Betamax: Old Technology Returns Once More

[Music] Trinitron TVs the Walkman the CD the PlayStation video game consoles the DVD what have all of these got in common they were all developed by sony Sony was founded on May the 7th of 1946 making them 74 years old since then they've become a multinational conglomerate specializing in all kinds of industries from consumer electronics to compete to hardware but there was one product released on May the 10th 1975 this sticks out for me it competed with something else and lost but it left a good impression and lives under reputation have been the first commercially successful magnetic tape format does this B look familiar well you should do because that's the logo for Sony's video cassette recording system the Betamax [Music] although videotape and magnetic tape was developed in Germany in 1928 Sony wouldn't experiment with it until 1969 they would experiment with a video cassette format which they would call the U Matic it would go on sale in 1971 Sony reached agreement with the metal sheet electric industrial company now known as Panasonic and the victor company of Japan or JVC as well as five other non Japanese manufacturers the resolution for this cassette along with their later invention and its rival would use composite video transmission cables typically having a 480 I or 576i resolution countries using the NTSC format would have the 480 I resolution whilst power and say cam users without the 576 version you may recognize these colored cables as they're also called RCA connectors or RCA cables being invented in the 1940s by the Radio Corporation of America the yellow one is the composite video cable whilst the red and white cause of for audio unlike any other video cassettes of that era when playing a pneumatic tape the reels rotate in opposite directions when playing normally fast-forwarding and rewinding one real would run clockwise and the other one would run anti-clockwise the u-matic was named after the shape of the tape path when it was threaded around the video head drum this giant thing here it would go around the drum 180 degrees creating a u-shape some people call this a u loading system the process like any other major format is called helical scan the first generation of U Matic VCRs were very large and thus very heavy they are approximately thirty inches wide 24 inches deep and 12 inches high this would have definitely been an inconvenience for owners since they would require special shelving early machines also have mechanical controls limited to record play rewind fast-forward stop and pause later models have improvements such as Dolby audio noise reduction remote controls vertical interval timecode or EITC etc as mentioned before the u-matic have issues like damage due to friction to visuals and noises and trouble producing the color red not to mention recording time was limited to one hour per cassette the recording time for normal cassettes didn't increase whatsoever throughout the human ethics life to be perfectly honest the pneumatic wasn't entirely successful but it was rather innovative in clever in 2012 an internationally produced film called no was produced and uniquely it was filmed using pneumatic tapes the film was very successful being nominated and winning several awards the Ematic was thought as achieved well specified product and was used in television programming for a couple of years but has since been discontinued the u-matic was among the first four months to contain the video tape inside a cassette of some kind and even though it did have quite a few drawbacks it was an interesting piece of technology for the time you could think of the you Matic as like a test to see what would come out of it for their later product of course like any other format Sony proudly made video demonstrations however there's something awfully creepy about the u-matic video demo they released in 1971 have a look for yourself hello this video tape demonstration has been recorded on the Sony color video cassette and is being played by the Sony color video cassette system [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Sonne would repeat this odd marketing technique when they released their next home video format in late 1974 under cross into early 1975 Sony met with the executives at Matsushita to discuss the forthcoming home video market as mentioned earlier both companies had previously worked together with the u Matic Sony brought a prototype of what they would release in 1975 for master sheeta's engineers to analyze I did mention that Sony also made an agreement with JVC when it came to the u Matic but sometime during the 1970s JVC broke the agreement and began to work alone at a later meeting JVC showed Sony and Panasonic their home video format prototype and said to them it was not too late to embrace their idea for the good of the industry however Sony dismissed this as they felt it was too close to the production of their invention to understand and agree eventually after years of making and finalizing on May the 10th 1975 Sony released the Betamax home video format in Japan and this was a demonstration tape that came with it [Music] [Music] anyway this is what looks inside of beta machine this giant circular thing is called the head drum the rollers inside this machine carry the tape around the drum almost in a 360-degree fashion like with other formats at the time the process is called helical scan the name beta was chosen because the word beta is the Japanese word used to describe the way in which signals are recorded onto the tape it was also chosen because the shape of the lowercase Greek letter beta resembles the course of the tape through the transport this is why some people call the mechanism a B a load system oh and if you're wondering in the UK we pronounce it Betamax rather than Betamax by November of 1975 the United States had a taste of the Betamax system with the LD 1 901 console this is a color TV monitor with a mounted Betamax system on it you have to remember that at this stage the Betamax was made so you could record TV programs but not at home so you could come home and watch what you missed before 1975 there was no proper way of doing this Sony used slogans like watch whatever whenever and heavily advertised what it could do throughout the 1970s when it launched the maximum recording tone was one hour but that increased to five hours as Sony continued to develop it as I said earlier though surely didn't know what JVC was doing what they were doing is what some Betamax fans have called a sloppy knockoff ever since the u-matic launched JVC had been working on something similar to the Betamax but slightly larger and with more tape inside JVC really pushed their invention particularly after showing Sony in 1975 on September the 9th 1976 JVC unveiled the video home system or VHS to the public two years before in 1974 the Ministry of International Trade and Industry or MIT I wanted to avoid consumer confusion so they attempted to force a Japanese video industry to standardize on just one home video recording format when Sony was just about ready to launch the Betamax the MIT I were persuaded by Sony to adopt the Betamax system they were then allowed to license the technology to other company jvc believed that an open standard where no licensing was needed was better jvc will to convince other companies to accept their system not just in Japan but across the globe by the end of the 1970s they're vicious was in Japan the United States and the United Kingdom the VHS worked almost exactly the same as the Betamax using helical scan insight machines there is still a drum and heads except the loading system is called an EM load because of the way it wraps around the head forming a weird M shape so now we have two similar formats both might look innocent but both wanted a rule the consumer market with an iron fist what did they do how would they do it why did they do it well the videotape format war as is usually called has a lot more to it than just numbers both Sony and JVC improved their ideas significantly throughout the late 1970s and the battle continued all the way into the late 80s so we have a lot to go through here together out of the way now many people believe that VHS one because there were more adult films available on that format rather than Betamax that is entirely false both formats had adult films it wasn't up to Jayde we see also need to decide what would be released onto VHS and beta most of the time taste would be fabricated by different companies and neither JVC or Sony had a proper home video company and even then that was an original purpose of these products they were created so you could record television programs were not at home it was only later when companies realized that they could rip films onto VHS and Betamax from a master that that came the most universal use for it they were just some manufacturers of the machines and related accessories more on those later on for now here's a lot of numbers as mentioned earlier when the Betamax launched the maximum you could fit onto the tape was an hour this is because of the smaller size of the cassettes one betta cassette is fifteen point six by nine point six by two point five centimeters one VHS tape is eighteen point seven by ten point two by three point five centimeters the weight of the cassettes doesn't matter as neither were heavy no matter how much tape was inside however weight was a huge deal when it came to the machines depending on the manufacturer the weight of the machines will differ but a 1979 Betamax video cassette weighed thirty-six pounds or roughly sixteen point three kilograms a JVC HR 33 hundred feet away twenty nine and a half pounds or approximately thirteen point four kilograms so VHS machines were ever so slightly lighter the weight of these two formers may not seem that important in today's world but back then the weight of the player would impact the material cost shipping costs and assembly time due to the overall lighter weight of the VHS machines they would usually be cheaper so more would have been sold and JVC would have gained a higher monopoly as mentioned before when JVC launched their video home system the recording time was two hours that would have been enough time for a film one thing I find rather interesting is that the recording time was sort of Goff Stover by Sony what you're currently watching is a Betamax salesman training video from 1977 watch this little clip of it how much gonna get on there you can record up to 60 minutes on a single Betamax cassette and the great duty of videotape is you can use the same cassette over and over rerecord notice how the salesman is more interested in how reusable the Betamax is rather than how much you can record on it the original question the customer asked was how much can you record not is it reusable the way the salesman quickly moves on kind of implies that the recording time was overlooked he's more interested in the Betamax longevity rather than how much you can fit on one tape here's some more figures for you when the Betamax launched in 1975 they tabled me about 1.5 7 inches per second or IPs offering a resolution of 250 lines lower video noise and less chroma crosstalk than its rival this was called beta 1 a normal VHS tape would move up 1.31 IPs allowing the system to be able to record for 2 hours Sony quickly realized that in order for their invention to offer the same capacity they have to bring the speed down hence beta 2 beta 2 another tape to move at naught point seven nine inches per second which did get them a two hour recording time but this lowered the resolution by ten lines in other words Sony was very fiddly and wanted everything to be exactly right this fiddling led to the VHS becoming dominant and by 1980 they controlled 60% of the North American market by 1981 Sony fell into a hole in the u.s. Betamax sales had dipped to only 25% there have been many debates on why this happened many of service was because of Sony's marketing and licensing strategy Sony didn't allow that many companies to make Betamax machines they did eventually give licensing rights to sanyo Toshiba NEC and a few other Kahn but not many JDC allowed dozens of other companies to make VHS players with all different specifications and prices this quickly allowed the VHS to grow especially by 1981 in terms of marketing both JVC and Sony went completely different ways Sony used most of their energy on time shifting and how you could watch whatever whenever they simply didn't see the future when it came to the Betamax and only really focused on what can be done rather than what should be done JVC along with many other manufacturers of VHS were more open and spend more time and money creating relationships but the currently developing video rental market hence the home video industry this would be very important for other 1980s since video rental stores particularly family-run ones appeared all over the place despite the marketing differences and many companies still made both VHS and beta tapes to please both types of consumers during 1982 Roadshow home video began releasing his first titles in Australia and RSA Columbia Pictures Home Video began operation [Music] around this time Sony realized that if they made accessories and beige related products they could earn more money before they get onto that I always quickly tell you about the common Betamax tape lengths the number corresponds to how long the tape was in feet the main ones are L 1 through 5 L 165 L 250 L 370 L 500 L 750 and L 8:30 with these new tapes and maximum you could get on one tape was five hours using an L 830 cassette on beta3 mode yes beta 3 was a thing these lengths would become more important later on along with the Betamax Sony released 15 Betamax related products or at least 15 other products with beta in its name these include Sony beta high five beta flex beta can betacam SP betacam s X beta Cart beta me V beta scam beta scan to beta skip scan digital beta can II D beta to super beta movie super beta and super beta hi-fi I'm not going to talk about all of them since some of them don't even have a Wikipedia page the ones were interested in are beta - betacam beta movie edy beta and super beta the first of these five to come around was beta can released on August 7th 1982 several people seemed to confuse betacam with Betamax some say that beta might continue to be used in the professional market way after the 1980s they think it lost in the consumer market but was more popular in the professional market however that was in fact the job of the betacam after the format war ended it was still in use from til around 2006 beta comma still brought up stay for archival purposes up next is bata movie released sometime in 1983 unfortunately I couldn't get an exact date the beta movie is a brand name for a range of consumer grade camcorders in this sense a camcorder is a single unit comprising of a video camera and a video recorder it would allow you to record life's moments on a regular bottle mats cassette you'd then place the cassette into a Betamax VCR when you get home and read watch what you recorded in its own way beta movie was a revelation cameras were definitely not new in the 1980s but for home use beta movie was the first of its kind or at least the first to be commercially successful using an L 830 tape you could record up to two hundred and sixteen minutes or three hours and 36 minutes using the pal encode and fridge of minutes or five hours using the NTSC standard on beta 3 for home use this was easily plenty however like with everything there were some drawbacks firstly this took a while to construct Betamax cassettes were smaller so it should have been easy to fit all of the essentials from a beta play into a camcorder however this was actually a problem the silver-haired Drummond beta players were usually larger than those seen in VHS players so somehow they had to shrink that head down to fit inside the camcorder this was very difficult but eventually it was manageable however this would lead to another issue with all these mechanical parts inside a small compact space these camcorders became rather heavy making them an inconvenience there was practically nothing Sony could do to make them lighter and easier to carry and the only other solution was a shoulder strap with all these limitations playback was also impossible on these cameras once you finish recording something you'd have to go back home place a beta cassette into your VCR and see what you've recorded the whole limitation of the product cut its life Sony moved on from it by the late 1980s long recording capabilities [Music] looks like betta movies a winner all around the third extra would be beta - beta - or beta high fidelity was an audio upgrade it's improved the playback of sound as if it was coming from a CD the result was an audio with an 80 decibel dynamic range with less than nor point naught naught 5% Wow and flutter some Sony anti C models were marketed as Wi-Fi ready this odd but clever slogan ended up working in countries using the NTSC television standard super Betamax or super beta was introduced to the world in early 1985 it's increased a resolution from 240 lines to 290 lines making a nearly identical copy of the live television the crema resolution was poor however limiting to approximately 30 lines of resolution whereas live broadcast commoners resolutions were over a hundred but overall if you had a super Betamax play with beta - you would be pleased by the sound and picture quality Sony pushed the upgrades again in 1988 with extended definition Betamax or edy beta this allowed the viewer to see up to 500 lines of resolution which for 1988 was very impressive however 1988 is considered the end of beta by many people so maybe if ad beta was available a couple of years before beta could have stuck around and in the consumer market for a few more years despite all the greatness these five extras brought JVC topped all of them before we get on to that though here are all the tape lengths or beta had three different modes beta 1 2 & 3 VHS had what we call standard play mode or SP long play mode or LP an extended play mode or EP the latter also being called super long play mode or SLP beta tapes were named after the tape length in feet jvc names though percent types based on the approximate running time on SP mode in the NTSC market the most common links were t20 T 32 xD T 90 to 120 T 140 to 150 T 160 T 180 T 200 T 210 and T 244 pal the most common tape types were ether T V 45 each 60 90 120 150 180 II 1 9 5 e 282 10 e 2 4 T and E 300 if you're in the UK and you have some VHS tapes if you're lucky the length of the tape would be printed on the bottom like this for example this 25th anniversary rocky VHS has a 1 - 9 printed on the side meaning that the whole tape from start to finish is approximately a hundred and twenty nine minutes long personally having it named after how many miss you could fit on the tape is better don't start saying that it's slightly irritating how it's always only in minutes and not in hours because that's not true some manufacturers like Sky put both the running time in minutes and in hours across the 1980s to compete with Sony JVC introduced its own extra bits and bobs these include D VHS s-vhs vhs-c VHS - VHS HQ and W VHS I have mentioned D VHS and W VHS before I won't speak about them again here since they were made after the video format wore out of the remaining Falls the first one to be introduced was VHS tape video movie camera panasonic proudly announces the new MC 10 vhs-c will be camera this was a tiny cassette with either 30 or 60 minutes available in one cassette it would normally be 92 by 58 by 20 millimeters several fans of beta say that JVC were always copying Sony's ideas well I'd like to disprove that word always boss beta movie made his first appearance in 1983 vhs-c was first available in 1982 like beta movie VHS he was used in camcorders recording life's moments however what made this more unique was an Isetta fitting a normal-sized VHS tape into a camcorder this little guy would go inside instead once done instead of having to go back home to see what you recorded you could just play it back on the spot this small advantage push it ahead of the competition significantly also instead of JVC having to make a load of new machines just for this tiny thing they made VHS see two VHS adapters you can still buy them on eBay this might seem like a downside but remember even if you didn't have an adapter playback was possible so you could simply see what you filmed from where you are since the cassette was smaller but cameras would be smaller lighter and therefore easy to operate when moving as you can probably guess VHS see was superior to beta movie and by the end of the 1980s Sony have moved on to a video 8 it's exactly the same concept but it's just a different cassette based on the 8 millimeter video format hilariously video age would eventually fail to because of VHS see still those who owned and used video aids found it to be comfortable it's a hundred and twenty minute capacity worked for those who had one and it was less bulky than what came before it the video eight begs the question though since it was very successful why couldn't they just do what JVC did and invent a smaller cursor with an optional adapter in the first place and not go through the huge struggle of using average-size beta tapes that question should be easy to answer but there doesn't seem to be one simple conclusion the other three inventions VHS hi-fi HQ and s VHS were all to improve the picture or sound s VHS or super VHS launched in 1987 and was perhaps the most useful at least when it came to recording times depending the TV standard in speed mode you could fit up to 15 hours on one tape that's three times longer than what the Betamax offered however as VHS only improve the television quality to 400 lines or CD beta was 500 VHS hi-fi arriving in 1984 like beta hi-fi improved the sound quality however it wasn't until the early nineteen nineties where it became more acceptable on VHS VCRs the sound was either at 70 decibels or 90 decibels longitudinal audio is recorded onto the narrow edge tracks of the tape but hi-five performance comes from two separate flying audio heads that record stereo sound over the full video tape width the portion traditionally reserved for video signals only the sound is laid down first deep within the tape next the video heads put down a picture signal this is depth multiplex audio FM recording the result is VHS quality pictures with sound performance that approaches the finest digital recordings an effective audio writing speed of nearly 230 inches per second television and music have just taken a quantum leap all this technological gubbins doesn't really matter today if you want a VCR normally just buy a nice cheap one on eBay perhaps with a remote and discard all the extras well these extras important back then though yes if you aren't into old technology half the information on Wikipedia would make no sense to you even I don't understand some of it but back then the differences in audio visuals marketing etc all matter and both companies tried as much as they could to impress and engage as many people as possible several say the 1988 was the final year for bata since everything that mattered was now on both formats but we seem more reliable or significant on VHS it's not wholly Sony's fault that they lost JDC another VHS collaborators saw what sony was doing and wanted to make their own version of what sony made but make it better sony was already heard when the war began because of the smaller cassette size and the tape length one hour was not enough and it still isn't today plus across 1983 and 84 there was a lawsuit many television film production giants noticed the Betamax infringed on their copyright companies were worried that people would begin recording live broadcasts on to tape and then sell them to make money Universal wasn't having it and so in 1984 they filed a lawsuit against the Sony Corporation of America colloquially known as the Betamax case this was a decision by the US Supreme Court which ruled that the making of individual copies of television shows for time shifting and private home purposes does not constitute copyright infringement but it is instead fair use so do you want this court battle and they guess they use it as an advantage to do whatever they wanted with the Betamax however copyright was effectively murdered by the home video industry and civilians began selling home recordings of films and shows to make money especially on the black market this is why at the beginning of many tapes from large film and TV companies have an anti-piracy blog he started off quite calm like this RCA Columbia Pictures one you should have noticed a red leading edge bearing the RCA Columbia Pictures logo on the cassette you are now watching if you didn't have a quick look now before the film starts if this video cassette hasn't got a red leading edge we'd like to hear about it but as time went on this system became even more abused so to quote unquote scare pirates this became a thing the Pirates are out to get you don't let them brand you with their mark piracy funds organized crime will destroy our film and video industry piracy cost jobs and will destroy our music and publishing industry piracy funds terrorism and will destroy our development and your future enjoyment don't touch the whole stuff coolness copyright copyright is a matter of fact if you have any knowledge of the manufacture or sale of counterfeit film and video product or related software after 88 Betamax was a virtually dead and Sony began to make VHS VCRs however Sony continue to develop Betamax into the 90s and 2000's the last Betamax recorder was made by Sony in 2002 on November the 10th 2015 Sony announced that it would no longer be working on Betamax cassettes production and sales ended in March of 2016 after almost 41 excruciating years VHS would meet the same fate after the DVD launched in 1986 and hitting the rest of the globe by 1999 manufacturers began to slow down and stop making VHS machines and cassettes by 2003 DVD would surpass them in sales from 2005 to 2007 several home entertainment companies switched to DVD entirely JVC themselves left VHS alone in 2008 vinay another Japanese company was the last to make any sort of VHS part doing so in July of 2016 it's very interesting how Betamax would fall in 1988 but they wouldn't die until 2016 alongside their nemesis the picture and Sony Betamax records a sharper picture than VHS that's not just our opinion in tests throughout the country more people said the picture was sharper with Sony Betamax than VHS so how many choices do you really have only one Sony Betamax a sharper picture [Music] after all these years Betamax is still brought up in conversations and videos people still preserve beta which is nice in today's world beta is seen as a more expensive and reverent machine you can still buy it back to tape some machines on ebay if you're lucky enough you can find some other yard sale or a car boot sale probably the biggest reason why people still keep Betamax players and tapes is because of nostalgia even though VHS one and many more people use and continue to use it rather than Betamax VHS will never take betas crown as the first majorly successful video tape recording formats VHS beat beta in pretty much everything but that doesn't mean that beta isn't an interesting format as we've clearly seen beta was clever and innovative but simply not as much as its main rival we can go even further if we want to there are a bunch of other long gone for memorable home video formats throughout the seventies and eighties RCA will get their turn eventually don't you worry thank you very much for watching this documentary I really hope you enjoyed it and I will see you all later good bye [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: CCGFilms

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Id: B4YbM_PVZcM

Length: 35min 28sec (2128 seconds)

Published: Sun May 10 2020