Bought my first VCR in Hawaii,BETA.Was great in Hawaii and Japan...âŠ..returned stateside and nobody knew what the **** BETA was.I still have the player,my daughters Christening,birthdays 1-4 along with some other childhood events are all on BETA.
Whistlebritches wrote:
Wouldnât it been a hoot if I sold it to you at NEX? We held a few Sony sales there with me helping to man the booth / area. Which model? 8600? 5000? 2500?
And yes, for a few years Beta dominated in many areas, especially Hawaii and Japan. Of course Sony was the first one to come out with videocassette recorders, the marketing was just pizz-poor. One of the stories is that Sony executives showed RCA a Betamax player and they loved it! BUT, they said for the US market, Americans would use VCRs to watch movies so the tapes had to be 2 hours long. The Sony execs were flabbergasted at the thought. Slowing down the tape speed would mean video quality degradation. Using a thinner tape would mean possible breakage.
So they said no.
Matsu****a (...or was it JVC?...) then showed RCA their system, got asked the same question and agreed to a 2-hour tape and branded them âVideo Home Systemâ or VHS for short. When consumers went into the stores looking for that âVideo something-thingamajiggy...â salesman would ask âVHS or Beta?â and most times the consumer, not really knowing the differences, would say VHS.
Sony also did a pizz-poor job of licensing the Beta technology. Iirc, only Toshiba, Sanyo and Fisher were onboard with Beta. Eventually each would just go with VHS.
But hereâs another little known fact, the Beta loading system is modeled after the Sony professional broadcasting tape loading system called U-Matic. When Sony was developing video tape recording for their professional division, they first came up with M-Wrap...but, as you can imagine the tape looping around multiple rollers to create that âMâ look, it caused more stress on the tape so their 2nd loading system was U-Matic...which became the industry standard. Less stress and better video quality. When Sony decided to market a home version of their video tape recorders, and used the U-Matic loading system, they dubbed it âBetaâ. As Delta would know, Beta is the 2nd letter in the Greek alphabet.
Sony would later license out the M-Wrap technology to Matsu****a and JVC. The deal, of course, was rather hush-hush but ultimately their success would lead to the downfall of Beta.
Fast forward a few years and Sony would learn from that fiasco and partner with Phillips to standardize compact discs. At the time, the two companies were trying to come out with their own versions for digital audio. Phillips was the inventor of cassettes so had a HUGE presence in the audio market. Sony, of course, was HUGE in the electronics hardware market. By partnering, the two giants would have a stranglehold on the new technology. Lesson learned...too bad they didnât know about some young whippersnapper named Steve Jobs....
