of quality isn't a problem because I'm a junky for too many shows and don't want to watch them when they're on, so I set up my TWC digital box to record everything and then I watch it later. Buffy, SG1, Enterprise, Farscape, Angel, Charmed, Junkyard Wars, FMC, etc. Yeah, I'm a geek. :)

I've considered buying a Tivo, but I haven't found any evidence that it'll work well with the TWC digital box, so I hesitate and stick (happily) with 'crappy' VHS tables in EP mode, despite the fact that I know exactly how a VCR works and know exactly why it's 'technically' lower quality.

Therefore, this is why PVR's are also taking some time to catch on, and given that you can't move the recordings out of the machine is another deterrent to me. In fact, I bet when HDTV becomes mandatory, I'm probably going to still try to tape some shows down-converted to NTSC, at least until the MPAA is destroyed by market failure and we can freely record HDTV shows and possibly keep some for later (which I usually don't, but...).

Pardon my not-awake-yet ramblings. :)

Re:I always use EP mode anyhow!

[topham]

TWC cable box? Is that the product/model, or just the cable company?

I can say that if you have a motorola or Generial Instruments digital box the tivo works well with it.

(Althought ig you have the AT&T branded boxes it works even better, they can use the serial port on the boxes to change the channel.) (for those motorola boxes that have the correct firmware to enable it).

Re:Argh-Decisions, decisions...

[Anonymous Coward]

" Too many technically superior standards aren't popular. Ogg Vs Mp3, Jabber Vs MSN/AIM. Not nearly enough people use IRC. Anyone care to list more?..."

Sex vs Abstinance,Left vs Right,Up vs Down,Cats vs Dogs,Clothed vs Naked.

Decisions, decisions...

Geek opinions so easily swayed...

[Theovon]

Isn't it interesting how "everygeek" will believe something is good or bad or whatever for like forever, until one day, some other card-carrying geek has a new insight, and then everyone suddenly changes their opinion. So now, a good 80% of Slashdot readers are suddenly going to erase the Betamax/VHS debate from their minds because they're been enlightened now to the fact that VHS won, and that's cool because it was, in fact, superior. They've also added the concept of "whole product" to their set of memes.

On the one hand, this is great, because smart people grow and learn. But on the other hand, it's very amusing, because people don't figure these things out on their own (not like I did) and are only swayed when some other insightful geek gives them a new perspective. And that insightful geek got it from marketing suits and was just smart enough (more so than the rest of us) to not ignore what the suits were saying.

Maybe we should look at this on the meta level. Geeks seem to go on crusades over every little technological inferiority/superiority. Maybe they should learn from their new-found enlightenment that perhaps many of their other beliefs also are based on near-sighted analysis. There's a bigger picture, and we need to consider that!

Taking this a step further: Many 'geek ideals' are wonderful, but they also have to be marketed. Consider what has made things like Windows and VHS succeed in the market and apply that to marketing things like Free Software. Some people do that, but things like this article may help people to see another approach.

Why can't I shake the feeling that my last paragraph just became near-sighted again?

Re:Geek opinions so easily swayed...

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt many people will change their views on VHS/BetaMax after hearing new information. But I expect that part of the reason many people didn't go and find this out for themselves is that they actually don't care all that much, and have better things to do with their time.

Take me for instance, I'm too busy with my extremly important work to waste time posting self-gratifying messages on Slashdot.

The death of betamax eh?

[DaBjork]

This guy claims that Betamax died due to it's recording shortcomings huh? well you know, I like most of my fellow consumers can't record onto DVDs, and yet it's plain to see that they are here to stay...in fact the only real advantage to DVDs is the quality (no one really buys a DVD player just for the bonus features). I think the real answer is that it's easy to "predict" the fall of a technology after the fact. If it was that easy to know if products would succeed or not then no product would ever fail. There are too many other factors this guy even has neglected (timing, etc). If he did have the perfect formula why is he a reporter and not a marketing Mogul?

Re:The death of betamax eh?

[CashCarSTAR]

Back when VHS and Beta were first released, they were pretty much only marketed towards personal recording. There was no after-market video, nor rental option. These days, with cheap after-market videos and DVDs, this is not much of a concern.

Dvd?

[PeRFecTIoN87]

Alright, now why is this relevent to this era? Betamax is dead....vhs is almost dead...is there something im missing here?

Re:Dvd?

[KillerBob]

VHS is far from dead. It'll be several years before it disappears entirely: not until recordable DVD's are as cheap as VHS. That won't happen until a couple years after they can actually agree on a format for recordable DVD's. (/wave, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, etc.)

As you walk into the local Blockbuster or Videoflicks, do you not notice that 80% of the content on the shelves is still VHS?

Did you actually read the article?

Beta was bettter quality.

[nurb432]

It simply had better quality output then VHS.

It's failure is simple, VHS was cheaper then BETA, and 'close enough'.

This was evidenced by its continued use in professional markets for many many years.

The cost difference was due to Sony not licensing and keeping the entire pie for themselves..

Everyday people tend to be cheap, its a fact of life. This is what really killed Beta ( and microchannel too )

Re:Beta was bettter quality.

[Anonymous Coward]

^ More Urban Legend bullshit about Beta in your post.

BetaMAX was never used in professional applications. BetaCAM was, and it was not compatible.

As for output quality, consider the terrible quality of your average early-80s television set. Doubtful that most people could tell the difference.

Re:Not this crap again.... Macintosh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, Mac is still around... So it should be:

AMIGA!!!!

it does

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the internet, father of all lies.

http://www.ce.org/publications/books_references/ di gital_america/history/vcr.asp

This is a load of CRAP

[cleetus]

The author, when speaking about the 'whole product' neglects to understand that the infrastructure which he praises as part of VHS, was just the result of something economists call 'lock-in' that often comes with products that exploit the network effect with closed architectures. It has real costs: technically inferior products gain early adoption and exploit the network effect, not market merit, but on legistlation (see DAT), or advertising. It would be impossible to argue that we wouldn't be better off if the same network effects enabled the widespread adoption of Beta instead of VHS.

The only benefit I can imagine arising from lock-in of a technically inferior product is the inspiration it gives inventors to keep on inventing new technically superior producs in response to the shortcomings of what was locked in (see audio mini-disk for a moderately convincing example).

cleetus

This article...

[skermit]

This article is the main reason why we're still using a Windows operating system which is EXPECTED to crash at least once daily (once every couple of days if you're running 2k). Pandering to the masses isn't innovation, and it's not in the best interests to build up the peripheral aspects of a product rather than improve on the product itself. A crappy toaster with 24-7 on-site support (people who toast your bread for you) is still not as good as a toaster which toasts bread when you push the button...

I wonder why nobody stated the well known myth

[Anonymous Coward]

Accordoing to a well known urban myth, VHS simply won because the format was the earliest to adobt porn!
It was not the technical merits nor Sony, but you could get porn without having to go to greasy theatres.

A truly terrible article

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is not qualified to do technical coverage. Actually, he's pretty much a failure as a journalist.

You need to do actual research to write an article sometimes.

Yes, his talk of compatibility makes the whole argument circular, true. But that is the core assertion of this article, so I won't touch it.

The 1 hour limitation was a serious problem. But the real problem with Beta was that Sony wanted higher licensing fees for companies to produce players than JVC did. As a VCR maker, that was pretty simple math to do.

Then he goes on to show how Beta wasn't "technically superior" either, since VHS has the chance to upgrade to the compatible Super-VHS format.

Well, that's true. Except Super-VHS isn't compatible. It's partly compatible. Also, Beta had its own Super- variant. It was called ED Beta and was the highest quality analog consumer video tape format ever. VHS was lucky to get about 225 lines of resolution. S-VHS was a lot better with 350 lines of resolution. However, ED Beta whomped them all with 500 lines of resolution. It generally had better quality than any source available at the time, including LaserDisc which had about 400-450 lines of resolution.

Finally, what about VHS HQ? VHS HQ was a more significant development than S-VHS. I owned an S-VHS deck (pre HQ) and VHS HQ produced almost as large a picture improvement as S-VHS and unlike S-VHS it truly was fully compatible. How successful was VHS HQ? Well, eventually it took over the whole market. All VHS decks have been HQ for over 5 years, they just dropped the name since every one had it anyway.

Re:A truly terrible article

[HereAllNight]

VHS was lucky to get about 225 lines of resolution.

And Betamax had 240. Then VHS-HQ came along and they were even at 240 lines. It's important to remember that the single technical lead that Betamax had only lasted for a half-dozen years! Even then, 99% of the people who bought the things didn't notice any difference.

S-VHS was a lot better with 350 lines of resolution. However, ED Beta whomped them all with 500 lines of resolution.

That's the kind of specsmanship that parts clueless consumers from their money, but what use was it? After all, NTSC video tops out at 330 lines. The reason why S-VHS tops out at 350 lines is because more lines == more bandwidth, and more bandwidth == more noise. So from an engineering perspective, adding 170 useless lines of resolution is technically inferior.

Finally, what about VHS HQ? ... All VHS decks have been HQ for over 5 years, they just dropped the name since every one had it anyway.

More like 15-20 years. So what if not 100% were HQ in the beginning? The important thing is that the best VHS decks have been comparable to the best Betamax decks for far longer than they have not. And VHS has always offered superior tape handling for the home user.

Price is part of quality.

[Forge]

As soon as you accept that simple fact, the success of VHS and Wintel start to make sence. As dose the reason MS fears Linux so.

Hateful as it may sound the cost of an item is a part of the quality equation. If it wasn't then the Rols would be the only car that maters.

I'll have to remember his name...what's his name?

[webster]

This is a columnist I'll never have to read again. He's full of himself and full of shit.

I have a large library of movies recorded onto Beta tapes. Entire movies. The idea that people bought VHS because they could record movies on them is patently ridiculous. He, himself notes that movies were first released on Beta - the format he then claims is too small to hold a movie.

Everyone I knew who bought a VHS rather than a Beta machine, back when VHS was winning the marketing war, did so because you could program the VHS machine to record all your favorite programs for a week or two. At least, someone could, presumably. None of the folks I knew who chose VHS for that feature ever, ever used it. Most could never even figure out how to set the clock.

VHS won that war because of better marketing. They came up with a feature with marginal utility (longer tape length) and convinced a whole lot of people that it was essential.

Wrong!

[Kong99]

I wasn't even gonna read this article but was using the electric shaver, (did it beat the blade?!?! not sure but blade shaving everyday is murder on my skin) and thought I would read this drivel. I read a case Study of this in Grad School, the case study was done by the Harvard Business School. The basic conclusion is that the reason Sony lost is because they would not license Beta at a reasonable cost. So JVC made their own, VHS, and licensed to anyone who was interested. Beta was far superior in quality, but not enough to justify the cost difference, not to mention the "percieved" choices the consumer had when buying VHS (multiple brands) or Beta (Sony). If your still not sure that Beta was better than VHS in quality ask anyone who worked in a business that used Visual media what format they used in the 80's and 90's. Recap - Superior Quality, Unwilling to license, Arrogant company = lost the market. Hmm... I have heard of this combination before... oh yea Apple Computer!!!

Jaguar superior?

[mcgroarty]

The Jaguar had some interesting hardware, true. But anyone who thinks the system was superior never tried playing a game on that hellish phone pad of a controller. It literally hurt after just a few minutes!

Re:Jaguar superior?

[AndroidCat]

A Z80 and a 68000, interesting. But at the time, the 3DO had a hell of a better library for development. last best chance yadda yadda It failed. (And I'll be damned if I can remember what chip was in a 3DO. So I won't!)

Re:Jaguar superior?

[mcgroarty]

No Z80. A 14mhz 68000 and two proprietary DSPs running at 28mhz.

In many ways, the Jaguar was like the PS2. :)

why would you want Linux?

[Hubert_Shrump]

I don't know if it tis the season, but there have been a lot of my friends having their computers go down recently.

When you can't find your old version of MSWorks and the current one is hosed, and all your important docs are locked away in a proprietary format, you're ready to hear about Linux and open standards.

So there's one. Linux (mostly) automagically uses open standards for everything, so you don't have to pussyfoot around with Save As bullshit.

Advocate!

Re:why would you want Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm sure a MS Works user would really enjoy the Tower of Babel that is Linux file formats.

Openness is meanless to the end user without interoperability. The solution you guys sell is to Save As Microsoft RTF.

Sure they COULD write their own file filter, but they could also just go and buy a new copy of Works.

"Advocate!"

Advocate to the right people, people who can manage it. Selling Linux to granny is a big, big mistake.

Re:why would you want Linux?

[Hubert_Shrump]

All I advocated was HTML.

It worked for them. They could link to other docs and embed images. Tables. Nice. Granted, Abiword has some dislike for importing, but it can be +/- painless.

But you're right, they're a little more savvy than my grandmother.

But then, my grandmother is dead.

And that is a hell of a UI issue.

Re:why would you want Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML would be great if it supported things like headers/footers and page numbering. Every try to print from Mozilla? Bleck.

Ironically, MS Word's support for HTML is excellent.

Metaphor, simile, analogy

[Hubert_Shrump]

Does this make flaming people anything like "information superhighway rage"?

Re:Metaphor, simile, analogy

[vsprintf]

Does this make flaming people anything like "information superhighway rage"?

Hmm, it's not a real catchy phrase. How about "troll-road rage"? :)

Jabber

[Anonymous Coward]

Jabber's interface is vastly inferior to AIM or MSN. That's not speaking from a dumb consumer standpoint, that's from a techie usability engineering standpoint. Sure, the underlying technology is "great" XML, but that doesn't mean crap if I've got to program my own interface if I want it to be remotely intuitive.

Home vs. Commercial Use

[atroxi]

As was mentioned before, although Beta failed in the consumer market, it has thrived in the professional market - in a much upgraded form. In fact, Digital Betacam/BetacamSP is one of the highest quality formats around.

The TV station I work for used to shoot on Beta, and still uses a Betacart playback system for commercials. Sony was very smart to adapt it to a market that would benefit from its picture quality.

Plus, the tape size made it perfect for shooting out in the field - much easier than carting around a camera plus a seperate recording deck.

So, Sony may have failed in the consumer market, but more than made up for it in the professional market.

Re:Home vs. Commercial Use

[HereAllNight]

The problem is that what you're saying is similar to "Farmer Brown's oranges taste good, so therefore his apples taste good too." Betamax and Betacam are apples and oranges. They share exactly two things in common: 1) the general shape of the tape shell, and 2) the "Beta" prefix in their names. So sure, the Beta... trademark has succeeded. But Betamax has failed.

Yes, Sony has been successful in the professional marketplace. So has Matsushita (Panasonic) and JVC, both VHS vendors. As a matter of fact, Panasonic's AG-1900 series VHS editing decks continue to be very popular in industrial video applications, long after the demise of Betamax.

Re:Home vs. Commercial Use

[protohiro1]

And what you are saying is that because Betamax and betacam are not the same, and betacam is better, therefore betamax wasn't. Sure beta failed, we accept this. But no one, I mean no one, ought to be claiming that VHS does anything but suck. Sure its good enough for most consumers, but its acceptance had NOTHING to do with it being technically better than betamax, which it wasn't. I have used pro VHS equipment. And you know what? It stinks. Its horrid. The generational degredation is just shocking. I am not an engineer, and I really don't understand the ultimate causes of VHS sucking so badly, but I have seen it murder the best shot footage. VHS may continue to be popular in industrial applications, but I assume thats because it was cheaper than beta, and now its just pure momentum.

idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

VHS dominated because of marketing and distribuition. The article's author states:

Let's take a simple example: digital audio tape (Dat). Get someone to compare Dat with a humble C90 compact cassette and they will find Dat to be technologically superior, especially for recording music. However, if you consider "the whole product", Dat is vastly inferior for most people most of the time. This is why people still buy millions of cassettes, while Dat has virtually disappeared from consumer use.

Actually, dat failed because the recording industry succeeded in supressing it, just as they are trying to supress newer digital media technologies.

i don't like that guy

[mindgam3r]

we could take a look at that article and then we could take a look at your copy of tron on betamax

Quantity isn't enough

[phr2]

DAT is inherently a heck of a lot more complex than analog cassette. It's a helical scan system with all kinds of digital electronics. A DAT deck is at least as complex as a VHS VCR. VCR's are sold in enormous quantities but really never get below $150 or so. But there are tons of analog audio cassette machines available at $25 or less. You can find playback-only cassette walkmans for under $10. No amount of economies of scale can produce a VCR or a DAT deck for that little.

Re:Quantity isn't enough

[dachshund]

DAT is inherently a heck of a lot more complex than analog cassette

Sure, but if you read my post you'll see I was comparing them to CD players, not analog tapes. CD players may still be slightly less complex than DAT decks, but not outrageously so. And CD players retail for a fraction of what DAT decks go for.

The point remains the same: DAT decks could have sold for reasonable prices (way less than the prohibitive $500 barrier) if they'd really taken off.

Re:Quantity isn't enough

[phr2]

Oh I see. I'd have to say CD players are a heck of a lot less complex than DAT decks. Yeah they have a laser, but the rest is pretty simple. You can get CD Walkmans for under 20 bucks at Circuit City. I stand by the claim that a DAT and a VCR are about equal in complexity. And nobody has ever sold a VCR for that little.

Re:Quantity isn't enough

[Anonymous Coward]

DAT was designed to be a consumer format, much like CD Audio. It was basically FUDded out of existence by the RIAA.

There's also the matter of the Audio Home Recording Act, which placed enough DRM restrictions on 'consumer' digital recorders that DAT had to position itself as a pro format.

Furthermore, VCRs are routinely sold for $30-50 nowdays.

No it doesn't.

[sulli]

Video Home System.

That was tried...

[Anonymous Coward]

Late 80s... early 90s? Couldn't you get a card that outputted to a VCR? I think the thing was that people wouldn't trust data to a medium that fails (sparklies, glitches, etc.) so often when watching a video.

This guy is just wrong, he needed some copy

[drinkypoo]

So he wrote any old thing and submitted it. "Oh shit, deadline in 30 minutes? Time to write a fluff-piece!"

The fact is, geeks understand better than anyone else how technology markets work because they follow the prices and features of devices. They know when a new product comes out, and why it is technically superior or inferior. But we don't stop there; RDRAM came under fire not only for its lack of technical merit (interleaved DDR SDRAM is still faster than interleaved RDRAM, in both latency and bandwidth) but also for its legal encumbrance which we all knew would hold back adoption. This is mostly because we're the ones adopting it or not. When a manager tells you to buy a server, he might give you all kinds of meaningless specifications, but they don't generally tell you what kind of ram to buy.

Betamax IS superior in every way. The fact that it was mislicensed does not change its technical superiority. The only place in which betamax falls short is the lack of deployment, but that does not change its usefulness in the home; taping things off the air, or off of other tapes. For this purpose it is superior to VHS; the picture and sound quality are improved, it takes up less space, what's not to like, at least compared to VHS?

Probably the best magnetic home video recording solution is S-VHS EX (Do I have the name right?) which is some manufacturer's proprietary S-VHS recorded on normal VHS tapes. Better quality than VHS or Betamax, readily available tapes... But blockbuster is unlikely to start renting you S-VHS movies.

The author also uses DAT as an example. DAT is superior to audio casette in every way. It is a smaller tape which holds more audio at a higher quality. The fact that the devices cost more in no way changes the fact that DAT is superior to casette. The only way in which it is not; cost. Who buys music on casette any more anyway, since CD players are the same price as tape players now? (Well, you can get a walkman for $10, but they last about a week. Let's talk devices at all worth buying.) Digital is the only reasonable way to go.

Anyway saying that geeks don't get it is completely absurd. It's among geeks that the slang term "Betamaxing" is used to describe someone licensing a technology into its grave. Most of us were hoping that rambus would betamax RDRAM but it never came to pass. Sony was on the verge of repeating its mistake but they kept pouring fuel on the minidisc fire... But minidisc almost didn't make it, if sony didn't have piles of money from video game sales they would have had to abandon it. They supported a going-nowhere format for so long, that it finally made it when the technology was outdated; MP3 players are now smaller than minidisc players and frequently use solid state media, which is better than having really good buffering and skip protection.

I could have written that article, and I'd have been no less incorrect for it. It's pure stinky bull leavings.

Re:Recording times

[Anonymous Coward]

but movie-length beta tapes became available well before VHS captured a major lead.

By "movie-length", you mean 90 minutes? There's lots of films longer than that.

A very large percentage of films on Beta shipped on 2 tapes, or were cut. Hollywood only shipped movies in SP mode, AFAIK.

Another Straw Man Argument

[bbagnall]

The author just takes the same old argument and says it in a different way, sounding smug the whole time. He claims people who say Betamax is technically better are wrong, but when people say this they are stating it is technologically superior in picture, nothing more. The author is just making a straw man so he can gleefully bash it down and make himself seem all knowing in the process.

And saying you oculd only record an hour?! If that is correct, then how could video stores have two hour movies on tape?

The fact is, everyone who says Betamax is different was also acknowleging that the high prices and lack of consumer choice was the downfall.

Re:Another Straw Man Argument

[HereAllNight]

Q. And saying you oculd only record an hour?! If that is correct, then how could video stores have two hour movies on tape?

A. They had to rent two tapes for one movie. That negated the size advantage Betamax tapes had, and was a logistical nightmare. Later on, when slower tape speeds allowed longer recording, they could fit a whole movie on one tape, but then the picture quality was clearly inferior to VHS.

French chefs make me gag.

[Anonymous Coward]

This might seem off topic, but it's really as on topic as you can get...

French chefs cook snails and goose liver and people not only eat it, but pay a lot of money to eat it. In doing so they actually think themselves superior to the common folk eating burgers and fries.

If you take a step back and look at it from a distance you can see just how silly it is. Imagine a guy with a plate of snails in front of him looking down on a guy with a burger in front of him sitting next to him.

One guy is eating beef, from a cow, that was fed corn and raised for years, shipped off to the butcher, ground up, packaged and shipped off for distrobution. The ground beef is then formed into a patty, cooked, put on a bun made of bread baked in an oven, topped with cheese that has been cultured, lettuce tomato pickles onions that were grown, perhaps a little ketchup and mustard. Point being, quite a bit of time and effort between hundreds of people went into the burger.

The other guy is eating a plate of snails. Snails you could find under your garbage can out back, throw them in a pot of boiling water for a couple minutes and dump them on a plate. Point being, snails are slugs, they eat garbage, little time and effort of just one or two people went into preparing the snails.

So who should be looking down on whom? The answer is obvious right? The guy who paid more for his meal is the winner because he is elite.

Any product that costs more is viewed as superior even by the people that don't want it!

Snails would be easy enough to farm, just make a big pile of slimey garbage and they will come. I imagine snails would be easier and cheaper to produce than cows. But you don't see 10 different national chains of snail restuarants do you? Because snails only taste good if they cost a lot of money. yet it seems to be common knowledge that snails are superior to beef.

Just as it's common knowledge that Beta was superior to VHS, and Macs are superior to PC's. I mean, surely everyone on a PC right now would be on a Mac if it weren't for the price and they have to use a PC at work, right?

Common perception is based on common perception because people are sheep. Were Cabbage Patch dolls superior to the other dolls on the market some 15 odd years ago? No, they were nylons stuffed with cotton. There were dolls that ate, slept, and even performed bodily functions for the same price. Yet granny was hip checkin' people in the isle to get her hands on a Cabbage Patch doll. Everyone wanted one because everyone wanted one.

Re:French chefs make me gag.

[Anonymous Coward]

Feedlot animals are actually pretty bad for you. People think that eating meat is the source of saturated fats and such, but the truth is that animals in the wild have a very different body makeup, not just in how lean but in the chemical composition of their tissue. Snails are actually pretty good for you - corn-fed cattle definitely isn't.
Snails aren't actually expensive btw, if you buy and cook them yourself (they're pretty good too). You're paying for the chef in a restaurant like that. The majority of a French menu will be beef and chicken just like McDonalds, but more expertly prepared. Services cost more than produce.

Worse is Better

[UnknownSoldier]

It seems that if a product is "good enough" (price wise & technologically wise) it will become popular with the mass-market.

Remind's me of Richard Gabriel's Worse is Better essay.

Cheers

A lesson the pure math world needs to learn

[jcast]

The value of a subject is not defined by its researchers. It is defined by its market. Meaning its students and appliers.

Pure math is doomed to be a niche player until this fact is more widely accepted. It doesn't matter what academics think about the product if the end engineer is not satisfied, overjoyed even.

As it is today, woe to any freshman who wants to jump on the pure math bandwagon; all they get is name calling and static when they have real problems. The overall experience can be very unpleasant.

p.s. Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch, but Linux is a collection of algorithms, i.e. mathematical abstractions, not a set of contraptions, so the analogy is better than one to devices.

I suppose the moral of the story is "don't try"

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically, if one is to design a new product with new technical features, but as a drawback there is a lack of various forms of support (human, price, peripheral, etc) then we shouldn't try because it won't succeed. hmm.

insulting

[v(*_*)vvvv]

VHS v Beta analogy, they are not indicating a market failure but their own ignorance

Some analogies stick, and get imported by people who want to make a similar point. In this case, on technology and marketshare. To necessitate we all do research on everything we hear is obsurd. He even admits he's been working with these concepts for over 10 years, and that it isn't obvious. And to then accuse those who do not know what he knows as being ignorant is totally arogant and insulting.

It is fine to argue how something is actually wrong. In fact, that is an extremely popular outcome for many arguments: "in fact so and so is WRONG". But to add "and so those who think so and so are ignorant" just makes you sound hostile.

Popular = Lowest Common Denominator

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur. Look at George Bush. You don't have to be Canadian to know he's a moron, but he did get voted in.

What a moron

[Sabalon]

It seems that most of his argumens (C90 vs Dat, wintel vs mac, vhs vs beta) were that if you are already the domininant product in a market place then of course you are gonna be chosen. And also because of this dominance of course prices will be lower.

Next up - what people like sells more than what people don't like.

for concision, clarity, and simplicity...

[Jayson]

read http://kx.com/a/k/readme.txt and be amazed

Well, yeah... that is kinda my point

[Jayson]

However, even Perl's utility isn't born out of anything special in the language. There are other laguages are clearer, simpler, more concise, and more powerful. However, it is all the intangibles that make Perl (and C) like VHS: market penetration, large libraries, and perceived quality is good enough. If you try to evaluate Perl on an single metric, it is clearly inferior to almost any competitor, it is only when you view th language and all that it provide holistically that you get a clear picture of why people use it, and many of these aggregate factors are not even techniccal or unique to Perl.

Re:Well, yeah... that is kinda my point

[cameldrv]

A pretty big issue is that they are both free for non-commercial use, with no runtime fees, unlike kx.

Re:Recording times

[tgibbs]

But while the movie-length tapes may have appeared before VHS had taken a lead, the fact that they weren't available from day one may well have encouraged manufacturers to opt for VHS: I would expect the time between the decision and the appearance of the machines in the shops to be at least 6 months, probably nearer 12.

Beta and VHS were both available from multiple manufacturers. And virtually all movies were available in both formats throughout the Beta-VHS wars. I imagine that the vast majority of people who bought a VCR never knew that for a brief time beta tapes did not support movie-length recording at the highest speed.

What really killed Beta was price. The cheapest machines available were always VHS. Sony knew that they had a superior product--they were consistently 6 months ahead of VHS is technical innovation--and they figured they could charge a bit more for their video recorders (and for third party licenses). After all, it was a pricing model that worked just fine for all of Sony's other products. And it made sense if you thought of the primary uses of a VCR as being time-shifting of TV and occasionally playing a purchased tape. What Sony didn't anticipate was that the major use of the VCR would turn out to be playing video rentals.

Carrying two formats was expensive for video stores. And since the cheap VHS players were more popular, they stocked VHS tapes more heavily. Which was another reason, in addition to price, for consumers to buy VHS. Which encouraged rental shops to cut back still further on beta. By the time Sony got wise and cut prices drastically on their low end betas, it was too late for beta to recover.

Real big flaw in your reasoning.

[Anonymous Coward]

You equate Linux use with drver certification. Well at current, the level of skill needed to use Linux is like that of a mechanic. Yet in our world today (or even in Model-T times), drivers are not required to know how to install an engine, tune up a suspension, etc. to get a driver's license. They just have to know how to operate the damn thing.

Why should Linux use be the exception, why must you people insist everyone be a tech? Every other facet of living does not? One does not need to be a locksmith to use a key, or become a doctor to take aspirin. Get a grip on reality.

Brand perception

[Anonymous Coward]

Well now, I guess that there may be some truth in this article. And I learnt one new thing, that BetaMax tapes only lasted an hour. But it seems to me that there is little in the way of useful argument, it just misses the point.

And I think I'll make one correction. This could be seen as nitpicking, but I do think it's important: Consumers do not buy a product directly because it _is_ the best "whole product" solution or whatever, but rather because they percieve it to be, which may or may not have anything to do with whether or not it actually is.

As an example (kind of): A while ago, an uncle of mine told me he was considering buying a drawing package (I'm not sure what the technical term is, but something the likes of Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator). I asked him what one he would get, and he told me he would get the one written by Microsoft (This is before they wrote one I think, I believe they have one now). He stated it fairly clearly, as a matter of fact, that is what his decision was.

If there had been an art package written by Microsoft at that stage, then, presumably he would have bought it. But clearly it would not have been because it was the best "whole product" solution.

--
James G

Re:Recording times

[tgibbs]

I bought my first VCR at the hight of the beta-vhs wars, before rental shops had really started to take off. At that time, beta blank tapes were available in L-500 length, which recorded for 2 hours in beta-II at quality comparable to or slightly better than VHS's SP. Shortly thereafter, L-750 tapes became available, which recorded for 3 hours. I understand that the very earliest betas had an even faster beta-I speed, but Sony abandoned it as their recording technology improved. I presume that beta-II was the speed used for prerecorded videos. I often rented beta tapes, and I don't think I ever saw a two-tape movie. I'm sure there were some, but they weren't "a very large percentage."

Interesting..

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting and all. But really, who gives a shit?

Pron

[triptolemeus]

I don't know whether it was in the article at all, but I thought that it has been known for a long time that VHS won the battle because you could rent a lot of adult movies for it. Seems the same explanation that makes up for the succes of the polaroid camera.

Re:Pron

[Cid Highwind]

Seems the same explanation that makes up for the succes of the polaroid camera. ...and the internet.

Betacam is not betamax

[Anonymous Coward]

it never has been and it never will be! Why is it that everytime that something about the consumer betamax format comes up on this site some asshole starts talking about a format that is part of the betaCAM family. Betacam (oxide), Betacam SP, Betacam SX, Digtal Betacam and MPEG IMX are all sony formats that members of the betacam family. They are all very popular and VERY high quality, but they have nothing to do with the dead/unsucessful betamax format. So next time please do your research!

This will get you started: http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Professional/webapp/Categ ory?m=0&p=16

Re:Recording times

[Anonymous Coward]

I obtained a big pile of Beta stuff 4-5 years back, and the prerecorded tapes were all 90min Beta I. Some of the movies were cut. I suspect the longplay modes had too many dropouts for the rental market.

Re: Why

[Anne Thwacks]

Thats easy ...

Philips is a European company, and US companies are totally committed to NIH syndrome. (Not Invented Here).

Stupid, sophomoric geek blathering...

[aquarian]

This is like every other witless, pointless geek conversation. It usually starts with something like, "Such-and-such isn't so great. It's really just a something-or-other with a blahblah added on." Crap like this seems to pass for wisdom among these blathering bores/boors. They prattle on like this, thinking it makes them sound smart. This is why I gave up engineering as a career. I'd go raving mad if I had to listen to this everyday.

Who cares? Both are dinosaurs now...

[aquarian]

...that we have DVD.

Re: Why

[sheimers]

"Philips is a European company, and US companies are totally committed to NIH syndrome. (Not Invented Here). "

That's why they prefer japanese VHS over japanese Betamax in stead of the european V2000 ;-)

Summed up

[Anonymous Coward]

The original article, without a doubt is an urban myth in itself. VHS (the original) was shiteful quality image!! Ask yourself why did the TV stations use Betamax for many years - in fact, long after betamax's demise? For kicks?? Because it was "supposedly" better?

Fact is, noone has quite put together the key facts in one posting (although they are scattered throughout postings).

1. VHS picture quality was crap prior to super VHS.
2. There were MANY, MANY (read in direct contraditction to the author) Beta tapes when my family first bought a VCR at all of the shops in Victoria, Australia. VHS had -none-!!!
3. Betamax players cost much more than VHS due to licensing fees (read: cheap cost the author forgot to mention)
4. The betamax tapes were smaller and could not record as much (agreed)
5. VHS quality noticeably improved with super vhs (again, the author forgot to mention). If VHS was "so perfect in the first place", this would be an irrelevant point.

(Opinion) I believe it was in "manufacturers", the "video industry" and "joe consumer's" interest to go VHS.

The machines were cheaper to build (less licensing), the tapes were cheaper to produce for the film industry (again, less royalties and no "double cases" for a movie) and "more expensive" (beta) v/s "cheaper" (VHS). You take your pick.

After we bought our first Betamax video recorder, VHS came in cheaply within 8 months - bummer!!

AC
PS Interestingly enough as a side point, has anyone noticed the picture of VCRs these days has plummeted to the point where a 5-10year old VCR has a significantly better picture quality than the newer ones!!

Re:Summed up

[HereAllNight]

No, TV stations do NOT use Betamax. It's not broadcast-quality. TV stations do use other Sony products, but not Betamax.

1. VHS picture quality was crap prior to super VHS.
A. Same thing Betamax. Their specs were nearly identical.

2. There were MANY, MANY (read in direct contraditction to the author) Beta tapes when my family first bought a VCR at all of the shops in Victoria, Australia. VHS had -none-!!!
A. I guess you never read the article. The author's whole point was that Betamax had the lead at first, then lost it because it was inferior all-around.

3. Betamax players cost much more than VHS due to licensing fees (read: cheap cost the author forgot to mention)
Again, read the article.

4. The betamax tapes were smaller and could not record as much (agreed)
OK

5. VHS quality noticeably improved with super vhs (again, the author forgot to mention). If VHS was "so perfect in the first place", this would be an irrelevant point.
I see a straw man.
If Betamax was so perfect in the first place, why was SuperBeta introduced? Slewn by his own sword, LOL.

Re:Not this crap again. - FAST FORWARD better VHS

[TheCrazyFinn]

If Beta was unsuited to Video Cameras then why was it the defacto standard for profession use video cameras (Reporters & such) up until recently (S-VHS and MiniDV finally killed BetaMax cameras).

Why VHS Was Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Must admit nobody that I ever talked to in over
25 years ever claimed that VHS was better than
Beta, as we called it. Trouble was that you
could only get 3 hours on a beta tape. One movie
was good for usually 2 hours. That meant an hour
of wasted space, and usually less because movies
are always larded with commercials on TV. TV
recording was the primary use for videotape as
folks built home libraries of movies to view when
ordinary TV was putrid that night.
VHS, with its 6 hours capacity on t-120 tapes,
was the perfect answer. It remains so, especially
as CDs are proving to be an unattractive option
given the impending hardware copy prevention being
contemplated by the monopolistas. You can easily
get TWO movies on ONE tape....and THAT is the
bottom line.

I'll be damned!

[Feztaa]

VHS IS better than Betamax!

AARGH! Repeat after me... Betamax != Betacam

[Dogtanian]

...all the media outlets (your local TV news, etc)...did (and continue to, to some extent) buy into Betamax technology. Why? It was broadcast quality and continued to be broadcast quality after being copied or played many, many times...

Home Betamax is not the same as the version typically used for broadcasting; search this discussion for "betacam" and stop repeating this drivel.

Whether it was better than VHS or not, I don't know. I doubt it was remotely as good as you claim.

This is bullshit.

[nordicfrost]

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.

Re:This is bullshit.

[HereAllNight]

Those features are pretty lame. Some of them were in fact released first on VHS! So all in all, they aren't unique to Betamax, so they're no evidence of alleged Betamax superiority. The only thing that Betamax beat VHS in was horizontal resolution. In the beginning, Betamax had 240 lines to VHSs 220. Big deal. Both were very short of the 330 lines broadcast. By the mid-80s, VHS had made up that difference, and emerged as victor on all technical fronts.

Waste of space

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got bored reading the article.

Acronyms Change With Time!

[CharlieO]

There is a remarkable phenmenom with technical acronyms.

Thier meaning shifts over time. Mainly this is because the technology they describe becomes successful and the meaning of the orginal expansion is no longer valid. However the acronym is firmly rooted almost like a brand name, so usually the expansion is changed.

For instance VHS did originally expand to Vertical Helical Scan - which is a description of the way that the enigineering team solved how keep the tape speed over the head high without having to have the tape itself spooling at hig speed and therefor needing a huge amount of it.

Later as it became popular and mass market the expansion changed to Video Home System as this was more understandable for the consumer.

Video Home System (a less daunting rendering of the original acronym, which stood for Vertical Helical Scan)
Reference : Baird to MPEG A History Of Video

Look at the GSM mobile phone standard. Orignially this stood for Group Spécial Mobile - a special interest of the CEPT set up to develop one digital standard, based on the existing ISDN standard,for mobile phones in Europe to replace the mess of competing analogue ones.

Nowadays, given the massive success of the standard the expansion is Global System for Mobile communications .

DECT originally stood for Digital European Cordless Terminal . For the non Europeans its a standard for short range digital handset to base station communication for cordless phones. Being a standard you can now buy extra handsets from whoever you want, and things like wireless modems. As its success took off and it began to be used outside of Europe then the expansion changed to Digital Enhanced Cordless Terminal

As mentioned elsewher in this thread DVD originally stood for Digital Video Disc but as it became apparent that a high capacity replacement for CD could have many uses it was renamed to Digital Versatile Disc with the convention that the specific use is tagged afterwards, hence DVD-Video, DVD-RAM, DVD-ROM, DVD-Audio The moral of the story is be careful what you state an acronym stands for - a whole load of them in daily use have stood for a number of things in thier history!!

Oh, and yes I do currently work in the telecoms side of it, how did you guess??

Re:Acronyms Change With Time!

[scottgfx]

In nearly 20 years of following video technology, I have hever heard the term "Vertical Helical Scan". It actually doesn't mean anything! Is the scanner helical or vertical? I don't think Mr. Fenton has this right. In a quick search of the global JVC web site, I did not find a reference to "Vertical Helical Scan" even among many articles about the history of VHS.

Re:Acronyms Change With Time!

[CharlieO]

Curious isn't it?

If you do a Google search for "Vertical Helical Scan" then you will find a large number of hits. Agreed this is not the best way to confirm as a large number of people can be wrong, but some of those sites are US Military and Nasa.

The terminology does make sense to me at least.

Scan means that the head is moving as well as the tape, not fixed.
Helical means that the scan is helical on the tape, rather than transverse as in some early systems.
Vertical means that the head and tape axis orientation is vertical rather than horizontal, as would be the case in older reel to reel where the axis was horizontal so that large loops of tape could hang down and buffer the start and stop acceleration.

I've always suspected that "Vertical Helical Scan" was an internal engineering acronym to differentiate the system from thier earlier Helical Scan machines, and also to protect against Sony finding out that JVC were desperately trying to come up with a home video format to compete with Betamax. This rapidly became "Video Home System" when it was marketed - similar to the way Windows releases have internal names, and an 'offical' name when released, which is why you don't find it on the JVC site.

Either that or "Vertical Helical Scan" was coined by someone other than JVC very early on and its been with us since then.

I guess only someone from JVC can truly answer that one.

This is a very interesting timeline of VCR developement (and no it doesn't mention Vertical Helical Scan either), with the early JVC Helical Scan machines here.

Re:Acronyms Change With Time!

[Anonymous Coward]

And, how about our favorite /usr?

Unix System Resources, anyone?..

Yawn...

[sashang]

Talk about stating the obvious....This guy obviously thinks he's onto something that not many other people realize.
He's also arrogant enough to make this sweeping generalization 'The second is that almost no journalists, and no geeks, have ever come across the concept of "the whole product", though it is well known to marketing people.' Everyone I know, be they geek or not, when evaluating an item tries to look at it from as many angles as possible. It's common sense.

True, but...

[atroxi]

True, Betamax is not of the same family and quality of Betacam, but Betacam was born of some of the concepts of Betamax - primarily tape size.

This site has a little information on the birth of Betacam. Certainly, the fact that consumer Betamax was a superior format out of the gate gave Sony's engineers a head start on development.

No, they're not as closely related as VHS & S-VHS, but there is a little more connection beyond just the Beta name.

Granted, I just operate the stuff. I'll have to ask my father-in-law (he's been a video engineer since there's been video to engineer) about the differences in how the signal gets recorded to tape and whatnot.

Game Consoles

[Vegan Pagan]

If popularity, compatibility, openness and ubiquitiy are keys to a technology's success, why is console gaming more popular than PC gaming despite being single vendor, taxed and censored by hardware manufacturers, and far less open and inflexible? How is console gaming so popular despite a complete replacement of available formats every five years? How could console gaming be so popular when said overhauls make thousands of games unplayable, usually never to be re-released?

In other news...

[SirDaShadow]

Why Windows was better than Linux, tonight at 10.

Re:The only convincing bit was... (WRONG!) FF prob

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, the Betamax leaves the tape loaded. That's why Beta has the skip-scan trick play.

The early VHS machines had to retract the tape into the shell for fast motion.

Why Beta lives on

[Mahatma Scarf]

The Guardian author ommitted one fact germane to any discussion of Betamax. It evolved into the broadcast standard format known as Betacam. It's used by just about every TV/video production company in the world. It'll be around longer than VHS.

Re:Why Beta lives on

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it did not evolve into Betacam. Betacam is totally different, but with a similar brand. Just like Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X (10) have similar names, but totally different technologies. Granted, Betacam was good for its time and price, but Betacam is not proof of Betamax's alleged success.

I'm glad this has finally been settled.

[Max Threshold]

Now, which is better: DVD-R or DVD+R?

niche != doom

[David Jao]

Linux is doomed to be a niche player

You are absolutely correct that Linux is likely to remain a niche player for the forseeable future. What you don't seem to understand, however, is that Linux can thrive as a niche player.

A lot of people do not realize how revolutionary that fact is. It is the critical difference between free software and everything that came before it.

Most people automatically assume that a platform has to be popular in order to thrive. This assumption is correct for commercial platforms (which require corporate revenues, and thus end users, to survive). However, it is false for open source platforms such as Linux. Even if Linux attracts no end user support whatsoever, it will continue to do well as long as it can keep the users it already has right now, most of whom are extraordinarily talented developers with both the means and the desire to continue contributing to its progress.

The only way Linux will ever die is if laws like the SSSCA are passed to make it illegal.

Beta Does Not Live On

[HereAllNight]

The Betacam format was not evolved from Betamax. Cam uses a radically different method of encoding the signals onto tape. It's worth noting that while Betacam was once popular among broadcasters, that it has been all but replaced by digital tape formats. The reason for that is because Betacam used a lot of analog voodoo to get a broadcast quality signal onto what was then a very small tape. Because Betacam took analog to its limits, it often fell down on the job. It was all too common to see a Betacam playback picture freak out and disappear into blotches of solid colors. That's why to this day, the 1" videotape format still rules in broadcasting.

Re:Beta Does Not Live On

[Ambient Sheep]

That's why to this day, the 1" videotape format still rules in broadcasting

8-| It may do in your part of the world, but in the U.K. 1" has been more-or-less dead for many years. It's all Digital Betacam now (with some D3 & D5), and before that there was a *lot* of Betacam SP (which caught on more in 625-line countries than 525, I think, but I could be wrong). Betacam-without-the-SP never really caught on over here because it wasn't good enough for 625-line broadcast use (which is one reason they came out with SP).

Betacam NOT Color Under!!!!!!!!!

[scottgfx]

Actually Betacam's direct competition was Panasonic "M Format". Both Betacam and M-Format came out around 1982. It predates MII by about four years. MII went up against Betacam-SP. Betacam and M-Format were oxide tape based. Betacam and M-Format used Betamax and VHS cassettes respectively. Beta-SP and M-II were metal tape based. M-II discontinued the use of the VHS "M" tape wrap and actually was more similar to Betamax with it's "beta" tape wrap which was more gentle to the tape. M-II also used a different cassette shell from "M" or VHS. Betacam-SP could still play back and record oxide Betacam tapes. What this basicly means is that Sony allowed for backwards compatibility and Panasonic did not. Also, the only major US adopter of M-II was NBC and some of their affiliates. I remember watching Letterman on NBC when they went to M-II and noticed TONS of dropouts! The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson refued to switch and continued to record on 1" Type-C.

Neither Betacam, nor M-Format used "Color-Under" for recording. "Color Under" is a composite system of doing a frequency shift of the chroma to place it under the luminance. Betacam and M-Format were component based. Standard Betacam recorded Luminance and Chroma on separate tracks.

The "Real" hands-down quality winner was a 2-inch Helicial format made in the `70's by a company called IVC.

For a history lesson, go to http://www.lionlmb.org/quadpark.html

Re:Betacam NOT Color Under!!!!!!!!!

[HereAllNight]

Good stuff!! Nice to see some more authoritative information.

I remember watching a Letterman segment taped on-location, and noticing the 1" portable recorder they were using. They must have switched back at CBS. Back then they were still doing "60 Minutes" on film!

As far as backwards compatibility was concerned, I think it needs to be clarified that Betacam decks were NOT backwards-compatible with Betamax. And although the cassette shells looked very similar, every single part inside was different. So it's erroneous to say that Betacam used Betamax tapes.

BTW, Betamax also used color under, not separate tracks. I never saw any 2" helical decks, although the 2" quads are still around here and there. They're so stable they don't even require a TBC!

Re:Betacam NOT Color Under!!!!!!!!!

[scottgfx]

Very true. The invention of the digital time base corrector allowed helical scan systems to produce "broadcast quality" images. I have read about "analog" TBC systems for some 2" quad machines.

I saw one of those Ampex-Nagra 1" portable machines on ebay. They are very rare and collectable.

Actually you could use a standard oxide Betamax cassette in an original Betacam machine, just don't expect any kind of interchange. If you attempt to play a betacam tape in a betamax, you will get no video, but you can hear some poor quality audio going way too fast.

I have two BVW-40s that were given to me, one actually works and is in great condition. Usually machines like that are beat to hell!

But Nothing

[HereAllNight]

Tape size? VHS also uses 1/2" tape. So what? No, Betacam is in a completely different "family" than Betamax.

It's too bad that you have failed to grasp the point of the article--that Betamax is NOT superior. Maybe your father in-law can explain it to you when he tells you how Betacam records in a totally different way.

Here It Is

[HereAllNight]

I don't recall an explanation of BetaMax's supposed superiority.

The Betamax specification specifies a maximum luminance bandwidth of (roughly) 3 MHz, producing a horizontal resolution of 240 lines per NTSC testing methods. The first VHS specification had a luma bandwidth that was only .2 MHz less, and so the number of lines was 220 or so. In practice, this difference was negligible to the home viewer, and was only of value to salespeople who bombarded the hapless shopper with a slew of numbers that neither really appreciated the significance of.

So you see, it was nothing more than a pissing contest that proved nothing. You can brag all day that your penis is 2mm longer than your friend's, but if you can't get any girls, what does it matter?

In the mid 80s JVC amended the VHS specifications to allow a hair more luma bandwidth than Betamax, and at that point, all technical superiority that Betamax owners could boast of came to an end. Later on there were extensions to the basic formats, called S-VHS and Super-Betamax. Again Sony went for brinksmanship in numbers, boasting 400 lines of horizontal resolution to S-VHS's 350. The problem was that NTSC video signals only had a resolution of 330 lines to begin with, so the big numbers got you nothing.

In the 1980s, advances in technology got to the point that Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic) started selling compact VCR decks for electronic news-gathering (ENG) use, that could be connected directly to a video camera. Sony's was called Betacam, and used a cassette that was the same basic size and shape as the Betamax cassette, but that's all they had in common. Betacam was a component video recording format, while Betamax and VHS were composite color-under formats. "Color-under" meant the color information was recorded separately from the luminance (think "black and white") signal. Composite recorded the red, green and blue output from the camera without first encoding into NTSC composite. This had a number of technical advantages for video production, but was vastly more expensive.

Betamax recorders were designed to take the tape out of the cassette, and thread it into the machine whenever a tape was inserted. This was done to save time, since the Beta tape path was long and convoluted, taking a long time to load. The problem was that if the deck malfunctioned (and they often did!), your tape was stuck inside the machine, and couldn't be removed without an expensive service call. In contrast, VHS tapes stayed in their shells until you wanted to use them. This made for much faster rewinding, and saved many tapes.

A few things better than anyone else...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sony Aibo toys.

The Sony Clie PalmOS devices.

PS1, PS2, PS3...

No, I don't own any Sony... Wait, I don't think I do. Ah, yes, I do. That damnable 17" CRT Sony Trinitron tube wrapped in a Dell-branded case that refuses to die. (Nice tube. Don't ask, it was a freebie!) ARGH! I bet I have some Sony hiding elsewhere in random chips and designs as well.

Someday you will drive your Sony to the Sony to pick up some more Sony. "Honey? We're all out of Sony again!"

"Sony? Err, honey?"...

Ancient clients

[dachshund]

Look around at the applications that people run in corporations -- 30 year old COBOL apps, 10 year old UNIX apps, 15 year old XBASE apps that have been ported to the latest Visual FoxPro, 7 year old Visual BASIC apps that may or may not have been rebuilt with a recent version, DOS applications from the 80s, things that use BTrieve. All of this stuff is very real and in production.

And everything you say makes sense, if you're talking about servers. But we're not talking about servers, we're talking about desktops.

To carry your argument through to its logical conclusion, you'd see millions of employees interfacing with those machines using 20-year old clients: teletypes, maybe early CRT machines. Yuck.

But you don't see that. Go into the average large business today, even one that makes use of some ancient customer app, and you'll see a bunch of relatively modern Windows boxes interfaced through telnet or some web interface. And that's the key: does a free client OS have a decent telnet or web interface? Then why in god's name should I spend $xx for all of those clients?

Re:Help

[stanmann]

And your answer is exactly why he should talk to a dermatologist and a dietician. Because every case of acne is different, and a dermatologist along with a dietician can help him discern the cause.

I'll download anything I darn well please. MP3 too

[A55M0NKEY]

Frankly morals have no bearing on copyright. There is no thou shalt not copy without paying a fee commandment. Copyright is a law designed to encourage the production of art and prose and patents are designed to promote more new technology. More cartoons/music/gizmos is a societal goal that I do not agree with enough to shell out cash if I don't have to. Sorry, that is a donation I'm not willing to make. I'll give to the poor if I feel generous. Downloading MP3s is not stealing it's copying and nobody can stop me from doing it, so I'll guiltlessly pirate anything I want.

Re:Not this crap again. - FAST FORWARD better VHS

[jandrese]

Excellent troll. Hoping that nobody on Slashdot would have enough technical knowledge of archaic hardware to yell "bullshit".

Re:I'll download anything I darn well please. MP3

[acarey]

There is no thou shalt not copy without paying a fee commandment.

There is a "thou shalt not steal commandment", though.

Downloading MP3s is not stealing it's copying

Oh, right. I forgot. Silly me!

So if I find your credit card number online and download that, that's not stealing, that's just copying, right? Cool!

$30-50 VCR's?!

[phr2]

Are you serious? I've never seen a new VCR for anything like that amount. I may have seen them for $100 but I thought they were normally always $150 or over. Am I asleep? I don't know about VCR's that much, I've never actually bought one.

Yep

[A55M0NKEY]

As long as you don't charge anything to it, you're welcome to it.

It doesn't matter since MD's transfer rates

[Anonymous Coward]

sucked.

Re:I'll download anything I darn well please. MP3

[llamaluvr]

More cartoons/music/gizmos is a societal goal that I do not agree with enough to shell out cash if I don't have to. Sorry, that is a donation I'm not willing to make.

So, suppose I go to your workplace and demand your company's services, but then I refuse to pay because I don't feel that it's worth my money. Doesn't seem right, eh?

And if you don't agree with "more cartoons/music/gizmos", then why the heck are you downloading them?

Re:Not this crap again. - FAST FORWARD better VHS

[Ambient Sheep]

If Beta was unsuited to Video Cameras then why was it the defacto standard for profession use video cameras (Reporters & such) up until recently.

No it wasn't. Betacam SP was. Betacam != Betamax. Do not confuse the two. Betacam is a semi-professional format, later upgraded to fully professional/broadcast Betacam SP. Betamax shares some physical similarities with Betacam but the former was a home system from the word go.

The broadcast standard nowadays tends to be Digital Betacam. Mini-DV tends to be only used by semi-pros, and I would guess that SVHS is nearly dead now as well.

Obconfuciusquote

[diskonaut]

"The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell." --Confucius

Re:I'll download anything I darn well please. MP3

[A55M0NKEY]

You could demand all you want. Doesn't mean you'd get anything. If you make a threat then the police would give you a ride in their car tho.

Re:I'll download anything I darn well please. MP3

[Anonymous Coward]

You misunderstand the argument. Services cannot be copied. Someone's money or credit cannot be copied (well maybe money can but that's another story). However images and sounds can be copied. When you take your "copy" the whole original is still with the previous owner. That is the difference between stealing and copying.

When you steal you deprive the owner of the original object. When you copy, you may diminish the value of the original, but the original is left intact.

It was Porn I hear

[Anonymous Coward]

That the owner of Betamax refused to let it be used for porn. And so VHS went on to sell alot more units instead.