This video is part two of an exploration on why Sony’s Betamax video recording format
lost to the more ubiquitous VHS.
We were comparing these two machines, and we saw how Sony had introduced BetaScan, but
they had overlooked something.
Here comes a link to get to part one.
We left off with me saying that this machine falls flat on its face.
What’s most important to consumers is
the machine’s flexibility at recording shows.
And here’s where the Sony machine falls flat on its face.
See, that’s where we left off.
Now,
In addition to spending time and resources making new features that the buyer didn’t
know they needed, Sony also seemed to just keep flailing their arms about and making
stupid decisions about other basic necessities, and it shows in this model.
Initially, they thought things like timers were silly features to include in their machines.
As Marc Wielage and Rod Woodcock recall in their piece The Rise and Fall of Beta, one
Sony executive, when asked why his machines didn’t include a timer when the competition
did, explained that “Having separate timer allows the consumer to use it for other purposes.
And not everyone needs timer.
We do not force you to buy one.”
Yeah, no.
While it sounds noble, the whole damn point of a VCR is to time-shift, recording things
when you’re gone.
That’s not possible without a timer.
So selling it as an add-on is only going to piss people off and look like a money-grab.
Great job, guys.
While they did come around and include a timer in most of the models, the timer wasn’t
nearly advanced as what the competition offered.
The Sony unit has a 3 day, 1 event timer.
Take a look, programming is pretty simple, you just hold down the program button and pick
a time.
Then you select what day, either today--tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.
And lastly you choose how long you want it to record for.
Once you’ve punched that in, you select the channel you want it to record, hold down
the record button, and move the power switch to timer.
Not too difficult, but also not too impressive.
Let’s hope you’re not gone longer than just a weekend.
And let’s hope there’s only one program you want to record.
The RCA model, meanwhile, has a 4 event, 7 day timer.
And it’s actually less frustrating to program, as you don’t have to hold a button down
while making adjustments at the same time.
Turn the selector from manual to program, then select which program, a, b, c, or d,
you want to input.
First, you pick the day.
0 is today, 1 tomorrow, 2 the day after tomorrow, etc.
I’ll admit, that’s not as easy to work out as Sony’s in-your-face wording.
But it’s way more capable--Also, A means it will record every day.
That means one program can actually create multiple daily recordings, which is pretty
neat.
This lever switches between the start time, and how long you want it to record.
So, say I want to start at 4 PM, and record for an hour and a half.
Set the time to 4, turn this to select the length, and then 1 hour thirty minutes.
This is more versatile than the Sony, as you might want it to start recording a minute
before your show starts and stop a minute afterwards to make sure nothing is missed.
You’re not limited to thirty minute increments like here on the Sony.
But the most important way this machine kicks the pants off the Sony is here.
Notice how the channel is flashing.
It wants you to select it.
That’s right, the RCA machine will change channels for you.
So, the Sony has BetaScan, but the RCA can record for 6 hours, on 4 different programs
over a week, and even change channels for you.
Which one would you buy?
Sony just didn’t seem to get it.
They released this device with virtually no regard to how their buyers would actually
use it.
The reason people flocked to recording time wasn’t simply that they wanted the machine
to be able to record a very long program like a football game, it was also that they wanted
it to be able to record a lot of different programs.
A six hour recording time means 3 one hour shows and an entire weekday lineup of half-hour
daily programming could be recorded on a single tape with room to spare.
But to do that automatically, you need a timer that can start more than just one recording.
So while Sony caved and produced the Beta 3 speed, it was rather obtuse to not also
add a complicated timer that can manage more than one program.
Now to be fair, this RCA machine was probably a little more expensive than the Sony.
Poking around online shows that the Sony retailed for, are you sitting down?
One thousand 2 hundred fifty dollars, eek, and although I don’t have a firm price for
the RCA model, this price chart from Popular Mechanics shows the Panasonic PV-1600, probably
the exact same machine internally as this one given its features, at $1295.
But, this is for the absolute whiz-bang most complicated VCR on the market.
As their ads proclaimed, nobody gives you more VCR than RCA.
But what about lesser-models?
Remember, I said that jumbled mess of how this machine came to be made was important.
That’s because JVC was super-OK with other companies paying them a licensing fee to make
their own VHS machines, and tons of companies offered VCRs from the most basic machines
with a mechanical clock-timer to the crazy advanced ones like these.
This meant there was a lot of competition between manufacturers, and prices for VHS
machines tended to stay lower than their Beta counterparts.
A VHS model sporting a 3 day, one event timer like this Beta model may have cost a few hundred
less, in fact this chart shows a Panasonic unit available for 995, although it can’t
record at the SLP speed (not that it mattered all that much as a T-160 at LP was still more
recording time than an L-810 at Beta 3).
Now, sony did eventually come around and produce Beta machines for others, for example Sony
produced some machines under the Zenith name, and they didn’t all out refuse to allow
licensing--Sanyo and Toshiba both made Beta machines later on, as well as others.
But the menagerie of VHS VCRs to choose from kept manufacturers in a price war with each
other, and thus it was very common for a similarly-specced VHS machine to cost hundreds of dollars less
than a Beta model.
Was sony completely wrong to avoid licensing?
Perhaps not.
The price war amongst VHS manufacturers meant they had to cut costs to compete with each
other, and thus the machines tended to be less well made than Beta machines, with some
cut corners.
But usually they were just as reliable as Sony’s machines, and details like a dampened
cassette drawer and soft-touch buttons don’t mean much to the shopper if you can save a
few hundred bucks by avoiding them.
Plus, the intense competition between VHS manufacturers meant they had to compete with
each other on features as well, so these companies were quickly learning what features mattered
most to consumers, like decent timers, whereas Sony just kept chugging along doing their
thing without stopping to ask what the consumer actually desired.
So again, which one of these would you buy?
This RCA unit, with its extremely versatile timer and 6 hour recording time, or this Sony,
with its one event timer, 4.5 hours recording time, and nice eject mechanism?
Oh, and don’t forget BetaScan!
But my favorite detail about this machine in particular is the recording speed selector.
Notice how it chooses between Beta 2 and 3.
Where's 1?
Sony basically admitted, in 1979, mind you, they effed up by proclaiming, well we know
beta 1 is useless, so let’s just not let you use it anymore.
This was only 4 years after the entire format was released!
This model has a switch to let you use Beta 1, but it’s located on the back under this
cover cause they really just don’t want you to think about it anymore.
This is particularly hilarious because the Beta 1 speed offered a slightly better picture
quality than VHS SP, which led many people to sing praises about Beta’s better picture,
but since Beta 2 became the standard it was essentially like recording on VHS LP all the
time, so the quality became pretty similar, in fact
you could say Beta 2 looks--and sounds, given the slower linear
tape speed on non-hifi machines) slightly worse than VHS SP.
We interrupt this program for a quick message:
OK, you can’t say things like that without
some people losing their minds in the comments.
Here’s some footage recorded on a VHS VCR at the SP speed.
OK, now here’s the same footage on Beta at Beta 2.
Now here they are side by side.
I will admit that this is using a newer VHS machine than the Beta one,
not that this is a huge surprise given VHS machines were made long after Beta machines
and the Beta machine isn’t in perfect shape.
But it still looks pretty similar.
Oh, and sound.
Here’s a clip from VHS SP.
Now Beta 2.
So, decide for yourself.
I’ll upload another video with all of this footage and details on my methodology.
And a little card will be appear right about now if it’s ready.
Personally I don’t see a difference, and technical data is remarkably similar between
the two.
But I’ll stay out of this, go ahead and argue amongst yourselves, if you please.
So, in 1979, just 4 years after its release, Beta was struggling to justify its existence.
Now you might think that Sony would try and find a way to differentiate beta from VHS
to give a concrete reason to buy a beta machine.
And try they did.
But every time they offered a new feature, either they went about it in the complete
wrong way and shot themselves in the foot, or VHS just copied it.
For example:
In 1983, Sony released Beta HiFi.
Look at us!, they said, CD-quality sound on videotape!
VHS will never match that.
Guess what.
They did.
In 1984.
Then, in 1985 Sony released SuperBeta, a slightly-better picture quality standard boosting image quality
by shifting the Y carrier, whatever that means.
VHS will never copy that!
Guess what?
They did, creating the VHS HQ standard.
To be fair this wasn’t nearly the improvement that SuperBeta was, particularly since many
manufacturers resisted its implementation due to cost and JVC was forced to reduce the
minumum specs for it, but still.
Interestingly VHS actually far and away leapfrogged SuperBeta with the introduction of SuperVHS
(I wonder where they got the idea for that name), or S-VHS in 1987.
S-VHS was almost a 60% increase in resolution over standard VHS, much more than the 20%
improvement achieved by SuperBeta.
Sony wouldn’t match that until the next year with Extended Definition-Beta, actually
called ED-Beta, a fitting name given how difficult it seemed for Sony to produce a meaningful
rise in sales.
Really, though, both SuperVHS and ED-Beta weren’t ever all that relevant due to their
high cost compared to their standard counterparts.
But one of Sony’s ultimate missteps was their idea of a camcorder--Betamovie.
Sony figured that the smaller cassette of Beta would work to their advantage, allowing
them to create a smaller all-in-one camera than the competition.
Great.
While their camera was pretty small for its time, they had to sacrifice a lot to make
it work.
Namely, the ability of the camera to play a tape back!
They performed some weird technical magic to shrink the video transport down to where
it would record onto the tape in a completely strange fashion that would work fine once
removed from the camera and placed in a normal VCR, but which could not be played back by
the very device that recorded it.
I’m sorry, but how stupid is that?
Since there was no ability to review what you recorded in-camera, Sony also decided
that an electronic viewfinder wasn’t necessary, and instead just gave you an optical one.
So, not only could you not be sure if the shot was in focus or if exposure was OK while
recording, but you would have no way of reviewing your footage till you could get home and pop
the tape in your VCR.
As you can imagine, sales weren’t great.
Meanwhile, JVC actually had a pretty clever idea and created the VHS-C format in 1982,
which were small cassettes that only held a half hour of footage at SP speed (90 minutes,
at SLP) but which contained honest-to-goodness VHS recordings on them.
These cameras were smaller than Sony’s incredibly dumb Betamovie, and the machines could play
the tapes back!
Best of all, they simply go into an adapter for playback in a normal VCR.
Sony wishes they thought of that, for sure.
Sony eventually released the Video8 and then Hi8 formats which were formidable competitors
to VHS-C, but since no one in their right mind would purchase a dedicated Video8 VCR,
you’d have to watch your movies with the camcorder plugged into the TV or you’d have
to dub from the camcorder to a standard VCR, which reduced the quality of the second generation
copies.
I’ll tell you my family was on team VHS-C, and we have the bins of tapes to prove it.
Hi8 produced a much sharper picture than VHS, but again, unless you wanted to plug your
camcorder into your TV every time you watch home movies, you have to dub it onto a normal
tape anyway.
In retrospect, it seems like Sony kept failing to put themselves in their customer’s shoes.
Right from the start they were doomed because of their small cassette.
If they had done research to determine how people would actually use a VCR, they probably
would have found that recording time was more important, and they probably would’ve taken
the effort to have a sophisticated timer.
So if the Beta cassette had been made with VHS-like capacity, it’s likely Beta would
have won the war.
After all, they had a year’s head start.
But people flocked to VHS because it was simply more flexible.
Impressive trick features and niceties like the feather-lite buttons are of no use if
the machine doesn’t do what you need it to do.
By the mid 1980s, sales between Beta and VHS were pretty lopsided.
Far more people owned VHS machines than Beta.
Naturally, when pre-recorded tapes with movies and what-not began to be sold under the brand
new product called “Home Video”, sales of VHS copies were always stronger than Beta.
This led economies of scale to rear its ugly head, and for movie studios, producing Beta
copies of their latest home-release was more expensive than VHS.
So, either movie studios had to charge more for Beta, which was unpopular and only further
annoyed Beta loyalists, or they simply made less profit on each Beta sale, which annoyed
shareholders.
By the late 1980s, most movie studios had decided to altogether stop releasing their
films on Beta.
Not.
Good.
To many people, 1988 marked the end of Beta, as this was the year that Sony caved and started
marketing their own VHS machines. (Gasp)
The history of the videotape format war is
interesting, but in my view hilariously one-sided.
Sure, Sony was first to market, but they just kept screwing up!
It’s like watching a cartoon where the protagonist repeatedly slips on a banana peel.
Is it fair to say it was all Sony’s fault?
Not really.
After all, VHS kept copying their developments.
But Sony trapped themselves with this cassette.
4.5 hours isn’t enough.
Even the name wasn’t a good idea.
Beta kind of implies second, as in the second best, the fallback, the reserve, number two,
the alternative option.
Alpha might have been better.
Hell, even Epsilon.
Anything but “not quite first”.
And there were plenty of annoying little details that plagued Beta, like the one-sided cassette
window, and their strange decision to label tapes based on actual physical length and
not recording time.
Sony famously did win their second big format war, back in 2006 when Blu-Ray was fighting
HDDVD.
So at least we can say with a fair bit of certainty that they did indeed learn from
their mistakes.
Oh, and their 1982 release of a new product co-developed with Philips went very well for
them--that new product?
The compact disc, or CD.
I hope you enjoyed this video!
If you did, I humbly ask that you hit the like button and subscribe to Technology Connections.
I’m doing my best to keep videos like this headed your way.
I’ll see you next time!