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Posted by Bill Vermillion on 11/13/05 04:05
In article <4370aa0a.9056109@news-server.houston.rr.com>,
Bob <spam@uce.gov> wrote:
>On Tue, 08 Nov 2005 02:15:01 GMT, bv@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) wrote:
>
>>I got my Beta in March of 1977.
>That must be a record for Early Adopter. Is it in Guinness?
No - the 7200 came out in 1976 as a stand-alone. Prior to that the
transport was in a wooden console that came with a built-in 19"
Sony color TV. I think that was a $2500 unit. Far out of my price
range. I don't know why Sony's marketing didn't put out a separate
unit earlier. If they had VHS might never had made the grade, as
the only competition for Sony at that time was the Sanyo V-Cord and
the Quasar Great Time Machine - which had cartridges that were more
ungainly than a U-Matic. It had a little 'penthouse' in the middle
of the cartridg as I recall. I haven't seen one of those
cartridges since about 1985 so my memory is a bit hazy on that as I
never owned one.
The Quasar was gone before the time the VHS came out in the US. And I
think the V-cord didn't go away until after the VHS came out.
But for a short while there were 4 formats in the marketplace -
with the old Qusars still on dealers shelves.
The niftiest of that era was in my opnion the Technicolor machine
with the 8MM tape. Kodak also tried 8MM and bowed out before Sony
came on strong with 8MM for the camcorder market.
>I thought the issue that caused VHS to win was the recording length of
>the tape.
That was one. But shortly after Sony introduced their 2 hour
machine VHS had 4 hours. When Sony went to 3 hours - VHS went to
6.
>I had Beta and it would not record any 6 hours. That was my first
>experience with Sony and it has only gotten worse over the years.
You could get 3 hours max - on the later machines - but they were
limited by the size of the cartridge.
>If there has ever been one company that goes out of its way to make
>people hate it, it is Sony.
Actually Sony had many fantastic ideas and had a hard time getting
them accepted as they were so small. They pretty much made
affordable reel-reel tape recorders availing in the US.
For a great history on how it all started - with a couple of people
at Sony and going through the VHS read "Fast Forward (Hollywood,
The Japanese, and the VCR Wars" by James Lardner.
ISBN number 0-393-02389-3. My copy says 'first edition' and was
printed in 1987. I find that the closer to the real event that
history of a technology is written - the more accurate it is.
The history starts in 1945 with The Japanese Instrument Measuring
Company who had wisely moved out of Tokyo and escaped the bombing
raids of Doolittle. And when the war was over Morita joined the
company - and from just a handful it grew to what it is today.
Their management problems didn't help them out in the past 10 years
or so. But all the pro-equipment I used from them - and semi-pro
too has been excellent. There aren't many companies left that
have items to sell from $1.00 to about $500,000. Most have wisely
targeted ranges - as it makes marketing much easier - you choose
between consumer or industrial - but doing both is hard.
If your library doesn't have Fast Forward you'll have to search used
book sources such as abebooks.com or bookfinder.com.
Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
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