Betamax
Betamax (colloquially termed Beta) is an obsolete home videocassette tape recording format developed by Sony, and released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contained 1/2 inch (12.7 mm) wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional 3/4 inch (19.05 mm) U-matic videocassette format.
Its rival VHS came along on 9 September 1976 http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/history_center/vhs.html , invented by JVC , it had no guard band, and used azimuth recording to reduce cross-talk. The "Betamax" name came from a double meaning: beta being the Japanese word used to describe the way signals were recorded onto the tape, and from the fact that when the tape ran through the transport it looked like the Greek letter "Beta" (β). The suffix -max came from "maximum" to suggest greatness.
Sanyo marketed a version as Betacord, but this was also referred to casually as "Beta". In addition to Sony and Sanyo, Beta format video recorders were also sold by Toshiba, Pioneer, Murphy, Aiwa and NEC, and the Zenith Electronics Corporation and WEGA Corporations contracted with Sony to produce VCRs for their product lines. Department stores like Sears, in the US and Canada, and Quelle in Germany sold Beta format VCRs under their house brands as did the RadioShack chain of electronic stores.
Betamax and VHS competed in a fierce format war which saw VHS come out on top in most markets.
Sony used the Beta format to produce a one-piece camcorder for consumers - the Betamovie. (The first camcorder ever sold was a professional unit using the Betacam standard, not Betamax.) While the idea was well received, the camcorder itself was rather large, and lacked features common to two-piece camera-recorder units: It could not play back or rewind its own tape, and had an optical, rather than electronic viewfinder. In effect the camcorder operated similarly to the 8mm film-based cameras of the day.
VHS manufacturers countered with the VHS-C format, and Sony eventually introduced the Video-8 format to compete with the VHS-Compact format. For more information, see the article on camcorders.
The VHS format's defeat of the Betamax format became a classic marketing case study. Sony's attempt to dictate an industry standard backfired when JVC made the tactical decision to forgo Sony's offer of Betamax in favor of developing their own technology. They felt that it would end up like the U-Matic deal, with Sony dominating.
By 1980, JVC's VHS format controlled 70% of the North American market. The large economy of scale allowed VHS units to be introduced to the European market at a far lower cost than the rarer Betamax units. In the UK, Betamax held a 25% market share in 1981, but by 1986 it was down to 7.5% and continued to decline further. By 1984, forty companies utilized the VHS format in comparison with Beta's twelve. Sony finally conceded defeat in 1988 when it too began producing VHS recorders.
In Japan, Betamax had more success and eventually evolved into Enhanced Definition Betamax with 500+ lines resolution, but eventually both Betamax and VHS were supplanted by laser-based technology. The last Sony Betamax was produced in 2002.
For more information on why Betamax lost to VHS, see Videotape format war.
One other major consequence of the Betamax technology's introduction to the U.S. was the lawsuit Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios (1984, the "Betamax case"), with the U.S. Supreme Court determining home videotaping to be legal in the United States, wherein home videotape cassette recorders were a legal technology since they had substantial non-infringing uses. This precedent was later invoked in MGM v. Grokster (2005), where the high court agreed that the same "substantial non-infringing uses" standard applies to authors and vendors of peer-to-peer file sharing software (notably excepting those who "actively induce" copyright infringement through "purposeful, culpable expression and conduct").
Three Sony Betamax VCRs built for the American market. Top to Bottom: (1982) SL-2000 portable with TT-2000 tuner/timer "Base Station", (1984) SL-HF 300 Betamax HiFi unit, (1988) SL-HF 360 SuperBeta HiFi unit.
A rare Japanese market Betamax TV/VCR combo – Model SL-MV1.
The early form of Betacam tapes are interchangeable with Betamax, though the recordings are not.
In the professional and broadcast video industry, Sony's Betacam, derived from Betamax as a professional format, became one of several standard formats; production houses exchange footage on Betacam videocassettes, and the Betacam system became the most widely used videotape format in the ENG (Electronic News Gathering) industry, replacing the 3/4" U-matic tape format (which was the first practical and cost-effective portable videotape format for broadcast television, signaling the end of 16 mm film — and the phrase "film at 11" often heard on the six-o-clock newscast, before the film had been developed). The professional derivative of VHS, MII (aka Recam), faced off against Betacam and lost. Once Betacam became the de facto standard of the broadcast industry, its position in the professional market mirrored VHS's dominance in the home-video market[citation needed]. On a technical level, Betacam and Betamax are similar in that both share the same videocassette shape, use the same oxide tape formulation with the same coercivity, and both record linear audio tracks on the same location of the videotape. But in the key area of video recording, Betacam and Betamax are completely different. BetaCam tapes are mechanically interchangeable with Betamax, but not electronically. BetaCam moves the tape at 12 cm/s, with different recording/encoding techniques. Betamax is a color-under system with linear tape speeds ranging from 4 cm/s to 1.33 cm/s.
Sony also offered a range of Industrial Betamax products, a Beta I only format for industrial and institutional users. It was basically cheaper and smaller than U-Matic. The arrival of the Betacam system reduced the demand for both Industrial Beta and U-Matic equipment.
Betamax also had a significant part to play in the music recording industry when Sony introduced its PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) digital recording system as an encoding box / PCM adaptor that connected to a Betamax recorder. The Sony PCM-F1 adaptor was sold with a companion Betamax VCR SL-2000 as a portable digital audio recording system. Many recording engineers used this system in the 1980s and 1990s to make their first digital master recordings.
Initially, Sony was able to tout several Betamax-only features, such as BetaScan, a high speed picture search in either direction and BetaSkipScan, a technique that allowed the operator to see where he was on the tape by pressing the FF key (or REW, if in that mode) and the transport would switch into the BetaScan mode until the key was released. This feature is discussed more on Peep Search. Sony believed that the M-Load transports used by VHS machines made copying these trick modes impossible. BetaSkipScan (Peep Search) is now available on miniature M-load formats, but even Sony were unable to fully replicate this on VHS. BetaScan was originally called "Videola" until the company that made the Moviola threatened legal action.
Sony would also sell a BetaPak, a small deck designed to be used with a camera. Concerned with the need for several pieces, and cables to connect them, an integrated camera/recorder was designed, which Sony dubbed a "Camcorder". The result was Betamovie. Betamovie used the standard sized cassette, but with a modified transport. The tape was wrapped 300 degrees around a smaller, 44.671 mm diameter head drum, with a single dual-azimuth head to write the video tracks. For playback, the tape would be inserted into a Beta format deck. Due to the different geometry and writing techniques employed, playback within the camcorder was not feasible. SuperBeta and industrial Betamovie camcorders would also be sold by Sony.