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Posted by Bill Vermillion on 04/06/06 02:25
In article <ea9ff$44346bd5$483198a5$21404@FUSE.NET>,
bobukcat <bobukcat@killspam.fuse.net> wrote:
>
>"Richard" <rfeirste@nycap.rr.com> wrote in message
>news:1237jina8eg7pc8@corp.supernews.com...
>> I have informally talked to people as well. They note Sony
>> lost betamax because it did not license it out.
>> Sony licensed Beta to Zenith. VHS was licensed to RCA. At the
>> time Sony priced its units very high and Zenith was starting
>> its decline as a force in the retail market. RCA was a much
>> stronger distributor offering dealer incentives, etc. Sony
>> did a poor job promoting Beta's advantages, smaller case size
>> designed to fit on a book shelf, standard 720 tapes holding
>> more than 120 tapes at Beta II speed, superior mechanical
>> design and superior video quality.
>> Poor marketing and higher prices when thrown against a far more
>> aggressive marketing force that understood our market is what
>> did Beta in. This may not be the case with blu-ray.
>> Richard.
>I personally believe that Sony lost the video cassette war
>because of the longer available recording time that VHS provided
>with a long tape and the slowest speed (8 hours versus 6 for
>Beta if IIRC). People didn't seem to compare and notice that it
>looked like CRAP compared to Beta at ANY speed! Part of me wants
>at least one of the HD optical disk formats to win (if I were a
>betting man I'd go with Blu-Ray because of PS3) so that prices
>will drop and titles will become readily available for rent and
>purchase. I must admit that I would not be surprised though if
>both formats croaked kind of like DVD-audio or SCD, people are
>not yet ready to pitch their DVD collections like they were VHS
>tapes because too many people still don't have the HD TV to take
>advantage of it.
When the VHS came out it recorded for 2 hours while Beta was
1 hour.
Sony bumped the Beta to 2-hours and VHS went to the non-standard
[eg not scantioned by JVC] 4 hour. Beta went to 3 hours and
VHS went to 6 hours. The JVC's would only record at 2 and 6
hours.
Before Beta III Sony came out with a changer for the 7200 and like
models with the piano-key controls. I have the first changer - a
mechanical unit - that you could load up to have 4 tapes. They
later went to an electic unit changer that when used in BIII mode
you could get about 21 hours continuous record time with about 5-8
second loss during the cassette change.
Sony did come out with an 830meter tape that played longer than
the L750s [good for 3 hours] but you didn't see that around too
much.
It really was a war of longer recording time, and each time VHS
beat Sony.
Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
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