Quote:
Originally Posted by SeaKing
You probably are too young to remember the BetaMax. I had a brother in law that swore by them. They had better specs than the VHS machines, but eventually lost out to better marketing.
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Beta did have slightly better specs than VHS - noticeable, but not spectacular. Their biggest problem was that Betamax tapes would initially only 60 minutes, while VHS tapes would record for 120 minutes. Consumers seemed to find the two hour recording time more important than the slightly better performance. The difference between one and two hours was huge, though, because it meant that you could record a movie from TV or cable on one VHS tape...which also meant that you could do it unattended. (I remember some movie channels used to put classic movies on at 3:00 a.m. to assist in the recording process).
(Beta eventually made its tapes longer, losing some quality in the process; VHS also made its tapes better - but Beta was never quite as long as VHS, and VHS+ was never quite as good as the newer beta formats...but VHS had already won the format wars before these developments played out.)