Why Sony's Beta Videotape System Failed--and failed hard (Part 1)

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voxadam · 2023-02 · Recommendation

The YouTube channel Technology Connections has a few good videos talking about how and why Betamax failed. Why Sony's Beta Videotape System Failed--and failed hard (Part 1) - [VIDEO] Why Sony's Beta Videotape System Failed--Part 2 - [LINK] The VHS cassette was more clever than Beta - [LINK]

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anyfoo · 2022-02 · Recommendation

From the article: "I’m not a binge watcher. I’ve never been much of a TV viewer. I didn’t even own a television until my mid-30s. [...] but I get restless if I spend too much time staring into that flickering screen. My wife Tara has a similar attitude." This honestly makes me wonder "ok, why should I listen to you, then?" It doesn't help that they then go ahead and give an, at best, oversimplified explanation of why VHS won against Beta.[1] Not a single mention of one of VHS's killer features versus Beta: Tape length. (And calling Windows , of all OSes, an "open operating system"... oh dear, I get the point you are trying to make, but "open" and 90's anti-trust Microsoft in the same sentence is pretty bold.) Maybe the conclusions are still valid, I can't tell. I remember that what made Netflix so immensely attractive to me, a "binge watcher" of many many TV shows and with many friends who were at least to some extent binge watchers, was that Netflix was the platform that had all the movies and especially TV shows that I wanted to binge watch. [1] Here's a very good video going into details: [VIDEO]

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leoc · 2026-08 · Reference

While a worse format surely could have won something like the video wars, it doesn't seem that VHS was in fact the worse format overall: [VIDEO] (Part 2: [LINK] . Quality comparison: [LINK] ) Beta was basically optimised for one thing, reasonable cassette size, and the tradeoffs turned out probably not to be worth it.

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