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Originally Posted by JSWolf
Actually, marketing has nothing to do with beta vs. VHS. What one the battle was that porn came out on VHS first (or was it more porn came out on VHS?). But anyway, VHS won because of porn.
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That's an urban myth; see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war
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...Sony, being the first producer to offer their technology, thought it would establish Betamax as the leading format. This kind of lock-in and path dependence is exactly what economists point out as the Betamax weak link.
Further driving the VHS format was its inherent 2 hour playback time - a much better fit for Hollywood movies and which spawned the huge video rental business that flourished in the 90's. Being able to watch Hollywood rental movies was a major reason for North American consumers to purchase a VCR. To their credit, executives at JVC foresaw this and thus the VHS format's Standard Play time of 120 minutes was VHS's design goal right from the beginning. On the other hand virtually all commercially pre-recorded Beta titles were done in Beta II (half) speed in order to achieve a 2 hour playback time with some loss of picture quality.
What Sony didn't take into account was what the consumers wanted. Sony believed that having better quality recordings was the key to success, whereas it soon became clear that consumer desire was focused more intently on recording time and compatibility for easy transfer of information.
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