1 00:00:00,170 --> 00:00:04,657 The video you’ve clicked on and are about to watch is objectively pointless. 2 00:00:04,657 --> 00:00:09,127 The videotape format war between VHS and Beta happened some 40 years ago, 3 00:00:09,127 --> 00:00:13,714 and nobody has any legitimate reason to be sticking up for either format because, 4 00:00:13,714 --> 00:00:15,058 news flash, 5 00:00:15,058 --> 00:00:18,100 we’re kinda done with analog videotape. 6 00:00:18,100 --> 00:00:24,238 And yet, a persnickety group of people just can’t seem to stop themselves from popping out of the woodwork whenever they get the chance 7 00:00:24,238 --> 00:00:28,239 to lament that “the worse format won” 8 00:00:28,239 --> 00:00:30,291 and this annoys me. 9 00:00:30,291 --> 00:00:33,945 Those people will cite all sorts of reasons for which Beta was Better, 10 00:00:33,945 --> 00:00:38,298 but after a decades-long game of telephone made even worse by the internet, 11 00:00:38,298 --> 00:00:45,278 those supposed reasons are either missing a heckuva lotta context, misleading, or outright incorrect. 12 00:00:45,278 --> 00:00:48,808 And for the perfect example of such shenanigans, 13 00:00:48,808 --> 00:00:50,600 we need look no further 14 00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:51,657 [WHUMP] 15 00:00:51,657 --> 00:00:53,574 than this. 16 00:00:53,574 --> 00:01:01,425 This is a Sony UVW-1800, a Betacam SP professional videocassette recorder from 1993. 17 00:01:01,425 --> 00:01:04,681 You can tell it’s professional because of all the beige. 18 00:01:04,681 --> 00:01:07,745 And the fact that it has a bajillion ports on the back, 19 00:01:07,745 --> 00:01:10,125 none of which work with your average TV! 20 00:01:10,125 --> 00:01:14,083 I mean, the audio goes through XLR for crying out loud! 21 00:01:14,083 --> 00:01:21,441 Betalovers ‘round the world just love pointing to machines like this one as concrete proof that VHS was inferior to Beta. 22 00:01:21,441 --> 00:01:25,275 See, VHS just couldn’t cut it in the professional space, 23 00:01:25,275 --> 00:01:31,814 but Beta did ipso facto it was the superior format and consumers are just terrible at decision making. 24 00:01:31,814 --> 00:01:38,460 And they’re correct when they say that Beta enjoyed a long and successful life in the television industry. 25 00:01:38,460 --> 00:01:40,670 It lived on well into the new millennium, 26 00:01:40,670 --> 00:01:45,702 in fact there was even a digital, high-definition version of the format before all was said and done! 27 00:01:47,146 --> 00:01:52,201 There’s just one teeeeensy little problem with that whole argument. 28 00:01:52,201 --> 00:01:54,746 This much groovier piece of kit 29 00:01:54,746 --> 00:01:55,438 [THOMP] 30 00:01:55,438 --> 00:01:58,089 is a Sony SL-5400, 31 00:01:58,089 --> 00:02:01,121 a Betamax videocassette recorder from 1979. 32 00:02:01,121 --> 00:02:02,956 Did you catch that? 33 00:02:02,956 --> 00:02:03,973 It was subtle. 34 00:02:03,973 --> 00:02:07,504 Don’t worry if you didn’t, I’ll be hammering it in repeatedly. 35 00:02:07,504 --> 00:02:11,466 This is a consumer-grade Beta machine, and an early one at that. 36 00:02:11,466 --> 00:02:13,883 It’s got the simulated woodgrain cabinet, 37 00:02:13,883 --> 00:02:16,207 it’s got the piano-key controls, 38 00:02:16,207 --> 00:02:21,547 and best of all it’s got the pop-up cassette drawer. 39 00:02:21,547 --> 00:02:24,588 Now, both of these are Beta machines 40 00:02:24,588 --> 00:02:30,616 so it shouldn’t surprise you that the same tapes used by the SL-5400 will go right into the… 41 00:02:32,191 --> 00:02:34,267 well that’s all kinds of weird. 42 00:02:34,267 --> 00:02:39,682 I mean, it took the tape alright, but why is the loading door on this machine so freaking wide? 43 00:02:39,682 --> 00:02:41,968 Oh don’t worry, we’ll get there! 44 00:02:42,198 --> 00:02:44,334 But first, let’s try and play it. 45 00:02:44,334 --> 00:02:51,043 [extremely squeaky audio running at, like, six times normal speed] 46 00:02:51,043 --> 00:02:52,782 Uh… that is not right. 47 00:02:52,782 --> 00:02:54,890 And the screen is blank. 48 00:02:55,185 --> 00:02:58,227 I think we should take a closer look at these two machines. 49 00:02:58,227 --> 00:03:00,817 Let’s see here, they’re both from Sony. 50 00:03:00,817 --> 00:03:02,813 They’re both videocassette recorders. 51 00:03:02,813 --> 00:03:05,669 They both have model numbers divisible by 1800. 52 00:03:05,669 --> 00:03:07,315 And they’re both Beta! 53 00:03:07,315 --> 00:03:10,734 See, this one says Betamax right up here, couldn’t be any clearer, 54 00:03:10,734 --> 00:03:12,451 and this one… 55 00:03:12,451 --> 00:03:14,478 well hold on just a minute here. 56 00:03:14,478 --> 00:03:16,787 This one says Betacam. 57 00:03:16,787 --> 00:03:19,813 That’s a different set of three letters tacked onto the end there. 58 00:03:19,813 --> 00:03:21,510 Could it be… 59 00:03:21,510 --> 00:03:23,353 I wonder… 60 00:03:23,353 --> 00:03:28,480 Does this mean that these two machines are actually entirely different formats? 61 00:03:29,300 --> 00:03:30,410 YES! 62 00:03:30,410 --> 00:03:32,554 That’s precisely what this means! 63 00:03:32,554 --> 00:03:38,039 Betamax and Betacam are in fact not the same format at all. 64 00:03:38,039 --> 00:03:40,506 You can tell by how their names are different! 65 00:03:40,506 --> 00:03:47,592 Even their logos are different, with the Beta-compatibility mark seen on every consumer Beta VCR and tape 66 00:03:47,592 --> 00:03:50,668 suspiciously missing from this machine. 67 00:03:50,668 --> 00:03:56,274 Except, it’s not suspicious at all because that compatibility mark is for the Betamax system 68 00:03:56,274 --> 00:04:00,334 which is not the same format as Betacam. 69 00:04:00,334 --> 00:04:03,525 Sony did go ahead and use the same basic cassette design 70 00:04:03,525 --> 00:04:07,977 and decided to just lean-in to the whole “beta” moniker for this new format, 71 00:04:07,977 --> 00:04:11,118 so it’s understandable that there’s a lot of confusion here. 72 00:04:11,118 --> 00:04:18,214 But this Beta and that Beta aren’t the same Beta and never ever were. 73 00:04:18,214 --> 00:04:20,722 So, there you go, job done. 74 00:04:20,722 --> 00:04:23,149 Betacam isn’t Betamax, 75 00:04:23,149 --> 00:04:30,658 and anyone who points to "Beta’s" use in the professional world after the format war ended as some sort of proof that Beta was Better 76 00:04:30,658 --> 00:04:35,434 is either being very disingenuous or simply isn’t aware of the difference. 77 00:04:35,434 --> 00:04:41,150 And for those good folks in that second category (as well as the generally curious who would like to know the difference), 78 00:04:41,150 --> 00:04:42,845 I have great news! 79 00:04:42,845 --> 00:04:45,871 You’re already watching the video that’ll answer your questions. 80 00:04:45,871 --> 00:04:50,756 But first, we’ll need to go back in time for some important context. 81 00:04:50,756 --> 00:04:54,971 Now, I discussed the videotape format war at length several years ago, 82 00:04:54,971 --> 00:04:59,474 so if you want a deeper dive, click on that thing or check the description. 83 00:04:59,474 --> 00:05:03,039 While I’m staying pretty surface level with this recap, 84 00:05:03,039 --> 00:05:07,548 it’s still over 10 minutes long so if you would like to skip it go ahead and jump to 85 00:05:07,548 --> 00:05:10,697 seventeen minutes forty-one seconds. 86 00:05:10,697 --> 00:05:13,678 Betamax, released at the end of 1975, 87 00:05:13,678 --> 00:05:18,978 was Sony’s first full-color, cassette-based consumer videotape offering. 88 00:05:18,978 --> 00:05:24,575 And yes, U-matic came out a few years earlier, but that didn’t find any success in the consumer market 89 00:05:24,575 --> 00:05:28,565 and was co-developed with several other manufacturers so it doesn’t count. 90 00:05:28,565 --> 00:05:30,575 When Sony released Betamax, 91 00:05:30,575 --> 00:05:37,391 the pitch was to use these things to record and save broadcast television programs so you could watch them later. 92 00:05:37,391 --> 00:05:40,663 You might set up a timer to record a program while you were away 93 00:05:40,663 --> 00:05:44,838 [ANNOUNCER] Thanks to Sony’s revolutionary Betamax deck which hooks up to any TV set, 94 00:05:44,838 --> 00:05:50,700 now you can automatically videotape your favorite show even when you’re not home and watch it anytime you want! 95 00:05:50,700 --> 00:05:54,860 Or you could record one program while watching a second program. 96 00:05:54,860 --> 00:05:57,389 [ANNOUNCER] Because with Sony's Betamax video recorder 97 00:05:57,389 --> 00:06:02,395 you can actually watch a show on one channel while you’re videotaping a show on another channel! 98 00:06:02,395 --> 00:06:04,024 That way you get to see both of them! 99 00:06:04,024 --> 00:06:11,157 The idea of buying or renting something like a movie on a pre-recorded tape just wasn’t in the cards at this point, 100 00:06:11,157 --> 00:06:18,188 and that’s very important context for understanding the earliest phases of the soon-to-happen format war. 101 00:06:18,188 --> 00:06:22,250 Through an apparent obsession with an entirely subjective portability standard, 102 00:06:22,250 --> 00:06:26,508 Sony engineers landed on a rather diminutive cassette design. 103 00:06:26,508 --> 00:06:28,748 While admittedly pleasant to interact with, 104 00:06:28,748 --> 00:06:33,964 its small size meant small tape spools inside of it which of course meant 105 00:06:33,964 --> 00:06:37,325 not a whole lot of tape could fit on those spools. 106 00:06:37,325 --> 00:06:40,812 The format launched with a maximum recording time of 60 minutes 107 00:06:40,812 --> 00:06:43,688 (that’s one hour for those of you who speak Metric). 108 00:06:43,951 --> 00:06:50,939 Sony didn’t think this would be an issue as most television programs of the time happened to be an hour long or less. 109 00:06:50,939 --> 00:06:53,114 But Sony was wrong. 110 00:06:53,114 --> 00:06:54,760 Very wrong. 111 00:06:54,760 --> 00:06:57,401 Catastrophically wrong. 112 00:06:57,401 --> 00:06:59,754 See, one of their competitors, JVC, 113 00:06:59,754 --> 00:07:04,387 was working on their own consumer videotape format which they called VHS. 114 00:07:04,387 --> 00:07:08,196 It came to market about a year after Betamax was released. 115 00:07:08,196 --> 00:07:15,163 Coming out second and being a bit rougher around the edges, it was easy to smear as some sort of cheap knockoff product. 116 00:07:15,163 --> 00:07:21,774 But its slightly chunkier cassettes had much larger tape spools inside which 117 00:07:21,774 --> 00:07:22,936 - get this - 118 00:07:22,936 --> 00:07:25,322 meant they could hold more tape. 119 00:07:25,322 --> 00:07:27,575 Significantly more, in fact. 120 00:07:27,575 --> 00:07:32,650 Sony’s K-60 cassette held 500 feet or 152 meters of tape, 121 00:07:32,650 --> 00:07:39,101 but the T-120 VHS cassette held 812 feet, or 248 meters. 122 00:07:39,101 --> 00:07:45,503 With 62% more tape in the shell and recorders that ran at a slightly slower tape speed, 123 00:07:45,599 --> 00:07:49,244 VHS tapes held a full two hours of video. 124 00:07:49,244 --> 00:07:56,405 In these early days, VHS was generally regarded as having a slightly worse image quality than Sony’s product, 125 00:07:56,405 --> 00:08:01,078 but double the recording time was quite the tempting consolation. 126 00:08:01,078 --> 00:08:03,436 Not only because more time is more better, 127 00:08:03,436 --> 00:08:08,880 but videocassettes were brand new technology and very expensive to manufacture. 128 00:08:08,880 --> 00:08:17,235 Thus, they cost a lot to buy as a consumer, and the literal two-for-one deal offered by VHS was hard to pass up. 129 00:08:17,235 --> 00:08:22,450 And it turned out nobody cared at all that the cassettes were a bit bigger. 130 00:08:22,450 --> 00:08:29,104 I was gonna go on a rant here about how much more space-efficient the VHS cassette design is but here - just look at it. 131 00:08:29,104 --> 00:08:34,067 Much larger tape spools in an only marginally larger package. 132 00:08:34,067 --> 00:08:38,445 Sony knew right away they had a problem on their hands, so they set to work. 133 00:08:38,445 --> 00:08:44,282 By making the tape much thinner, they would soon stretch Beta’s recording capacity to 90 minutes 134 00:08:44,282 --> 00:08:48,227 with the introduction of the new L-750 cassette - right, 135 00:08:48,227 --> 00:08:55,037 you’d think they’d call it the "K90" but Sony decided to denote this new cassette by the literal length of tape inside in feet, 136 00:08:55,037 --> 00:08:58,724 and then went ahead and renamed the K60 to the L-500 137 00:08:58,724 --> 00:09:02,586 which I’m sure had nothing to do with 60 and 90 being smaller numbers than 120. 138 00:09:02,586 --> 00:09:09,420 Anyway, despite Sony’s bump in recording time VHS still had it beat by a full half-hour. 139 00:09:10,437 --> 00:09:12,966 And then came RCA’s idea. 140 00:09:12,966 --> 00:09:17,704 See, RCA was looking to sell a line of videocassette recorders in the United States, 141 00:09:17,704 --> 00:09:22,058 and they knew that consumers here would probably like to be able to record football games 142 00:09:22,058 --> 00:09:24,645 (which tend to be longer than two hours). 143 00:09:24,645 --> 00:09:30,029 So they partnered with Matsushita, who had licensed the VHS technology from JVC, 144 00:09:30,029 --> 00:09:37,788 to develop a long-play recording mode which would double the already much longer two-hour recording time of VHS cassettes 145 00:09:37,788 --> 00:09:42,259 to four hours at the expense of reduced video and audio quality. 146 00:09:42,259 --> 00:09:46,295 Their first Selectavision VCR was released in 1977, 147 00:09:46,623 --> 00:09:50,581 and suddenly VHS had a huge ace-in-the-hole. 148 00:09:50,581 --> 00:09:56,555 Sony, of course, had no choice but to respond with the new Beta-II recording speed. 149 00:09:56,555 --> 00:10:00,350 Which was literally the same exact idea as VHS-Long Play, 150 00:10:00,350 --> 00:10:04,448 cutting the linear tape speed in half and doubling the recording time. 151 00:10:04,448 --> 00:10:08,313 Just like VHS-LP, it reduced video and audio quality, 152 00:10:08,313 --> 00:10:14,349 but at least it was now a closer three hours on Beta and four hours on VHS. 153 00:10:14,349 --> 00:10:21,428 But of course, the same tape-thinning trick employed by Sony was used to make the T-160 VHS cassette, 154 00:10:21,428 --> 00:10:26,520 bumping the longest recording time of VHS up to 5 hours and 20 minutes. 155 00:10:26,520 --> 00:10:31,230 And in case that wasn’t enough, JVC would develop the extended-play recording mode 156 00:10:31,230 --> 00:10:39,370 which tripled the amount of time you could squeeze onto a VHS tape - making 8 hours possible with a T-160 tape. 157 00:10:39,370 --> 00:10:43,177 It would look and sound pretty terrible but you could do it. 158 00:10:43,588 --> 00:10:48,833 Sony, of course, once again had to respond by once again just copying that idea 159 00:10:48,833 --> 00:10:52,175 and introducing the Beta-III recording speed. 160 00:10:52,175 --> 00:10:57,040 But that was still just 4 and a half hours recording time on an L-750 cassette, 161 00:10:57,040 --> 00:11:02,154 and only three hours with the at-the-time more common L-500. 162 00:11:02,154 --> 00:11:06,727 VHS just walked all over Beta in the recording time department, 163 00:11:06,727 --> 00:11:12,278 and the original Beta-I recording speed was so utterly useless in the face of VHS 164 00:11:12,278 --> 00:11:14,032 that Sony just up and killed it! 165 00:11:14,032 --> 00:11:16,530 This machine from 1979, 166 00:11:16,530 --> 00:11:19,878 made only four years into the format’s existence, 167 00:11:19,878 --> 00:11:23,386 cannot record at the original Beta speed. 168 00:11:23,386 --> 00:11:29,301 Your choice is now between II and III, thus Beta-II became the new default speed for Beta, 169 00:11:29,301 --> 00:11:33,160 and Beta-III would net you a measly 50% bonus. 170 00:11:33,334 --> 00:11:36,354 And this brings us to the whole picture quality debacle. 171 00:11:36,354 --> 00:11:40,273 Beta-II was better-executed compared with VHS-Long Play 172 00:11:40,273 --> 00:11:48,572 (in fact JVC was apparently annoyed with Matsushita for creating it as they pretty much just hacked it together for RCA without even asking). 173 00:11:48,572 --> 00:11:55,632 So Beta-II produced an unquestionably better picture than a VHS machine recording in long-play mode. 174 00:11:56,321 --> 00:12:03,490 But ya see, VHS still had very usable recording times at its original standard-play quality. 175 00:12:03,490 --> 00:12:05,504 And, at least to my eyes, 176 00:12:05,504 --> 00:12:10,452 standard-play VHS looks just about identical to Beta-II. 177 00:12:10,452 --> 00:12:11,544 Here, look. 178 00:12:11,544 --> 00:12:12,183 [snaps fingers] 179 00:12:12,183 --> 00:12:18,412 You are now looking at the output from this Toshiba Betamax VCR running at the Beta-II speed. 180 00:12:18,412 --> 00:12:24,550 Unfortunately my vintage Sony tank really doesn’t like to record, so this is the best I’ve got. 181 00:12:24,550 --> 00:12:28,861 And now, let’s take a look at what a basic Toshiba VHS machine can muster. 182 00:12:28,861 --> 00:12:30,006 [snaps fingers] 183 00:12:30,006 --> 00:12:32,255 Doesn’t really look any different, does it? 184 00:12:32,255 --> 00:12:36,398 Now, in fairness, the VHS machine is newer than the Beta machine, 185 00:12:36,398 --> 00:12:37,666 but it’s nothing special. 186 00:12:37,666 --> 00:12:44,359 It’s part of a DVD-player/VCR combo and doesn’t even appear to support the VHS-HQ enhancement features. 187 00:12:44,359 --> 00:12:46,855 Anyway, let’s go side-by-side. 188 00:12:46,855 --> 00:12:50,776 Now, I promise, I’ve not done anything to alter the video you’re seeing. 189 00:12:50,776 --> 00:12:56,149 Both recordings were made from the same source, and they were captured using the same capture device. 190 00:12:56,240 --> 00:13:02,176 If the colors look slightly different, that’s entirely down to how the VCRs encoded and decoded them. 191 00:13:02,176 --> 00:13:07,956 We might disagree, but to me the quality between these two images is virtually identical. 192 00:13:07,956 --> 00:13:11,858 There are some subtle differences to be found if you look hard enough, 193 00:13:11,858 --> 00:13:16,287 but the difference is way too negligible for the average person to care. 194 00:13:16,287 --> 00:13:20,436 The fact is, once Beta-II became the default speed, 195 00:13:20,436 --> 00:13:24,841 the picture quality advantage of Beta had more or less evaporated. 196 00:13:24,841 --> 00:13:31,312 Also, fun fact, the linear tape speed of Beta-II is slower than VHS-Standard Play, 197 00:13:31,312 --> 00:13:36,576 so the linear-track audio quality of VHS is actually a little better. 198 00:13:36,576 --> 00:13:39,386 I would love to show you what Beta-I looked like 199 00:13:39,386 --> 00:13:40,647 but I can't! 200 00:13:40,647 --> 00:13:44,301 Only ancient Beta machines record at that speed, 201 00:13:44,301 --> 00:13:50,704 and since they are so ancient, they’re probably not able to match even a mediocre VHS machine from the ‘80s. 202 00:13:50,704 --> 00:13:54,910 Bottom-line, the difference in picture quality is slight at best, 203 00:13:54,910 --> 00:13:59,315 and anyone who thinks VHS was bad enough to be “the worse format” 204 00:13:59,315 --> 00:14:06,220 is either an ardent videophile and/or has no idea what actually matters to the average consumer. 205 00:14:06,220 --> 00:14:08,721 But anyway, let’s get back to 2023. 206 00:14:08,721 --> 00:14:11,300 [snaps fingers] We’re almost done with this recap, I promise. 207 00:14:11,300 --> 00:14:17,204 Sony would keep on trying to create features to make going with Beta worth its obvious tradeoffs, 208 00:14:17,204 --> 00:14:22,126 but pretty much every single one they made was swiftly copied by VHS. 209 00:14:22,126 --> 00:14:28,475 And even if they couldn’t quite match it, VHS still enjoyed a much longer recording time. 210 00:14:28,475 --> 00:14:34,649 VHS machines quickly dominated the market, and as time went on it would only get more and more market share 211 00:14:34,649 --> 00:14:38,974 thanks to the other mistake Sony made and never let up from. 212 00:14:38,974 --> 00:14:43,003 RCA was able to partner with Matsushita for their Selectavision VCRs 213 00:14:43,003 --> 00:14:49,016 because JVC was quite happy to license VHS technology for a relatively small fee. 214 00:14:49,443 --> 00:14:53,538 Meanwhile, Sony kept Betamax technology very close to the chest, 215 00:14:53,538 --> 00:15:00,134 and only licensed it to a small number of third-party OEMs who were willing to pay them quite a bit. 216 00:15:00,134 --> 00:15:05,851 The result was a sea of inexpensive VHS VCRs from many manufacturers on the market 217 00:15:05,851 --> 00:15:11,512 compared with only a few more-expensive yet less-capable Beta machines. 218 00:15:11,512 --> 00:15:15,401 So, quite naturally, more VHS machines were sold. 219 00:15:15,401 --> 00:15:22,381 And now, as the fledgling home-video market began to expand with the installed-base of VCRs, 220 00:15:22,381 --> 00:15:31,838 well if you were a content distributor you could sell your content to more people on VHS cassettes because there were more people with VHS VCRs. 221 00:15:31,838 --> 00:15:35,742 Supporting Beta machines was simply less profitable. 222 00:15:35,742 --> 00:15:40,205 And this probably is the genesis of the very irritating-to-me myth 223 00:15:40,205 --> 00:15:43,980 that Beta failed because you couldn’t get pornography on it. 224 00:15:43,980 --> 00:15:45,093 First of all... 225 00:15:45,093 --> 00:15:46,206 you could. 226 00:15:46,206 --> 00:15:51,972 This idea that Sony “wouldn’t allow it” is pervasive yet disproven with a simple eBay search. 227 00:15:51,972 --> 00:15:56,412 Again, Sony was not in the business of selling content. 228 00:15:56,412 --> 00:16:00,086 That’s not what they were trying to do when they invented Betamax. 229 00:16:00,086 --> 00:16:09,757 I think this myth came about in part because people quite simply forgot as years passed that the VCR was initially sold to record TV 230 00:16:09,757 --> 00:16:12,208 (the R stands for recorder) 231 00:16:12,208 --> 00:16:19,467 and video rental sprung up only after enough people had already bought these machines to support that business model. 232 00:16:19,467 --> 00:16:24,788 Eventually the ability to rent movies and play them at home was a reason to buy a VCR, 233 00:16:24,788 --> 00:16:26,450 but not in the beginning. 234 00:16:26,450 --> 00:16:30,046 There almost certainly was less porn available on Beta, 235 00:16:30,046 --> 00:16:33,975 but there was also less everything on Beta! 236 00:16:33,975 --> 00:16:41,160 There were fewer of these machines out there in people’s homes, meaning it was a smaller market to sell stuff to. 237 00:16:41,160 --> 00:16:45,370 Add to that, Beta equipment and thus duplication was more expensive, 238 00:16:45,370 --> 00:16:49,179 so the per-unit cost of making the tapes was, too. 239 00:16:49,179 --> 00:16:51,618 For any sort of content distributor, 240 00:16:51,618 --> 00:16:58,028 VHS was way more lucrative and supporting Beta was basically a nice gesture. 241 00:16:58,028 --> 00:17:03,531 The lack of whatever kind of content you were looking for was a result of Beta’s poor market share, 242 00:17:03,531 --> 00:17:05,338 and not a cause. 243 00:17:05,338 --> 00:17:09,489 But of course, it wasn’t helping Sony dig themselves out of their hole. 244 00:17:09,489 --> 00:17:16,706 Anyway, with the vast majority of consumers making the very rational and entirely-correct decision to go with VHS 245 00:17:16,706 --> 00:17:19,008 (that’s right, you heard me), 246 00:17:19,008 --> 00:17:23,792 Betamax was left to live out the rest of its days as the format of wealthy tech-forward videophiles 247 00:17:23,792 --> 00:17:29,849 that cared more about a quite-possibly imagined marginal increase in image quality than they did access to a wider ecosystem 248 00:17:29,849 --> 00:17:31,295 which was also cheaper. 249 00:17:31,295 --> 00:17:35,109 And there just aren’t enough of those people to sustain any format, 250 00:17:35,109 --> 00:17:37,091 so Beta was doomed. 251 00:17:37,091 --> 00:17:40,767 And now, at last, back to this beige beauty. 252 00:17:40,767 --> 00:17:48,394 By the late ‘70s, Sony started work to create a new professional videocassette format to supplant the venerable U-matic. 253 00:17:48,394 --> 00:17:56,153 U-matic was great and all, but its rather large cassettes and ¾-inch tape made it a not-so-portable format, 254 00:17:56,153 --> 00:18:00,727 and its picture quality was still just a little sub-par for post-production work. 255 00:18:00,727 --> 00:18:02,972 “But hey,” somebody at Sony thought, 256 00:18:02,972 --> 00:18:10,240 “we just spent all this R&D money coming out with Betamax… maybe we can reuse parts of its design for this new format.” 257 00:18:10,240 --> 00:18:11,461 So they did. 258 00:18:11,461 --> 00:18:15,514 And in 1982, Betacam would hit the professional market and was, 259 00:18:15,514 --> 00:18:17,521 to the delight and relief of Sony, 260 00:18:17,521 --> 00:18:18,982 a smash-hit. 261 00:18:18,982 --> 00:18:24,594 What makes Betacam the professional format that it is are the signals it records on the tape. 262 00:18:24,594 --> 00:18:27,551 Despite initially sharing identical cassettes, 263 00:18:27,551 --> 00:18:32,699 a Betacam VCR records true component video onto the tape. 264 00:18:32,699 --> 00:18:35,914 Now, to explain the difference we need to get a little bit into the weeds, 265 00:18:35,914 --> 00:18:37,690 but to show you the upshot 266 00:18:37,690 --> 00:18:38,471 [snaps fingers] 267 00:18:38,471 --> 00:18:41,303 here’s the quality we get out of Betamax 268 00:18:41,303 --> 00:18:43,189 and here’s how Betacam fares. 269 00:18:43,189 --> 00:18:43,919 [snaps fingers] 270 00:18:43,919 --> 00:18:45,591 Much better! 271 00:18:45,591 --> 00:18:48,378 This is true broadcast-quality video. 272 00:18:48,378 --> 00:18:53,041 And you’re not even seeing it at its best as I don’t have a good way to capture component video - 273 00:18:53,041 --> 00:18:54,833 this is just composite. 274 00:18:54,960 --> 00:19:01,166 By the way, a huge thanks goes out to friend of the channel James Colvard for lending this machine and a couple of tapes to me. 275 00:19:01,166 --> 00:19:07,400 I’ve been wanting to make this video for ages just to set the record straight on what Betacam was 276 00:19:07,400 --> 00:19:10,697 and with this we have a fantastic example. 277 00:19:10,697 --> 00:19:14,833 This machine barely got any use as you can see from its hours meter. 278 00:19:14,833 --> 00:19:19,230 Yeah, that’s right, it has an hours meter - this is proper professional stuff! 279 00:19:19,230 --> 00:19:22,325 And in case the beige and all those ports didn’t give it away, 280 00:19:22,325 --> 00:19:26,811 when you open up you’ll find that good lord it’s chock full of circuit boards! 281 00:19:26,811 --> 00:19:32,425 This isn’t just big and heavy for the lolz, there’s a lot of stuff jammed into this case. 282 00:19:32,425 --> 00:19:34,857 That alone is fascinating! 283 00:19:34,857 --> 00:19:40,685 These boards are all swappable and they plug into some sort of backplane down at the bottom. 284 00:19:40,685 --> 00:19:48,087 And they have a plethora of potentiometers all along their edges so technicians can conveniently make adjustments. 285 00:19:48,087 --> 00:19:53,634 I don’t want to know how much I can mess up by adjusting those so I will not be touching them! 286 00:19:54,389 --> 00:19:55,694 But wow. 287 00:19:55,694 --> 00:19:57,809 When we look at the tape transport, though, 288 00:19:57,809 --> 00:20:01,014 what we find is, well, Beta. 289 00:20:01,014 --> 00:20:05,083 Compare this to what’s inside the Toshiba machine and it’s very familiar. 290 00:20:05,083 --> 00:20:08,641 The tape is threaded around the drum in pretty much exactly the same way, 291 00:20:08,641 --> 00:20:13,198 and it takes a very discerning eye to notice any differences between the two. 292 00:20:13,198 --> 00:20:18,608 The technology of Betamax was very clearly adapted for this new format, so again 293 00:20:18,608 --> 00:20:22,986 when people confuse this with Betamax, it’s understandable. 294 00:20:22,986 --> 00:20:28,202 But a close look at the head drum reveals what gives Betacam its special sauce. 295 00:20:28,202 --> 00:20:35,808 A standard Betamax VCR, just like VHS, only has two heads in the drum located directly across from one another. 296 00:20:35,808 --> 00:20:41,130 This spinning head arrangement is needed because analog video is a very high-frequency signal, 297 00:20:41,130 --> 00:20:47,891 and to record such signals onto magnetic tape you need the tape to move very fast past the recording heads. 298 00:20:47,891 --> 00:20:51,855 Making the actual tape move that fast is impractical for lots of reasons, 299 00:20:51,855 --> 00:20:54,818 so instead the heads move around the tape. 300 00:20:54,818 --> 00:20:57,546 As the drum spins and the tape moves sideways, 301 00:20:57,546 --> 00:21:01,058 the heads record diagonal stripes across the tape’s width, 302 00:21:01,058 --> 00:21:07,700 with each pass taking only one sixtieth of a second and recording (or playing back) one field of analog video. 303 00:21:07,700 --> 00:21:12,192 Circuitry inside the VCR repeatedly switches which of the two heads are active, 304 00:21:12,192 --> 00:21:15,228 and the result is a seemingly continuous signal. 305 00:21:15,228 --> 00:21:20,855 But when we look at the head drum in the Betacam machine, we find that there are six heads. 306 00:21:20,855 --> 00:21:24,810 Two of them are flying erase heads and don’t have anything to do with the video signals 307 00:21:24,810 --> 00:21:27,612 (other than, well, destroying them when necessary), 308 00:21:27,612 --> 00:21:34,852 but the other four work in pairs to record two distinct signals onto the tape at the same time. 309 00:21:34,852 --> 00:21:38,756 There are actually two heads right next to each other in this little slot 310 00:21:38,756 --> 00:21:43,226 and they work together when recording onto or reading back the tape. 311 00:21:43,226 --> 00:21:45,389 Why might we want to do that? 312 00:21:45,389 --> 00:21:53,020 Well, it has to do with the bandwidth limitations of magnetic tape and the way analog color television works. 313 00:21:53,020 --> 00:21:57,414 The reason why Betamax and VHS look so, well, 314 00:21:57,414 --> 00:22:05,565 mediocre is that the tape can’t actually store a video signal with the same bandwidth of a television signal. 315 00:22:05,565 --> 00:22:14,647 It can store something that a television can put back together into an image all right, but every line drawn on the screen won’t display as much detail. 316 00:22:14,647 --> 00:22:22,015 That makes the image appear somewhat soft, but what’s even worse is the way the formats encode color. 317 00:22:22,015 --> 00:22:26,094 I have a video planned specifically on this so I’m not gonna get too deep here, 318 00:22:26,094 --> 00:22:31,016 but one of the truly groundbreaking things both Betamax and VHS accomplished 319 00:22:31,016 --> 00:22:38,000 was get color video working at all with such limited recording bandwidth and a single video head. 320 00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:46,005 See, both NTSC and PAL, the analog color television standards that used to dominate North America and Europe respectively, 321 00:22:46,005 --> 00:22:48,243 were a bit of a hack. 322 00:22:48,243 --> 00:22:53,163 We wanted color television signals to be compatible with existing black and white televisions, 323 00:22:53,163 --> 00:22:55,551 which was a pretty huge ask. 324 00:22:55,551 --> 00:23:03,918 Somehow we needed to take a signal that represented image brightness alone and magic that into three separate brightness values 325 00:23:03,918 --> 00:23:07,522 for the three color channels in an RGB image. 326 00:23:07,522 --> 00:23:11,213 We managed to do this, in fact I made videos on that whole saga 327 00:23:11,213 --> 00:23:12,065 *ding* 328 00:23:12,065 --> 00:23:21,579 and the way we did it was really quite elegant and involved separating a color image into a luminance signal for brightness and a chrominance signal for color, 329 00:23:21,579 --> 00:23:28,242 then combining those signals together in such a way that the color carrier signal was suppressed. 330 00:23:28,242 --> 00:23:31,180 A black and white television would only see the luminance signal, 331 00:23:31,180 --> 00:23:39,703 but a color television, using a circuit that latched onto a brief pulse of the color carrier transmitted before each line of video known as the colorburst, 332 00:23:39,703 --> 00:23:48,304 could recover the color signal from the luminance signal which would change the ratio between red, green, and blue as it drew lines across the face of a cathode ray tube 333 00:23:48,304 --> 00:23:50,812 and yes it’s all very complicated and I’m sorry. 334 00:23:51,101 --> 00:23:52,898 What does this have to do with videotape? 335 00:23:52,898 --> 00:24:02,057 Well, you need to have at least as much bandwidth as a true television signal for that scheme (known as composite color) to work. 336 00:24:02,057 --> 00:24:07,581 And neither Betamax nor VHS has that bandwidth available on the tape. 337 00:24:07,581 --> 00:24:12,737 Those formats had to come up with an entirely new scheme for encoding color video, 338 00:24:12,737 --> 00:24:18,076 and translate between NTSC or PAL and this new scheme when recording 339 00:24:18,076 --> 00:24:23,375 (and of course translate it back when playing a tape so a color television could display it). 340 00:24:23,375 --> 00:24:27,962 The so-called "color-under" encoding used by both Betamax and VHS 341 00:24:27,962 --> 00:24:33,860 could only encode about 30 to 40 different colors across the width of the television screen. 342 00:24:33,860 --> 00:24:40,634 Editor’s note: what I just said is correct but only when considering an individual scan line. 343 00:24:40,634 --> 00:24:45,707 Every next line can display its own unique set of 40 or so different colors, 344 00:24:45,707 --> 00:24:51,783 so I don’t want to mislead you into thinking that an entire image can only contain a few dozen colors. 345 00:24:51,783 --> 00:24:56,100 The whole image could theoretically contain about 20 thousand unique colors 346 00:24:56,100 --> 00:24:59,838 (that’s 480 visible lines multiplied by 40 colors per line) 347 00:24:59,838 --> 00:25:07,096 but when considering the width of the screen alone, the color resolution of consumer videotape is quite awful. 348 00:25:07,096 --> 00:25:12,104 And this is why the colors on ordinary videotape look so smeary - 349 00:25:12,104 --> 00:25:13,902 they literally are! 350 00:25:13,902 --> 00:25:22,176 You particularly notice this with animation - there’s a very good chance the change between two colors happens outside the lines. 351 00:25:22,176 --> 00:25:25,732 This is perfectly fine for a cheap home video format, 352 00:25:25,732 --> 00:25:28,451 but it ain’t gonna cut it in the studio. 353 00:25:28,451 --> 00:25:36,380 So, not only does Betamax (or any other consumer videotape format) lack the luminance resolution necessary for broadcast image quality, 354 00:25:36,380 --> 00:25:42,914 but it absolutely doesn’t have the color resolution to be seen as remotely acceptable. 355 00:25:42,914 --> 00:25:49,631 There’s just no way to cram enough information onto magnetic tape using a single flying head. 356 00:25:49,631 --> 00:25:50,844 But remember. 357 00:25:50,844 --> 00:25:53,496 Betacam doesn’t have a single flying head. 358 00:25:53,496 --> 00:25:57,757 It has two flying heads which work at the same time. 359 00:25:57,757 --> 00:26:03,434 If you look very closely at the two heads in the drum, you’ll notice that they’re not quite aligned. 360 00:26:03,434 --> 00:26:11,257 One sits a bit higher than the other so that as the heads sweep across the tape, they record two parallel tracks. 361 00:26:11,257 --> 00:26:16,166 One of them contains the luminance, or brightness, information (effectively a black and white image). 362 00:26:16,166 --> 00:26:19,147 And the other contains the color information. 363 00:26:19,147 --> 00:26:22,416 Since we aren’t combining those two signals into one, 364 00:26:22,416 --> 00:26:30,206 we can have much more color information and we can avoid the artifacts like dot crawl that plague composite video. 365 00:26:30,206 --> 00:26:38,557 That’s a huge boon for the video editing process and is a big part of what separates the professional VCRs from the consumer machines. 366 00:26:38,557 --> 00:26:42,299 Look at how well Betacam can reproduce titling elements. 367 00:26:42,299 --> 00:26:44,887 Now let’s compare with Betamax. 368 00:26:44,887 --> 00:26:47,055 With much more luminance bandwidth, 369 00:26:47,055 --> 00:26:49,616 the letters appear very crisp on Betacam, 370 00:26:49,616 --> 00:26:52,999 and with additional features like built-in time base correction, 371 00:26:52,999 --> 00:26:56,539 the image is rock-solid and stable. 372 00:26:56,539 --> 00:27:00,785 But what gets even more impressive is when I throw some color into the mix. 373 00:27:00,785 --> 00:27:04,093 Remember that terrible color resolution of consumer formats? 374 00:27:04,093 --> 00:27:05,944 Well, here it is in action. 375 00:27:05,944 --> 00:27:10,964 But Betacam, being a true component video format, doesn’t struggle. 376 00:27:10,964 --> 00:27:16,171 Frankly, the video produced by this machine is extremely close to DVD quality, 377 00:27:16,171 --> 00:27:20,545 and that’s mighty impressive for analog video on magnetic tape. 378 00:27:20,545 --> 00:27:25,841 Now the few video nerds out there who know the difference between Component and S-video 379 00:27:25,841 --> 00:27:31,771 but didn’t know that Betacam was different from Betamax might be a bit confused right now. 380 00:27:31,771 --> 00:27:34,870 I said Betacam stores component video signals, 381 00:27:34,870 --> 00:27:39,159 which you may know as the red green and blue jacks, or YPbPr. 382 00:27:39,159 --> 00:27:45,525 That’s made of three separate signals: Y for luminance, Pb for the difference between blue and luminance, 383 00:27:45,525 --> 00:27:49,485 and finally Pr, the difference between red and the luminance. 384 00:27:49,485 --> 00:27:52,332 But there are only two recording heads here, 385 00:27:52,332 --> 00:27:57,553 so how can I say that Betacam records the three signals of component video? 386 00:27:57,553 --> 00:28:02,608 Why, because Betacam uses compressed time division multiplexing, silly! 387 00:28:02,608 --> 00:28:05,792 Yeah, here’s where things get a little bit nuts. 388 00:28:05,792 --> 00:28:08,204 The head that records the color information 389 00:28:08,309 --> 00:28:12,371 is actually recording two color signals at the same time. 390 00:28:12,371 --> 00:28:15,224 Well, actually, no, not at the same time. 391 00:28:15,224 --> 00:28:24,718 Time-division multiplexing is a very old technique in which you essentially just keep switching between multiple signals so they can share a single channel. 392 00:28:24,718 --> 00:28:28,116 In this case, we only have two signals: Pb and Pr, 393 00:28:28,116 --> 00:28:34,503 so that head records the Pb signal for a teeny tiny bit, then the Pr signal for a teeny tiny bit, 394 00:28:34,503 --> 00:28:35,883 then back to Pb, 395 00:28:35,883 --> 00:28:36,888 then to Pr, 396 00:28:36,888 --> 00:28:37,758 then to Pb, 397 00:28:37,758 --> 00:28:38,483 then to Pr, 398 00:28:38,483 --> 00:28:39,172 then to Pb, 399 00:28:39,172 --> 00:28:42,733 and after enough of that an ice cold PBR with a PB&J is well deserved. 400 00:28:42,733 --> 00:28:47,700 Now, of course, those two signals are continuously being fed to the machine when it’s recording 401 00:28:47,700 --> 00:28:53,906 and it can’t just stop and ignore one while recording the other or we’d be losing half of the color information. 402 00:28:53,906 --> 00:29:03,637 So it’s actually time-compressing those two signals (effectively speeding them up) and alternately spitting them out as small double-speed chunks. 403 00:29:03,637 --> 00:29:06,353 When it’s playing a tape back, it’s gonna do the opposite, 404 00:29:06,353 --> 00:29:11,801 and slow each chunk down to half speed before sending them out the component jacks together. 405 00:29:11,801 --> 00:29:13,618 I know! It’s bonkers! 406 00:29:13,618 --> 00:29:17,461 But it’s a bit like taking a stereo audio track, doubling its speed, 407 00:29:17,461 --> 00:29:21,509 then splitting each of the two channels into half-second chunks. 408 00:29:21,509 --> 00:29:26,111 So long as you use some sort of reference clock so you can piece it back together correctly, 409 00:29:26,111 --> 00:29:32,388 you can send a half-second of the left channel followed by a half-second of the right channel over a single wire. 410 00:29:32,388 --> 00:29:37,192 On the receiving end, simply slow them both back down to the full second they should be, 411 00:29:37,192 --> 00:29:43,409 re-synchronize them, play them together, and voila - stereo audio over a single wire. 412 00:29:43,409 --> 00:29:49,346 Betacam is effectively doing that with the Pb and Pr signals of component video. 413 00:29:49,346 --> 00:29:54,647 And that’s at least part of why there is so much freaking circuitry inside this machine. 414 00:29:54,647 --> 00:30:00,189 I found the patent for the process by which Betacam encodes and decodes the signals it records 415 00:30:00,189 --> 00:30:02,449 and reading it just hurts. 416 00:30:02,449 --> 00:30:08,076 Even just the block diagrams are hard to follow, but here’s where the two color signals get combined, 417 00:30:08,076 --> 00:30:10,675 you can see some of the delay and clock pulse elements, 418 00:30:10,675 --> 00:30:12,465 here’s the part that slows it back down - 419 00:30:12,465 --> 00:30:15,243 it’s all sorts of nuts, but hey. 420 00:30:15,243 --> 00:30:16,417 They made it work. 421 00:30:16,417 --> 00:30:19,534 And honestly, hats off to Sony. 422 00:30:19,534 --> 00:30:23,770 I forgot to script this part, so I’m gonna do my best and record this off-the-cuff. 423 00:30:23,770 --> 00:30:28,360 You might have noticed that the two recording heads won’t hit the tape at the same time. 424 00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:30,091 One follows the other. 425 00:30:30,091 --> 00:30:32,446 So, how does that work? 426 00:30:32,446 --> 00:30:36,328 Well, truthfully, I couldn’t find a solid answer to this. 427 00:30:36,558 --> 00:30:41,817 The time compression that this thing is doing with all that circuitry might be the explanation, 428 00:30:41,817 --> 00:30:49,216 but the other possible explanation is that it doesn’t matter if the color information doesn’t actually record at the same time 429 00:30:49,216 --> 00:30:51,777 because of the vertical blanking interval. 430 00:30:51,777 --> 00:30:57,766 The beginning and end of every frame of video is black space that a TV can’t display, 431 00:30:57,766 --> 00:31:01,960 so if there’s no color information there it doesn't really matter. 432 00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:09,966 I think that’s the more likely explanation - the color information actually starts a little bit into each video frame and it just doesn’t matter, 433 00:31:09,966 --> 00:31:11,875 but, uh, I couldn't find a solid answer. 434 00:31:11,875 --> 00:31:13,352 So hopefully somebody knows. 435 00:31:13,352 --> 00:31:15,353 If you know, let us know. 436 00:31:15,460 --> 00:31:19,769 But the way the signals get put on the tape didn’t come without a cost. 437 00:31:19,769 --> 00:31:25,032 You might have guessed that the two parallel tracks recorded by the video heads result in a… 438 00:31:25,032 --> 00:31:28,365 less economical use of the tape’s running time. 439 00:31:28,365 --> 00:31:32,315 But if you guessed twice as many helical tracks means half the runtime, 440 00:31:32,315 --> 00:31:33,958 well you’d be wrong. 441 00:31:33,958 --> 00:31:40,852 Thanks to the use of guard bands between adjacent tracks, it is in fact only a third the normal runtime. 442 00:31:40,852 --> 00:31:44,997 A third, that is, of the original Beta-I recording speed. 443 00:31:46,014 --> 00:31:50,726 Yeah, this cassette here is more-or-less equivalent to an L-750, 444 00:31:50,726 --> 00:31:55,463 a tape that would yield only 90 minutes of recording time with an OG Betamax machine 445 00:31:55,463 --> 00:31:57,951 and three hours on a machine like this. 446 00:31:57,951 --> 00:32:01,538 But with Betacam, it holds a measly half-hour. 447 00:32:01,538 --> 00:32:06,911 In a Betacam machine, the tape flies by at over 10 centimeters per second. 448 00:32:06,911 --> 00:32:11,174 Compare the rotational speeds of the supply spools here to get a sense of the difference. 449 00:32:11,174 --> 00:32:15,116 The Betacam tape is moving roughly six times faster. 450 00:32:15,116 --> 00:32:21,347 So here, once again, Sony’s fixation on making a small cassette would become a problem. 451 00:32:21,347 --> 00:32:24,127 Sure, it made portable equipment more compact, 452 00:32:24,127 --> 00:32:28,708 and 30 minutes of recording time is all right for a news-gathering team, 453 00:32:28,708 --> 00:32:33,462 but if Sony wanted this format to see serious use in a television studio, 454 00:32:33,462 --> 00:32:35,531 they’d need to do better than that. 455 00:32:35,531 --> 00:32:40,680 So they had no choice but come up with this chonky boy. 456 00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:46,700 That’s right, Sony was basically forced to design an entirely new and much larger cassette 457 00:32:46,700 --> 00:32:49,883 which could actually fit a useful amount of tape in it. 458 00:32:49,883 --> 00:32:56,226 Betacam L cassettes - that’s L for Long - could hold up to 90 minutes of video. 459 00:32:56,226 --> 00:32:58,741 These are ridiculous and I love them. 460 00:32:58,741 --> 00:33:04,440 They have the same little cutout to thread the tape that the original Beta cassettes do which looks ever so silly. 461 00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:09,298 And, the original tape size, by the way, was now known as Betacam S - 462 00:33:09,298 --> 00:33:11,091 that’s S for short. 463 00:33:11,091 --> 00:33:13,884 And with that Sony finally admitted it - 464 00:33:13,884 --> 00:33:16,151 the tape is simply too short. 465 00:33:16,151 --> 00:33:17,552 Another editor’s note: 466 00:33:17,552 --> 00:33:27,901 I have seen some evidence that officially it was S for Small and L for Large, but either way… it’s not a good look for the original Beta tape. 467 00:33:27,901 --> 00:33:31,234 And now we know why the cassette slot is so freaking wide! 468 00:33:31,234 --> 00:33:35,395 This machine accepts both S and L cassettes. 469 00:33:35,395 --> 00:33:37,851 And think about the design challenges there. 470 00:33:37,851 --> 00:33:45,457 You need the slot to keep the small cassette centered as you insert it, so ridges are built into the loading carriage right at the edges. 471 00:33:45,457 --> 00:33:50,274 But the L cassette, then, needs a recess so it can slip past those ridges. 472 00:33:50,274 --> 00:33:54,715 And there they are, with a S-cassette fitting right between them. 473 00:33:54,715 --> 00:34:02,448 If that weren’t enough, the cogs of the tape spools are much farther apart on the big cassette than they are on the small one, 474 00:34:02,448 --> 00:34:08,021 so this machine has moving spindles that quickly change position depending on which cassette you’re loading. 475 00:34:08,021 --> 00:34:11,260 It’s equal parts hilarious and impressive. 476 00:34:12,638 --> 00:34:16,762 [various delightful mechanical noises] 477 00:34:26,903 --> 00:34:32,430 And I must say, using this machine is genuinely impressive in several ways. 478 00:34:32,430 --> 00:34:39,222 For one, the tape transport mechanism is deliciously responsive, precise, and wicked fast. 479 00:34:39,222 --> 00:34:42,626 Remember, the tape moves pretty quickly in normal playback, 480 00:34:42,626 --> 00:34:45,586 but look at this thing fly when you hit fast forward. 481 00:34:45,586 --> 00:34:52,664 That counter is going up astonishingly quickly, and the tape spools are moving at an almost scary pace. 482 00:34:52,664 --> 00:34:57,784 I also just love that when you hit fast forward or rewind when playing, it doesn’t mute the audio - 483 00:34:57,784 --> 00:35:01,385 [eyy - swoooopittttytytytyytytytytytytsquiuiiu.... 484 00:35:01,385 --> 00:35:02,192 eyuwooop. 485 00:35:02,192 --> 00:35:04,165 pooowuyeuiiuiuqstytytytytytyytytytyttttupoooowsyye... 486 00:35:04,165 --> 00:35:04,862 eyuwooop 487 00:35:04,862 --> 00:35:06,038 swoooopittttytytytyytytytytytytsquiuiiu 488 00:35:06,038 --> 00:35:06,678 eyuwooop. 489 00:35:06,678 --> 00:35:08,103 ♫ choir singing ♫ 490 00:35:08,103 --> 00:35:09,104 silence] 491 00:35:09,104 --> 00:35:12,732 This definitely makes me feel like some sorta professional video editor! 492 00:35:12,732 --> 00:35:13,739 Wait. 493 00:35:13,739 --> 00:35:20,509 And as much as I love to make fun of Sony, I do have to admit they knew how to build a satisfying machine. 494 00:35:20,509 --> 00:35:27,686 This is actually a pretty basic machine in the lineup, in fact the UVW model lineup was meant as a lower-cost option. 495 00:35:27,686 --> 00:35:31,951 But that didn’t stop them from using these delightful illuminated buttons. 496 00:35:31,951 --> 00:35:34,445 Pressing them is so satisfying. 497 00:35:34,445 --> 00:35:37,881 And look at the design for the little cover over these extra buttons. 498 00:35:37,881 --> 00:35:40,150 It could just pop down on a simple hinge, 499 00:35:40,150 --> 00:35:46,062 but instead it oozes with gravitas as it slides neatly below the controls and out of the way. 500 00:35:46,062 --> 00:35:47,389 MMMM! 501 00:35:47,750 --> 00:35:53,012 Lastly, I should probably touch on the whole SP thing in Betacam SP. 502 00:35:53,012 --> 00:35:58,312 Upon release in 1982, Betacam used the same tape formulation as Betamax - 503 00:35:58,312 --> 00:36:04,574 in fact you could use a consumer Betamax tape in a Betacam machine and it would work just fine. 504 00:36:04,574 --> 00:36:13,289 But in 1986, Sony would update the format with the new Superior Performance line that used special metal-oxide tapes. 505 00:36:13,289 --> 00:36:15,740 That yielded a slight bump in image quality, 506 00:36:15,740 --> 00:36:20,512 and the switch to SP also brought with it many other quality-of-life improvements. 507 00:36:20,512 --> 00:36:28,420 The fundamentals of the technology didn’t change, and Betacam SP tapes can generally be played back on original Betacam equipment, 508 00:36:28,420 --> 00:36:34,935 but the new metal oxide tapes required stronger video heads and weren’t backward compatible for recording. 509 00:36:34,935 --> 00:36:38,779 Remember, though, that this machine is from 1993. 510 00:36:38,779 --> 00:36:45,781 Betacam SP was the de-facto standard format in large swaths of the video production world for decades, 511 00:36:45,781 --> 00:36:50,511 and would see continued use long after Sony developed digital replacements. 512 00:36:50,511 --> 00:36:55,488 As a matter of fact, the same year this machine was released saw the release of Digital Betacam, 513 00:36:55,488 --> 00:36:58,679 which was Betacam but Digital. 514 00:36:58,679 --> 00:37:03,408 That would be superseded by Betacam SX, then MPEG IMX, 515 00:37:03,408 --> 00:37:13,415 and finally HDCAM, which used the same basic Betacam cassettes to store 1080P digital video at a bitrate of 144 megabits per second. 516 00:37:13,415 --> 00:37:19,468 HDCAM received a few updates over the years, but with the advent of portable hard drives and flash memory, 517 00:37:19,468 --> 00:37:23,647 the need to store digital data on magnetic tape slowly diminished. 518 00:37:23,647 --> 00:37:31,801 And now, inside my camera there’s a piece of plastic about the size of a dime that I bought for $12 which does the job just as well and doesn’t need rewinding. 519 00:37:31,801 --> 00:37:37,282 Now, before we roll credits, you might be wondering where JVC might have been through all of this. 520 00:37:37,282 --> 00:37:39,366 Turns out, nowhere! 521 00:37:39,366 --> 00:37:41,969 They didn’t care at all to compete with Betacam. 522 00:37:41,969 --> 00:37:45,014 But RCA wasn’t dead yet in 1982, 523 00:37:45,014 --> 00:37:51,042 and they worked with their old pal Matsushita to develop their own professional videocassette based on VHS. 524 00:37:51,042 --> 00:37:53,664 They called it M. 525 00:37:53,664 --> 00:37:55,338 Just M. 526 00:37:55,338 --> 00:38:00,272 And it was pretty much the same exact idea as Betacam, but VHS. 527 00:38:00,272 --> 00:38:02,905 It ran with a much higher-than-normal tape speed, 528 00:38:02,905 --> 00:38:07,571 and its VHS-based cassettes held only 20 minutes of video. 529 00:38:07,571 --> 00:38:08,899 It flopped. 530 00:38:08,899 --> 00:38:15,472 Then, in 1986, M was updated by Panasonic (which is a subsidiary of Matsushita, in case you didn’t know) 531 00:38:15,472 --> 00:38:17,433 and became M II. 532 00:38:17,433 --> 00:38:18,521 Catchy. 533 00:38:18,620 --> 00:38:21,881 Just like Betacam SP it was a marginal improvement, 534 00:38:21,881 --> 00:38:25,988 but Panasonic did figure out how to cut down on tape usage. 535 00:38:25,988 --> 00:38:34,700 Apparently, the large MII cassette was pretty much the same exact size as a normal VHS cassette and still managed to hold 90 minutes of component video. 536 00:38:34,700 --> 00:38:41,388 And they developed a baby cassette that only held 20 minutes but would make for a pretty compact camcorder. 537 00:38:41,388 --> 00:38:46,405 M II fared a little bit better, with NBC deciding to go with it for a while, 538 00:38:46,405 --> 00:38:50,272 but it still was a drop in the bucket compared to Betacam. 539 00:38:50,272 --> 00:38:52,142 So, here we are. 540 00:38:52,142 --> 00:38:56,385 The most important thing I want you to take away from this video is, 541 00:38:56,385 --> 00:38:57,832 say it with me now, 542 00:38:57,832 --> 00:39:00,870 BETACAM IS NOT BETAMAX. 543 00:39:00,870 --> 00:39:08,394 Sony reused the same cassettes and the same first four letters when creating this new format which was needlessly confusing, 544 00:39:08,394 --> 00:39:12,464 but the two are not compatible in any way. 545 00:39:12,464 --> 00:39:13,821 The next time someone pulls a 546 00:39:13,821 --> 00:39:17,857 “well, aktually, TV studios used Beta so it was clearly better” 547 00:39:17,857 --> 00:39:21,692 I want you to well actually right back and send them this video. 548 00:39:21,692 --> 00:39:23,784 Or, just, correct them on the spot. 549 00:39:23,784 --> 00:39:25,880 They don’t need to see the whole video. 550 00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:28,854 Uh, but if you were sent here and made it to this point, 551 00:39:28,854 --> 00:39:31,279 well I’m glad we’re now on the same page! 552 00:39:31,935 --> 00:39:33,647 At least, we'd better be. 553 00:39:33,647 --> 00:39:35,128 I don’t wanna have to do this again. 554 00:39:36,342 --> 00:39:37,333 Thanks for watching. 555 00:39:38,390 --> 00:39:40,834 ♫ incompatibly smooth jazz ♫ 556 00:39:42,935 --> 00:39:47,343 But after a decade’s long game of telephone made even worse by the internet, 557 00:39:47,343 --> 00:39:48,495 mmbeh [sigh] 558 00:39:48,495 --> 00:39:49,537 crap! 559 00:39:49,537 --> 00:39:51,957 Welp! Iuhrururgrestart gonna restart that line. 560 00:39:51,957 --> 00:39:56,838 I have good news! You’re watching the videooooh no. 561 00:39:56,838 --> 00:39:57,990 That’s…ugh 562 00:39:57,990 --> 00:40:02,283 …some sorta proof that Beta was better is either being very dishingenuous… 563 00:40:02,283 --> 00:40:05,160 I kinda said “dishingenuous” didn’t I? 564 00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:10,273 If you would like to skip it, go ahead and jump to heh heh hawah heh hawrh ha heh-ha 565 00:40:10,273 --> 00:40:12,959 Sony knew right away that they had a problem on… 566 00:40:13,583 --> 00:40:14,894 S… stop it! 567 00:40:14,894 --> 00:40:19,810 ...stretch Beta’s recording capacity to 90 minutes with the introduction of the L-seven - 568 00:40:22,075 --> 00:40:23,064 I think I hit it. 569 00:40:23,064 --> 00:40:25,393 Suspiciously absent from this machine [bonk]. 570 00:40:25,393 --> 00:40:26,316 Oh… 571 00:40:27,432 --> 00:40:30,912 At this point, you beta believe that Betacam ain't Betamax. 572 00:40:30,912 --> 00:40:35,094 It sure is astounding how angsty uncles could, through nonstop whining to their family and friends, 573 00:40:35,094 --> 00:40:38,287 change the broader understanding of how the format war happened, isn't it? 574 00:40:38,287 --> 00:40:40,648 Face it, Dave, you backed the wrong horse. 575 00:40:40,648 --> 00:40:41,656 It's OK. 576 00:40:41,656 --> 00:40:42,648 Mistakes happen. 577 00:40:42,648 --> 00:40:43,407 Let it go.