Say it’s 1979 and you’ve just decided to blow two whole paychecks on one of these
new fangled video cassette recorders. Congratulations on your life-changing decision! But now comes
the time to ask yourself, which one should you buy??? Two systems are vying for your
money, each packing their own set of unique features. A format war’s a brewin, how do
you know which choice is the right one??? Since a startlingly large percentage of viewers
may have never used or even seen a videocassette recorder, let’s just throw it in your face
and make clear that we’re talking about the format war between VHS, the winner which
was released in 1976 and stayed relevant until around 2003, and Betamax, the loser which
actually predated VHS by a year but became the butt of jokes by the late 1980’s. The
format war between Beta and VHS is widely studied even today in business classes the
world over. In this video, we’ll explore the history of the format war, and I’ll
be comparing two machines which were both on sale in 1979, and I think by the end you’ll
be able to see why VHS left Beta in the dust
Quick side notes--this video discusses the format war as it took place in the United
States. As such, Philip’s excellent and revolutionary Video 2000 format, which never
made it to the US, is not being discussed. Beta was not the first consumer videocassette
format--that title goes to Philips’ VCR format unless you count the professional U-Matic,
but Phillips was ultimately unsuccessful. Betamax is regarded as the first consumer
format to achieve any sort of widespread success.
Here we are. The pinnacle of modern engineering.
You can even smell it. Trust me, these machines smell….groovy. On the left, we have an RCA
VDT-600, a fully-featured VHS model built in Japan by the Matsushita corporation (the
parent of Panasonic) under license from the Japan Victor Company, or JVC, the inventors
of VHS, and branded and sold by the Radio Corporation of America, or RCA. Pay attention
to that jumbled mess of a who-built-it, because it will be important later. On our right,
we have a Sony SL-5400, a high-end Betamax model (which came to be known simply as Beta)
made in Japan by Sony, for Sony, and sold as a Sony. Glad we got that out of the way.
So let’s start with a physical overview of these two machines. In the looks department,
I’d say this is kind of a tie. The Sony doesn’t exactly look sleek, in fact it looks
kind of like a giant brick. Very sharp edges, and very straight lines. But, it’s fit-and-finish
is excellent, and the non-nonsense style almost makes it handsome. The clock is very clear
and attractive, with a charming programming display, and the buttons are labeled on both
the top and the edge. The RCA, on the other hand, looks a fair bit bulkier, but you could
say more interesting. It’s sloping front allows the clock-timer to be seen from a top-down
view, and helps to minimise its bulky appearance. But the buttons are far clunkier, with weird
color choices for their tops. RCAs decision to use mixed-case font for labeling makes
the machine appear perhaps a little less professional, but sort of gives it some modern-day charm.
Tuning channels is accomplished on the RCA behind this front panel, where you’ll also
find the tracking knob. Channel tuning on the Sony is done up top. See in these days,
electronic tuners were hella expensive. So instead, VCR’s had either big-’ol knobs
like this, or they’d have a series of tiny mechanical tuners each tied to a button. You’d
pick which 14 or so channels you’d want to be able to record, and set them with these
little switches and thumbwheels. Then you’d simply select between them with the buttons,
with each button corresponding to one of these doohickeys. Often the VCR would come with
replacement inserts to label these with the actual channel numbers.
Sony gives you camera inputs on the front of the machine, but the audio input is strangely
a ⅛ inch audio jack rather than a standard plug. RCA gives you standard connections,
but they are in back. Interestingly, the Sony machine has hardly any LEDs used in its design.
Apart from the timer programming display for tape length and this one little indicator,
all of the lights are either small incandescent bulbs, or in the case of the channel indicators,
tiny green fluorescent lamps, similar to the ordinary orange neon lamp you find in a power
strip, but with a green phosphor coating the inside of the glass envelope. The RCA model,
on the other hand, makes extensive use of LEDs, the only incandescent bulb being located
inside the cassette mechanism, working as part of the end-of-tape sensor.
Let’s get all touchy-feely. When using these machines, there’s a clear winner in the
ergonomics department. The Sony was obviously designed to make the operational experience
a pleasant one. The power switch moves silently--no click here--but decisively with clear physical
indentations between its positions. Each of the piano-key buttons is easy to press. And
when you press eject to raise the cassette tray, the machine seems to greet you with
a fine, may I have your cassette, sir? When you lower the cassette into the machine, it
immediately makes the most anti-climactic sound in the history of ever, the sound coming
from the action of threading the tape. See, Beta machines usually kept the tape threaded
at all times, even during fast forwarding or rewinding, but there are exceptions, notably
Sanyo built machines. Again, pressing play takes little force, and as the tape is already
threaded, you get a picture pretty quickly.
Now here’s where the RCA machine starts to look bad. The power switch isn’t quite
so nice, no it’s not a bad switch, but not a satisfying one. It’s just a switch. The
red LED lights up, and for those wondering why there’s an indicator for Dew, that’s
because these early VCRs were often lugged around with a camera to record life’s precious
moments, and RCA, I mean Matsushita, added a dew sensor to prevent operation of the machine
if a cold VCR was brought into a warm, humid room, causing condensation to form on mechanical
components. Pretty thoughtful, actually. Anyway, back to business. Pressing the eject button
on this machine requires smashing your finger into the button like you smash X when playing
Gran Turismo 3. Once you’ve hurt your finger enough to actually release the tray, the machine
says GIMME A TAPE! No money spent on dampers here, no sir. Lowering the
tape into the machine does, well, nothing. This machine won’t do a thing until you
press a button. Get ready, cause that play button isn’t any easier to press. Once you’ve
jammed it in there, the machine then lazily threads the tape around the head drum, and
eventually, you get a picture.
BUT, we can overlook minor inconveniences if it’s a more capable machine, right? Well,
here’s where things start to get interesting. Sony was already forced to play catch-up in
1979, and a lot of that had to do with the cassette itself. Speaking of, let’s have
a look at those.
A VHS cassette is still a somewhat common sight, and you probably know what it looks like.
Usually black,
but not always!,
the cassette measures 187 mm wide, 103 mm deep,
and 25 mm thick. Two windows allow you to see the internal reels so you can see how
much tape is on each reel, and thus you can tell roughly where you are along the length
of the of tape. A very utilitarian design, the cassette just is. Nothing fancy here.
The Beta cassette is a good deal smaller than the VHS cassette, with dimensions of 156 mm
wide, 96 mm deep, and 25 mm thick. This would prove a fatal mistake, as you’ll soon see.
The identical thickness isn’t much of a surprise as both Beta and VHS used half inch
wide magnetic tape.
Design wise, the Beta cassette is more visually interesting. Most Beta cassettes only had
a window on the left-hand reel, allowing you to see how much tape was remaining, but not
how much was used. I suppose Sony thought knowing how much tape was left was most important,
but it was also annoying as hell. Case in point: particularly with prerecorded tapes,
you can’t tell if a tape is rewound all the way! I know just by looking at this VHS
tape that it’s not quite at the beginning. But for Beta, the asymmetrical artsiness of
the cassette means that you really don’t know with certainty if that tape is completely
rewound. But it wasn’t just that annoying little quirk, in fact most of Beta’s problems
come directly from this cassette design. Let’s take a step back in time and go over a few
things.
When developing the format, Sony took the old adage of “size matters” the wrong
way. See, Betamax was pretty much just a shrunken down version of U-Matic, Sony’s earlier
¾ inch cassette format used in broadcasting. U-Matic had a recording time of 1 hour, which
was fine for television studios, as there would usually be multiple machines handling
multiple tapes for things like commercial breaks, and there was always a broadcast technician
able to switch between them and load up new tapes. Sony rather naively assumed that 1
hour was therefore a fine benchmark for a consumer format, and kept that their goal
for the Betamax machine. This went hand in hand with Sony’s desire to keep the cassette
on the smaller side--they used their company handbook as a template for a “Convenient
size”. Trouble is, worrying about that was the wrong thing to do. Sony released the Betamax
system in 1975 with L-500 tapes, the standard length that ran for 1 hour. L-750 tapes were
also available which could run for an hour and a half, but that was it.
So, in comes the revolutionary VCR, and early adopters were quickly annoyed with that 90
minute--at best--recording time. See, the whole point of a VCR is to allow you to record
shows while you’re not home, preventing you from missing a show you really wanted
to watch. A 90 minute recording time meant a lot of programs couldn’t be recorded.
For example, movies would routinely take up at least a 2 hour broadcast, with commercial
breaks built in. But this is America, dammit, and the most important thing we need to record
is a football game. That ain’t gonna work with Beta.
(Meanwhile), JVC is busy developing their soon-to-be unveiled VHS format. Fun fact,
VHS stands for Video Home System. You know, cause that’s definitely the order those
three words belong in. Anyway, JVC’s system used a larger cassette which--guess what--HAS
MORE TAPE IN IT! This meant that right out of the gate, the VHS system had Sony beat
with a 2 hour recording time on a standard T-120 cassette.
Let’s take these cassettes apart and compare what’s on the inside. Obviously these internal
tape reels are way smaller on the Beta tape, so to have the same length of tape as this
cassette, the tape would need to be impractically thin. To be clear, the signals recorded on
the tape aren’t compatible in any way. The machines record onto the tape in very different
fashions with incompatible signals, but as it’s otherwise identical tape, the speed
the tape runs through each format is pretty close so the overall length of tape was most
important (still, VHS did run a little bit slower). Here are two blank tapes, one Beta,
one VHS. You’ll see that the L-750 cassette contains 222 meters of tape (the 750 means
750 feet of tape). Remember, the L-750 is the “long” version with thinner than normal
tape. But this T-120, the standard VHS length, has 24 more meters of tape. A T-160, the most
common “long” VHS cassette, has 327 meters of tape, almost 50% more than the L-750. Sony
did release the ultra-thin (and somewhat rare) L-830, but this wasn’t a huge deal as it
only squeezed an extra 10 minutes of recording time on early machines. Just by the look of
these tapes, Sony seemed to be at a huge disadvantage here.
(Meanwhile), The American company RCA had a rather large part in ensuring VHS would
end up winning the format war. See, before Beta was even released, RCA was interested
in building a videotape recorder of their own. But they heard about Sony’s work on
Betamax, and decided that maybe they’d be better of to just license the technology and
ask Sony to build machines for them. But there were 2 problems. First was that Sony wasn’t
all that excited to build machines for other people, let alone let others build copies.
And second was their stubbornness on recording time. RCA reps reportedly asked the Sony guys
if a longer recording time was possible, and sony said “Maybe someday”. Pft. PFT. Don’t
bother with them!
So RCA found out about what JVC was doing. Already they were more excited about JVC’s
product, because if could record 2 hours. RCA asked if a longer recording time was possible,
and JVC gave a long answer about reduced image quality and maybe it’s not such a good idea
but I guess yes it would be technically possible so long as you kept that reduced picture quality
in mind to which RCA said OK! Sound great! Keep in touch!
Unlike the controlling Sony, JVC was totally cool with licensing the VHS patents to other
companies, and shortly dozens of names would appear on VHS machines. Like this machine,
Matsushita made RCA’s first Selectavision VCR, and although JVC still warned them about
doing so, RCA had Matsushita produce the recorders with an LP, or Long Play, recording mode,
which cut the tape speed in half and thus doubled the recording time. RCA thought this
was imperative to having a successful product, as 4 hours was a pretty average length for
a broadcast football game. And guess what? They were right on the money.
As soon as RCA went public in 1977 about their upcoming VCR with this amazing 4 hour recording
capability, Sony executives gave a collective AHH! And scrambled to come up with a solution.
So what did they do? Well, they just ripped off RCA’s technique and introduced a new
recorder with the X-2 (later called Beta 2) recording speed. Now, an L-500 tape could
hold 2 hours of video, and an L-750 could hold 3. Yay. But that’s still not as good
as RCA’s machine. And now is where things start to get interesting.
These two machines reveal the tit-for-tat, look-what-I-can-do nature of the format war
in its early stages. RCA kept pushing the importance of recording time, and this machine
has the brand new, whiz-bang SLP speed, which allows a whopping 6 hours of recording time
on a T-120 tape, 8 hours on the slightly thinner T-160. Sony wouldn’t leave this unanswered
and released the Beta 3 recording speed, which pushed the L-750 tape to 4.5 hours recording
time. Still not that great. So, what did they do? Well, this machine marks the beginning
of Sony’s desperate attempts to find a way to wow buyers with new exciting features that
might let people overlook the shorter recording time. You’ll notice this machine proudly
proclaims BETASCAN! What does that mean? Well, all video recorders before this very model
had to blank the screen when fast-forwarding or rewinding. On this VHS machine, you have
to press STOP, wait for the tape to unthread, and then you can fast forward or rewind. And
then you press STOP, then PLAY, and hope you’re in the right place.
But BETASCAN lets you
see on the screen a fast-motion image, showing you exactly where you are on the tape! Revolutionary!
While this feature would eventually become a staple of the VCR from both Beta machines
and VHS models (once VHS manufacturers figured out how to copy Sony’s work, which didn’t
take long), it was at the time kind of a grasping-at-straws gesture. Again, you’ve got to put yourself
in the mindset of consumers at the time. These machines are here to save you from the deep
dark despair that consumes you when you’ve missed your television show! Betascan was
more of a “neat trick” at this point. What’s most important is the machine’s
flexibility at recording shows. And here’s where the Sony machine falls flat on its face.
OK, we’re gonna have to pause here. There’s a lot to digest in this format war, so I’m
going to split it here into two videos. In the next video, we’ll be discussing how
Sony seemed to think they could decide what their customers wanted. This led them to a
position where they were always a step ahead of VHS in terms of technical feats, but often
a step behind when it came to everyday features that people really needed. Thanks for watching!
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