Betamax

[trekkiedane]

There was some kind of (semi-)professional system all schools had before they went all Video 2000.
I have never had any personal contact with Betamax!

/.../ I wonder if Beta had survived, and not VHS, if with time, they would have found ways to make longer-running Beta tapes, like how VHS eventually had T-120, T-160, and T-180.

By the time Betamax had the longer running tapes, the VHS was by far the most widespread system (due only to the longer tapes!)-and had in effect won the war (On the US market) despite the lower quality -the rest of the world just followed the (at this time) cheaper product.
(IIRC there's a videotape-war article on Wikipedia)

 

[Robert Maxwell]

My household was all VHS. My dad's stereo (or "hi-fi" as they called 'em) had an 8-track deck, though.

 

[That Weirdo In The Corner]

My Dad bought a Betamax which was not long after handed to me, as he bought a VHS VCR. my Betamax outlasted several VHS VCRs.

I only stopped using it because the last place that sold tapes, John Lewis, had stopped selling them.

You haven't lived till you've seen "Transformers more than meets the eye" on Betamax

 

[warpmephaseme]

I'd always heard that VHS won because Betamax wouldn't allow porn. No idea if that's true.

We had one of the old school VHS home video video recorders, with one part camera, one part tape deck. Probably weighed 30 lbs.

 

[TrickyDickie]

TOS on Betamax:

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series_(Betamax)

I never happened to use Betamax. My parents didn't even go to color tv until 1977. We bought our first VCR in 1987 and it was a Zenith VHS machine.

I have also heard that the large laser disks were of excellent quality. True?

I don't care much for DVD. The discs get scratched so easily and then skip, freeze, etc. My wife and I are in the process of watching Enterprise for the first time, using season sets from the local library. It gets rather frustrating at times.

As far as music, I much prefer the old 33 1/3 rpm records. They sound better, and while they may pop and crackle a bit, they hold up better over time than tapes and compact discs, in my opinion.

 

[kirsten187]

I remember Betamax. My family had one for a few years.

 

[Mary Ann]

At the time I didn't know it was a Betamax machine, but I remember watching Airplane! at a friend's house on Beta in about 1982. The reason I remember is because the movie was on two tapes, and at first I thought her dad was just flipping the tape over to play the other side, like a music cassette.

I finally talked my dad into buying a VCR in the late '80s. We had a CD player before we had a VCR.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Believe it or not the film industry continued to use Beta for many years after VHS won the home video market. Film makers liked the high resolution of the Beta format better than they liked the VHS long play time.

 

[DonIago]

I don't care much for DVD. The discs get scratched so easily and then skip, freeze, etc. My wife and I are in the process of watching Enterprise for the first time, using season sets from the local library. It gets rather frustrating at times.

One thing I -love- about my Blu Ray player is that it's able to read DVDs that my DVD player gave up on a long time ago.

 

[BolianAuthor]

I don't care much for DVD. The discs get scratched so easily and then skip, freeze, etc. My wife and I are in the process of watching Enterprise for the first time, using season sets from the local library. It gets rather frustrating at times.

That's not really fair though... any media taken from the library is usually mistreated more by users than stuff they themselves actually own. I take perfect care of my CDs and DVDs, and they work perfectly.

 

[TrickyDickie]

I don't care much for DVD. The discs get scratched so easily and then skip, freeze, etc. My wife and I are in the process of watching Enterprise for the first time, using season sets from the local library. It gets rather frustrating at times.

That's not really fair though... any media taken from the library is usually mistreated more by users than stuff they themselves actually own. I take perfect care of my CDs and DVDs, and they work perfectly.

I should have added that we have also had numerous instances where we have bought a movie or a series on DVD and there have been problems right out of the package from the factory. Most recently, it was the second disc in Season Two of The A-Team.

We have had to do many more returns with DVD than we ever did with VHS.

 

[Amaris]

Have you made sure it's not your player?

 

[Miss Chicken]

When I was planning to buy a video player (as opposed to just renting on my brother-in-law, who knew about such things, advised me to get a Betamax because they were superior. However I rent into a video rental store and looked at the small range of movies available in Betamax and compared it to the VHS range and decided to buy a VHS player.

my brother-in-law later said that it was a real pity that VHS won.

 

[Kelso]

I very rarely have DVD issues.

 

[Trekker4747]

I remember my high school (during the 90s when VHS had complete control of things and Beta was just an long-dead medium in the consumer market) had a Betamax player and tapes for some of the video-lessons/programs whatever.

You'd need a crane to lift that damn thing.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I keep looking for a good Betamax that I can afford on eBay. I've got all of TOS and TNG on Beta, among other things - lots of 80s goodness.

 

[Guartho]

I bought my first betamax player last year. Before that, it was just a thing of legend. It came with Close Encounters.

I bought it to convert one client's betamax home-video tapes to DVD and haven't used it since.

ETA-"among other things," Dennis?

 

[TrickyDickie]

Have you made sure it's not your player?

Yes.... early on it became our standard practice when this happened to try several different machines. We have a DVD/VHS combo machine, a stand-alone DVD player, our PC that plays DVD (several different programs for playing movies) and my mom's DVD/VHS combo machine.

We have bought far more music discs than video discs and have found that in our particular experience the music discs have been far less problematic, proportionately, number purchased to problems experienced, than the video discs have been.

 

[Waylander]

We had a Betamax when I was younger

I also remember going to the video shop where a friend worked, and after 3 weeks I'd seen all of the films I was interested in that they had in Betamax format

It could have been worse, one of my school mates came in raving about their new video player, where you could turn the tape over

Anyone else remember the short lived V2000 format

Details Here

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

One of my school friends was a Betamax owner - even when we parted company some 20 years ago I'm sure that her family was still using it. I wonder if they ever did upgrade to something more modern, like HD-DVD or something...

Maybe a laserdisc (the LP of the video world)? And for music, the DAT?
There are always going to be people who consistently bet on the wrong horse, as it were.

My household was all VHS. My dad's stereo (or "hi-fi" as they called 'em) had an 8-track deck, though.

We had one of those, but it was the 70's
I knew a guy in the early 90's that had a 1970 Trans-Am with an 8-track deck.