Betamax Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Betamax was a 12.7 mm (1/2-inch) home video tape recording format engineered by Sony. It was derived from the earlier professional 19.1 mm (3/4-inch) U-matic video cassette format. Like VHS, it had no guard band, and used recording azimuth to reduce cross-talk. Some say the name "Betamax" was derived from a Japanese phrase (beta raw + gaki write). However, the system's trademark punningly incorporated the Greek letter β. It was marketed under the Betacord name by Sanyo, but was often referred to as just Beta.
For home use, Betamax lost over VHS despite a huge marketing push by Sony. In his autobiography, Sony founder Akio Morita attributes this to Sony's refusal to license the format, allowing the technically inferior VHS format to get "critical mass". Others believe that the shorter recording time of Betamax was the factor that retarded its early consumer adoption, a problem that led Sony into a race in the 1980s to increase the capacity of the format, one they never were ahead in for very long.
Once VHS had achieved a critical mass in terms of the installed base of home video recorders, the rest of the Betamax marketing chain collapsed. Subsequent developments such as "VHS-HQ", and multi-head technology saw VHS equalling the technical superiority of Beta. Eventually, Sony started producing its own VHS format recorders, effectively conceding the "format war". The last American model appeared on the market in 1993, and overseas production of Betamax VCRs had completely halted by 1998. Sony continued manufacturing a limited number of Betamax VCRs for the Japanese market until 2002, when they officially announced the end of the Betamax consumer line.
The process by which VHS won over the apparently superior Betamax format has become a classic case study in marketing, to the point of the creation of a nounal verb "to Betamax" where a proprietary technology format is overwhelmed in the market by another format that allows multiple competing licensed manufacturers, as in "Apple Betamaxed themselves out of the PC market".
Surprisingly it appears Sony never learned the Betamax lesson themselves, and have repeatedly attempted to introduce similar technologies with similarly limited appeal. For instance, it appears that the recent Memory Stick system offers no technical advantages at all over the almost identical MMC system, yet Sony continues to advertise Memory Stick and offer it as the only removable media standard on their own consumer electronics and computers.
Technologies such as Betacam evolved from the Beta format and became the most widely used professional recording format by television stations until it was surpassed by digital media at the end of the 1990s. The Jerry Springer Show records all shows on Betacam.
One other major result of the introduction of the Betamax technology was a lawsuit, Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before the legality of home videotaping was finally determined. The court judgement held that home videotape recorders were a legal technology since they had "substantial non-infringing uses".
See also: video cassette recorder, VHS, network externality, whole product, tipping point
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An episode of Cowboy Bebop (1999) featured a scene in which some of the characters acquire an antique videocassette and undertake an arduous journey to find a working machine to play it on. Their efforts are undermined by their technical and historical ignorance, as they attempt to use the Betamax cassette in a VHS deck.External links