Quote:
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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I was an early adopter of Betamax and bought one in 1978 when they cost $1200!!
What really turned me to VHS was that VHS was the first to offer electonic tuners. This may seem caveman-like, but until around 1981 the tuners were analog knobs which had to be turned manually. You could set the Betamax to timeshift record, but you were limited to the one channel the tuner was tuned to before leaving the house.
An early RCA VHS offered electronic tuning, so it would switch channels while the user was away. This seems self-evident now, but in 1981 it was revolutionary, and cause many to switch (me included).
Sony offered this feature, but it was almost 2 years later, and the tide had turned.
Bottom line though....VHS was set up to record 2 hours at standard speed. Beta was set up to record one. So Beta had to make thinner and thinner tapes to keep up with VHS recording lengths...and the thinner tapes were unstable and tended to break or 'print through'.
VHS kept beating Beta to the market with features that the public wanted: longer recording times, channel switching, electronic marking on the tape for new recordings, and a host of others. Poor Beta could just not keep up.