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

"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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[buggy_throwback]

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

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.

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.

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...

[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...

[starling]

VHS had two hour tapes...

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

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.

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

[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...

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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

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...

[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.

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...

[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.

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: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.

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!

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).

Tomorrow on Slashdot

[SlashdotLemming]

Why Iron was better than Bronze

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.

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...

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?

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..

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.

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 ;)

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.

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.

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?...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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?

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.

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: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.

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."

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.

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??