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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?"
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
rage, rage against the dying of the light
http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/beta_vs_vh
True. See e.g. Urbanlegends.com's beta vs vhs page.
Sumner
rage, rage against the dying of the light
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
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.
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?
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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!
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
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.
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.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
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.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
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.
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.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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).
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.
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.
Ever wonder what VHS stands for?
It stands for Vertical Helix Scan
now you know and knowing is half the battle...
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..
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.
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
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.
... right, back to the topic though ;)
No, MPEG IMX doesn't sit above Digi Beta, but it is an important format.
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.
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.
Amen to that.
In my experience *nixers are eliteist bastards the lot of them, no wonder people still use Windows.
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.
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."
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.
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.