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

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

[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: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. :)