What was wrong with the Betamax format?

[Saturlight]

It's rather old, about...3 years old? I don't think it will catch on. And yet they said that about telephones.

Quote: "The need to speak to people over short and long distances will never replace human contact, literally seeing eye to eye..."

Dr Rubin Swinzkurt 1876.

 

[2cvbloke]

It's rather old, about...3 years old? I don't think it will catch on. And yet they said that about telephones.

Quote: "The need to speak to people over short and long distances will never replace human contact, literally seeing eye to eye..."

Dr Rubin Swinzkurt 1876.

I'm not sure how old Blueray is myself, but yeah, it's probably got the Sony curse, better but not popular enough...

As for that quote, well, we have things like MSN, ICQ and all that now!!!

 

[2cvbloke]

Well, in addition to my 8mm stuff, I'm also getting a Sony BMC-100P Betamovie camera, possibly working too as the eBay auction said that the tape runs and ejects...

I like the shoulder strap that Sony put with the 100's and 200's...

 

[2cvbloke]

It arrived today with my 8mm Sony kit, and I can't power it up as I haven't got a decent ~9v PSU!!!

I did get a bit of life out of it when trying one PSU but I think that PSU blew as all of a sudden it went from being 10v to 15v!!!

 

[Ampex175]

It was frequently argued that Betamax was better than VHS. The slightly higher tape to head speed did give a few more 'lines' resolution. The linear tape speed was slower than VHS and the track width narrower (33 microns against 49 microns) so there was a trade off in noise performance. Let's just say that a high end VHS machine would trounce a cheap Beta machine - and vice versa!

The basic Beta wrap mechanism and cassette shell is indeed still alive and well in broadcast circles albeit with limited running times for the small cassette (30mins. for BetacamSP).

I don't ever recall 2 inch Quad videotape ever being recovered from lofts or skips etc. - it's much too fraglie to cope with rough handling. Lost / found programmes are usually 16mm film. These film recordings were mainly produced for export (often b/w prints of colour programmes) and would come with both composite optical and separate magnetic soundtracks. Fortunately they tend to outlive the Quadruplex recordings, many of which were systematically wiped.

I've screened quite a few 16mm transmission copies from the BBC archives and they look surprisingly good. I do have a copy of The Basil Brush Show (1972). Sadly - it's monochrome (originally colour) !

 

[Ampex175]

I'll take issue with some of the stuff you said max.

Betamax isn't U-Matic. If they were both the same, my cupboard wouldn't be full of U-Matic breeze-block-sized monsters.

Everybody talks about the rental fight between the formats - yet, people rarely comment on the actual differences between the two formats - and why beta was better.

Betamax produced better skin tonality (read: better colours) for one and, er, ....... that's about it really. Albeit, BetaHi-Fi rocked at the time.

Functionality and features wise - early model VHS machines were always coming out with better features before SONY (assholes) had them in their machines.

I remember going down to my local department store to specifically see the new range of SONY VHS machines. Sweet Justice (in hindsight).

.

Thanks Max, you're absolutely right; Betamax and UMatic are very different formats. UMatic uses 3/4inch tape for a start. Though resolution is still only around 250 lines; in subjective terms it 'looks' much better than either Betamax or VHS. The high band version of UMatic (known as BVU) was broadcast standard, though not very widely used.

 

[Dadstuff]

Hi - would you still like one of these? I am getting rid of my father's things soon and have the SLF1 UB, which I will be putting on ebay.

Or DigiBeta as it's known in the industry...

I have a blank Scotch Betamax tape at home, so I need to get myself a Betamax recorder (Sony preferably, I would love an SL-F1UB (portable Beta recorder, has a seperate tuner, see pic), found one in a skip once but it's back end was smashed and it was a write off... ), and yes, I just said I need a recorder just cos I have a tape...

 

[2cvbloke]

Hi - would you still like one of these? I am getting rid of my father's things soon and have the SLF1 UB, which I will be putting on ebay.

Hi, thanks, but I already have an SL-F1UB kit, as documented in this thread (see the posted pictures, that's what I have)...

 

[Telia]

There was nothing wrong with Betamax technically, it was superior in quality to VHS back in the early 80's.

Market forced people to buy VHS because most movies were released on that format and got bigger with time.

I loved Betamax, i had the Sony SL-C7 but got tired when you went to your video rental shop and thought you were going to rent the newest blockbuster and the guy behind the counter said, "No sorry, it's only available on VHS right now, Betamax release will come out in a month or so"

Later on i bought the SL-C9 which was a big upgrade from C7.

 

[d122k7trb]

We still have our Sony Wega T7 Gold edition. Don't know what to do with it. Almost new and not touched that much having it's extra facilities. We have also Panasonic VHS player J700. I've the idea that better donig or buying one thing once than changing or upgrading it everymonth.

P.S.: by the way, 2cvbloke, why don't you upgrade your archive from beta to DVD or Blu-ray with a digital DVD recorder and a digital Audio recorder. Like Marantz dr6000 and Panasonic dr 1000 and the newer ones.

Arbi

 

[Channel Hopper]

Later on i bought the SL-C9 which was a big upgrade from C7.

Ooooo, I have a couple of those behind me, but the non tuner variety (used for *ahem* specialist copying a couple of decades ago). Still working a treat.

 

[Channel Hopper]

P.S.: by the way, 2cvbloke, why don't you upgrade your archive from beta to DVD or Blu-ray with a digital DVD recorder and a digital Audio recorder.

And record all those hours of stuff in real time ? A complete waste of resources and effort.

 

[d122k7trb]

Why!!!!! There are some kinda stuff that you can't find in the market. They either’re out of print or are personal records. They may damage. I've had that experience. The tape was near the phone and voilla, the next day there were nothing on it. Back-up is always needed, though today the ways are somehow different.


Go find some 80's material on CD's. Amazon and the other sites sell them always used starting from don't know hundreds of bucks.
Arbi

 

[2cvbloke]

I won't be transferring anything to DVD or Blu-Ray, mainly cos what I have is already on such media, the tapes I have I've not looked through fully, mainly cos I just can't be bothered, and most of the stuff I have looked at isn't really of much interest, it's just home recordings of programs (and badly "edited" with the pause button), so, nah, not going to bother...

Plus there's also copyright, even if material on the tapes is from the 1970s, there will still be copyright applied to it, so if I went and recorded and sold a cr*pload of DVDs of say Benny Hill (which seems to freqent my collection of tapes), I could be sued and fined a lot of money, so, I'd rather not risk it...

 

[Channel Hopper]

Plus there's also copyright, even if material on the tapes is from the 1970s, there will still be copyright applied to it, so if I went and recorded and sold a cr*pload of DVDs of say Benny Hill (which seems to freqent my collection of tapes), I could be sued and fined a lot of money, so, I'd rather not risk it...

Benny Hill has all but disappeared from YouTube, so somebody is pushing the copyright issue.

 

[2cvbloke]

Benny Hill has all but disappeared from YouTube, so somebody is pushing the copyright issue.

Probably his family, or ITV, one of the two...

 

[PaulR]

Benny Hill has all but disappeared from YouTube

Maybe it's an outbreak of good taste?

 

[2cvbloke]

Maybe it's an outbreak of good taste?

There was a lot of bad taste stuff on Betamax, Benny Hill being one of them (though in my case, they were mostly recorded off the air), horror films, cheap p0rn, low-budget films, and VHS to Beta copies (so the superior Beta quality was lost cos of the poor VHS format being the source!!)...

 

[Channel Hopper]

Maybe it's an outbreak of good taste?

On YouTube ?

 

[d122k7trb]

Benny Hill or other kinda hill!!! There are some kina clips or tracks like Jason Donvan. Mandy smith. Cutting Crew. And so on..... that are rare to find. Especially, some Japanese Ones. What’s the solution. You tube quality is not OK at least for me. Ya it’s good for watching them online but they’re not as good as DVD’s. In that case what should we do?

Arbi