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Why VHS Was Better Than Betamax
Vladimir Kornea writes "This article argues that 'when someone buys and uses a product, the technological aspects are a small and often uninteresting part of the decision' and that the when the 'whole product' (a term commonly used among marketing people) is considered, VHS was better than Betamax, and that the Wintel PC is better than the alternatives." Update: 01/29 04:26 GMT by T : Apologies for the dupe.
Didn't this story run like yesterday?
This time, it's even pointing to the same exact article, not just the same story covered by someone else
A new all-time slashdot low...
VHS was better in the same sense that the Model T Ford was better. It was cheaper, mass-produced, and more easily obtainable by the average Joe. Betamax was a technically superior format, with cleaner chrominance and luminance signal encoding/decoding to/from the tape, but Sony was just too expensive and arrogant with the Betamax's market positioning. They could've mass-produced them more cheaply to compete, but failed to do so in the very beginning, when timing and window of opportunity for establishing the dominant format was critical.
At least, that's what they say in the FAQ. I suggest the people that whine about dupes read it. Heck, if it's a dupe story, don't read it. You've already read it. Go to next story. Big whooping deal.
It's not like all the slashdot stories reside in databases on OUR systems. It's their database. If they want to have redundant data in it (a.k.a. dupe stories), let them.
I have an old, Sanyo top-loader Beta that I bought with money from my first job in 1985 and it's still running. The picture quality on it is better than the five four-head, gee-whiz VHS turds that have died on me within a couple of years of ownership. VHS won the format battle because of one thing...PORN! You could squeeze 7 hours of porn on a VHS tape, but only 4 on a beta. Microsoft proved it...your stuff can be better and still fail commercially.
It's definitely an interesting concept, but I think one of the fundamental problems is actually one of language use. The term "better" is terribly overloaded and is being used in two different manners at the same time: 1)as a value judgement (i.e. VHS has more value to the consumer than Betamax) and 2)as a standard of quality (Betamax is a technically superior format).
In this article the author is trying to claim that the percieved wisdom of Betamax being "better" (instance #2) is wrong, which makes for a decent opening, but is still incorrect. On the grounds that they have chosen to disprove Betamax is still better, as it is the superior technical format. All they have done is claimed that VHS has added value to the consumer that makes it more desirable and thus "better" (instance #1). Not exactly a complex argument that requires more than a few sentences.
Interestingly enough what it really attempts to do is prove the same form of common wisdom that the article is so intent on claiming is true. Afterall, who hasn't known that VHS succeeded because it had more tapes available to rent and held more?
Kuro5hin is full of unbelievably pretentious people just *burning* to let each other know how intellectual they are.
Kuro5hin is chock-a-block full of flamebait articles - it's purpose is to incite pointless psuedo-intellectual pissing contests.
Slashdot's purpose is to provide links to news and articles of interest - if you want to discuss them here you can.
Slashdot is phenomenally popular because it provides something that huge numbers of people want.
Kuro5hin isn't, because it doesn't.
You may think your argument is exactly the same as the one being made in the article, but your argument is a bloody stupid one, and totally irellevant to the discussion.
Why not just piss off back to K5 and have an 'intellegant' discussion or whatever it is you think you're doing.
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
Oliver Wendel Jones stated that the test of the truth of an idea is its power to get accepted in the marketplace of ideas. While there is some validity to this notion, it lacks familiarity with a physical or logical discipline. Our society is blighted with a tendancy to ascribe anthropomorphic victory to an idea which has achieved greater acceptance. This blight is in part the reason we fall victim to other basic flaws in logical thinking which lead to such phenomenon as bigotry. If one loses the backwards need to declare victory of some kind, one can see that the popularity of an idea is no measure of its accuracy or validity. After all, if enough people think that individuals of african descent are less intelligent than those of european descent, does this make the idea true? Certainly it does not. But, at one time, it was widely accepted. If an idea becomes popular enough, it becomes deemed 'right' by those who have no intellectual ambition to see for themselves what they want to believe.
The intelligent thing to do is simply to point out that VHS was more popular than betamax. The mistake is to confuse popularity with quality. They are actually two different things.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
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. :)
I have to say that the author of this article doesn't understand why people talk about the way things ought to be. As in the case of the standard x86 system. He clames that PCs are better because more people use them therefor there is a greater support and software base... Duh! It doesn't change the fact that there is better technology out there and that the masses don't always make the best descisions. Simply, by his arguements the consumer chooses the better "whole product" and through that choice makes it the better "whole product". So what's the point of the article? I don't think the author could even give you a valid arguement for the existance of the article.
Sorry, I seem to be off-topic by posting about the actual article rather than about dupes, but here I go. (I missed the Sunday article due to travel so wouldn't have seen this but for the duplication.)
The Guardian article had this paragraph about DAT:
"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."
I don't think Schofield understands the DAT failure at all. He argues that it failed because it was inferior to C90s on a "whole product" basis. That's just bunk. In no way was it inferior to analog tape as a "whole product", except maybe the Serial Copy Management Scheme (if I remember the name). It failed because it was inferior to *Compact Disc* as a "whole product". There was no motivation to start collecting new releases in yet another digital format, and I think the phenomenon of taping one's music for archival purposes really declined after CDs became popular. So the only application was for creating mix tapes, or for recording live performances. And I think that cut way down on the demand for any new tape-based medium.
Now we've got MP3 or Ogg and the random access they provide, which of course is better (from a "whole product" stance) than any tape-based medium can be.
Windows is stuffed down your throat by a monopoly.
Freedom to choose hasn't occurred yet.
He is saying the popular device is the better device, Which is better ? A Toyota or a Aston Martin? Well they sure do sell allot more Toyotas.
Get a free ipod.
will be happy. This is a single case of what happened in consumer technology. Doesn't apply to all markets, all customers, or all products. Enough of this story already!
Onward to the Aether Sphere!