One of the inferiorities, IIRC, is dealt with shorthandedly: Sony didn't have any control over software — they didn't own a studio at the time — and couldn't guarantee title availability. So since people can't program their VCRs to this day, I can't imagine that pre-recorded tape length was that big an issue 20 years ago.

But i understand and appreciate the larger [ers[ective: don't get lost in the technical details if the product doesn't deliver the basic needs (dealt with at length in Cooper's "Inmates Are Running The Asylum").

(Sorry for any typos I haven't caught, carrot slicing accident earlier today whilst preparing a seitan She[herds Pie.

Posted by: Frank on January 27, 2003 10:25 PM

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This article is stupid. No one said that BetaMax won the consumer market over VHS. That's obvious. People say "the recording format of BetaMax was technically superior to that of VHS." Want proof? Check out a TV station that hasn't gone digital. Bet you find Beta tapes, and no VHS. The industry who knows best (not stupid consumers) chose Beta. Just because 95% of lemmings follow their bretheren off cliffs doesn't make dying superior to living. Insert jab of your choice about an operating system more lemmings use than all other lemmings combined...

Posted by: ~bc on January 27, 2003 11:31 PM

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Be very, very careful before you believe either side of this story.

I have been looking at the similar 'Qwerty is better than Dvorak' question/myth. Received wisdom is that Dvorak is better than Qwerty, but is unable to displace the Qwerty keyboard because the ubiquity of Qwerty (now that was weird, I almost 'forgot' how to type qwerty!)

The article which supposedly disspelled this myth was published in 1996 in Reason. When I came across references to this article I decided to dig a bit deeper and found a rebuttal to the article.

The co-author of the anti dvorak article has also published a book called Rethinking the Network Economy ( sample chapter here ).

This book also contains a chapter called "Videocassette Recording: The Betamax Case". Whilst I haven't read this book, I am assuming that this section will 'explain' why VHS is better than BetaMax.

The author of this book has an agenda, which is to prove that the Free Market is the best possible form of organisation and is never wrong. This means that whenever a supposedly inferior product gains significant market share, the product must be better than its competitors.

I think that the Flat Earth Society has a better case, and I would be very wary about accepting this argument without tracing the source of this information.

By the way, the REAL reason that VHS beat BetaMax in the mass market was that the VHS tapes are bigger than the BetaMax tapes and consumers thought that they were getting more for their money! It may seem silly, but it's true, honest !

Posted by: Mac on January 28, 2003 03:56 AM

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What I don't get is that if recording time was the crux of the issue, and Beta tapes weren't long enough to record a whole movie, what was on the rental tapes? Or did long movies come in a two-tape set?

The funny thing is I remember my dad buying a Beta unit first, and all it got used for was recording TV - as I recall there simply was no beta-format rental market around us. He later changed to VHS just to be able to rent movies.

And I later worked at a shop that still rented the RCA non-digital movie discs...anyone remember *those* beauties? ;)

Posted by: Boyink on January 28, 2003 08:13 AM

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Beta tapes, even L-750s, could not record a two-hour movie in highest-quality mode, equivalent to SP on VHS. I *own* a Betamax and adore it (it sits on top of two VHS VCRs) and am something of a fetishist.

Posted by: Joe Clark on January 29, 2003 11:18 PM

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