Betamax (sometimes called Beta ) is a home videocassette tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10 , 1975 . The cassettes contain 1/2-inch (12.7mm)-wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional 3/4-inch (19.05mm) U-matic format. The format is generally considered obsolete, though it is still used in specialist applications by a small minority of people.
Like the rival videotape format VHS (introduced in September 1976 by JVC), Betamax had no guard band and used azimuth recording to reduce crosstalk. According to Sony's own history webpages, the name came from a double meaning: beta being the Japanese word used to describe the way signals were recorded onto the tape, and from the fact that when the tape ran through the transport, it looked like the Greek letter beta (β). The suffix -max came from "maximum", to suggest greatness.
Sanyo marketed a version as Betacord , but this was also referred to casually as "Beta". In addition to Sony and Sanyo, Beta-format video recorders were also sold by Toshiba, Pioneer, Murphy, Aiwa, and NEC; the Zenith Electronics Corporation and WEGA Corporations contracted with Sony to produce VCRs for their product lines. Department stores like Sears (in the U.S. and Canada) and Quelle (Germany) sold Beta-format VCRs under their house brands, as did the RadioShack chain of electronic stores.
Betamax and VHS competed in a fierce format war, which saw VHS come out on top in most markets.
Home Movies
Two piece camera/VCR systems rapidly displaced Super 8 mm film as the medium of choice for shooting home movies and amateur films. These units included a portable VCR, which the photographer would be cary by a shoulder strap, and a separate camera, which was connected to the VCR by a special cable. At this point, Beta had several advantages over VHS systems. The smaller Beta cassette made for smaller and lighter VCRs. Beta's superior picture was important for home movies, whereas the longer recording times of VHS were seen as superfluous.
However, consumers wanted a one piece solution. The first one-piece consumer camcorder, the Betamovie, came from Sony. A major requirement for a one-piece camcorder was miniaturizing the record head drum. Sony's solution to this involved a nonstandard video signal which would become standard only when played back on full sized VCRs. A side effect of this was that Beta camcorders were record-only. Consumers saw this as a major limitation.
VHS manufacturers found a better solution to the drum miniaturization issue. (It involved four heads doing the work of two.) Because it used standard video signals, VHS camcorders could review footage in the camcorder and copy to another VCR for editing. (Two Beta decks and a Betamovie were required for similar functionality, and this still didn't allow a videographer to review footage in the field.) This shifted the home movie advantage dramatically away from Beta, and was a primary reason for the loss of Beta market share: Owners of Beta VCRs found that a VHS camcorder would allow them to copy and edit footage to their Beta deck - something that Betamovie could not do. And if rental movies were not available in Beta, they could rent them in VHS and use their camcorder to play them. Owners of VHS VCRs could also choose a variant camcorder format called . This used a miniaturized cassette to make a camcorder smaller and lighter then any Betamovie.
Sony could not duplicate the functinality of VHS camcorders, and seeing the rapid loss of market share, eventually introduced the Video8 format. Their hope was that Video8 could replace both Beta and VHS for all uses. For more information, see the article on camcorders.
The legacy of Betamax
The VHS format's defeat of the Betamax format became a classic marketing case study. Sony's attempt to dictate an industry standard backfired when JVC made the tactical decision to forgo Sony's offer of Betamax in favor of developing their own technology. They felt that it would end up like the U-Matic deal, with Sony dominating.
By 1980, JVC's VHS format controlled 70% of the North American market. The large economy of scale allowed VHS units to be introduced to the European market at a far lower cost than the rarer Betamax units. In the UK, Betamax held a 25% market share in 1981, but by 1986, it was down to 7.5% and continued to decline further. By 1984, forty companies utilized the VHS format in comparison with Beta's twelve. Sony finally conceded defeat in 1988 when it, too, began producing VHS recorders, though it continued to produce Betamax recorders.
In Japan, Betamax had more success and eventually evolved into Extended Definition Betamax, with 500+ lines of resolution, but eventually both Betamax and VHS were supplanted by laser-based technology. The last Sony Betamax was produced in 2002.
While most casual observers describe Betamax as an obsolete format, there is still a small but fervent group of enthusiastic supporters of the format who continue to use, maintain, and trade the machines and media. Many of these people maintain (on technical merits, not related to run time or availability of prerecorded titles, but more akin to professional video concerns) that Betamax is superior to VHS in many ways, including picture quality, tape wear, and system design and convenience of use. For many of these people, VHS never obsoleted Betamax, and DVD may not either; the discrepancy between their view and the mainstream arises from a difference in the criteria (i.e., the interests) on which they judge. Also, some appreciate Betamax decks as examples of superior engineering or innovation for the time—Sony's Betamax was first with many features, such as hi-fi sound, full threading on load (which allows faster transitions between stop, play, and fast winding tape transport modes), and digital freeze frame (never available on a large number of VHS recorder models), which VHS adopted later. Because of their high build quality, many Sony Betamax machines are still working well today, and high-featured models sell regularly for hundreds of dollars on eBay and elsewhere.
Home and professional recording
One other major consequence of the Betamax technology's introduction to the U.S. was the lawsuit Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios (1984, the "Betamax case"), with the U.S. Supreme Court determining home videotaping to be legal in the United States, wherein home videotape cassette recorders were a legal technology since they had substantial noninfringing uses. This precedent was later invoked in MGM v. Grokster (2005), where the high court agreed that the same "substantial noninfringing uses" standard applies to authors and vendors of peer-to-peer file sharing software (notably excepting those who "actively induce" copyright infringement through "purposeful, culpable expression and conduct").
In the professional and broadcast video industry, Sony's Betacam, derived from Betamax as a professional format, became one of several standard formats; production houses exchange footage on Betacam videocassettes, and the Betacam system became the most widely used videotape format in the ENG (Electronic News Gathering) industry, replacing the 3/4" U-matic tape format (which was the first practical and cost-effective portable videotape format for broadcast television, signaling the end of 16 mm film — and the phrase "film at 11" often heard on the six-o-clock newscast, before the film had been developed). The professional derivative of VHS, MII (aka Recam), faced off against Betacam and lost. Once Betacam became the de facto standard of the broadcast industry, its position in the professional market mirrored VHS' dominance in the home video market. On a technical level, Betacam and Betamax are similar in that both share the same videocassette shape, use the same oxide tape formulation with the same coercivity, and both record linear audio tracks on the same location of the videotape. But in the key area of video recording, Betacam and Betamax are completely different. BetaCam tapes are mechanically interchangeable with Betamax, but not electronically. BetaCam moves the tape at 12 cm/s, with different recording/encoding techniques. Betamax is a color-under system, with linear tape speeds ranging from 4 cm/s to 1.33 cm/s.
Sony also offered a range of industrial Betamax products, a Beta I-only format for industrial and institutional users. It was basically cheaper and smaller than U-Matic. The arrival of the Betacam system reduced the demand for both Industrial Beta and U-Matic equipment.
Betamax also had a significant part to play in the music recording industry, when Sony introduced its PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) digital recording system as an encoding box/PCM adaptor that connected to a Betamax recorder. The Sony PCM-F1 adaptor was sold with a companion Betamax VCR SL-2000 as a portable digital audio recording system. Many recording engineers used this system in the 1980s and 1990s to make their first digital master recordings.
Initially, Sony was able to tout several Betamax-only features, such as BetaScan—a high speed picture search in either directionâ€
Betamax video tape by Sony
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Betamax - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Betamax (sometimes called Beta) is a home videocassette tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain 1/2-inch (12.7mm)-wide videotape in ...
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Betamax was also the first format to support the QPS (Quick Porn Search) facility that allowed popular sections of tape to be quickly located using a patented tape wear sensor.
The Betamax Format
Information about the failed Betamax video tape format.
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Beta Fact. The head to tape speed is 5.832m/s compared to 4.86m/s for the other format which allows for greater carrier deviation and so increased resolution.
Category:Betamax tape - Wikimedia Commons
Media in category "Betamax tape" The following 3 files are in this category, out of 3 total.
Category:Betamax - Wikimedia Commons
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Betamax tape on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Betamax tape. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . Comments *ade says: Technically superior to VHS, yet the loser of that commercial battle. Posted 36 months ago.permalink