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.

Comments

DUPE!

[dsmey]

Didn't this story run like yesterday?

Model T Ford

[Nick Driver]

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.

Re:Model T Ford

[urbazewski]

There's a subtle tautology involved in the author's claim that "the whole product" that cornered the market was superior. It's equivalent to saying that the product must have been better or people wouldn't have bought --- there's no way to falsify this claim.

If the whole product includes the network externalities involved with purchasing the dominant product, which is the argument that the author makes about 'Wintel PCs', then the superior technology is by definition the winning technology, and vice versa. I think we still want and need to separate out technological issues from the strategic marketing decisions. The "whole product" concept does not prove that an inferior technology cannot prevail in the marketplace, it simply defines the possibility out of existence.

annmariabell.com

Re:Model T Ford

[Bodrius]

The market doesn't choose what is "best" per se, and I don't think the article points in that direction.

The market chooses what the market WANTS.

According to some definitions of product, including the "whole product" idea used in the article, a "good product" is a product that matches the market demands.

In that sense, the "best product" is the one that gives the market what it wants, and by the nature of the market, the dominant players tend to do that in a free market.

That doesn't mean the product is "better" from a technical, moral, or whatever other point of view you want, except from the point of view that it meets the desires of consumers.

The consumers might want inefficient vehicles, lousy paperback novels, kitschy pop culture or education aimed at the attention span of a 3-year-old on a glucose overdose. That doesn't mean that they're better vehicles, literature, culture or education, but if the public is more willing to pay for those, by definition they're better "products".

Re:Perhaps this article can also explain

[CurlyG]

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.

Re:Why it was better....

[Paul E. Loeb]

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. :)

Weak arguements

[BytePusher]

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.