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Betamax

For Christmas in 1980, my parents bought me a Montgomery Ward stereo system that had am-fm radio, turntable, cassette recorder, and 8-track recorder.

A problem I found with 8-track tapes was that the little foam pad that the tape itself sits on inside an 8-track cartridge most often disintegrates from age. Sometimes I was able to get a compatible piece of foam and make a new one, but the tolerances were quite fine and you had to get it just right in order for it to work.

It was still rather fun recording onto 8-tracks in the 1980s though, because I was definitely in the minority in that hobby at that time.
 
I had a Sony Betamax deck that was so early the timer was a separate external device that cliped onto the top of the actual tape deck. There was nothing electronic about the timer, which displayed the time with transparent numbers on barrels that were driven by gears and an electric motor. The tape deck's power cord plugged into the back of the timer.

I recorded most of the audio tracks from the Star Trek animated series on eight track tapes.
 
I never had a Betamax, but my next door neighbor back in the late 1970's did. We used to go to their house and watch movies on it all the time. Ten years later in 1988, I was bulding up my VHS library after a discussion with this same neighbor (actually former neighbor by this point but still a friend), an it was him who told me to use VHS, since Betamax was in decline at that point. He was right. Within two years, VHS was the standard and Betamax was something you'd find in bargain basements. And the players themselves were rareities.
 
I could swear my grandparents' Betamax had analog clocks (barrel type as described above, though integrated into the unit) for setting the timer, but I can't quite convince myself that my memory's correct.

I do remember how each channel had to be tuned separately and with little dials though. :)
 
Have you made sure it's not your player?

I have found this problem to be the cause. I used to have a Sony DVD player that would not read Universal-released DVD-18's (the double sided ones) no matter what. A year or so later, I bought a Panasonic DVD recorder (my present machine), and those double-siders play fine on it.
 
My family's first player was a Pioneer VHS that ran for something like 15 years before it died. It was portable and survived family car trips. And then it died.
 
My parents purchased their first VCR in 1982. This unit was a top-loading VHS machine that was also "portable" in that the player/recorder portion of the unit could be detached and used separately, powered by batteries. This portion of the unit weighed quite a bit and required a seperate camera to record home videos. The two together were quite ungainly and expensive.
 
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.

Betamax spawned the BetaSP video format, and then eventually the digital betacam (digibeta) format that is still a widely-used industry format for standard-definition video. My company's standard for SD video is digibeta.

My family was pure VHS (I think we bought our first VCR around 1987) and I remember going to the video rental store for the first time, and having to distinguish between the VHS and beta sections of the store. I think my dad goofed and rented the wrong tape format. It took us several minutes to understand why the tape appeared to be too small and wouldn't fit in the slot on the VCR.

Some friends around the block had both formats. I always thought it was weird.
 
Anyone else remember the short lived V2000 format

Details Here

Ah, so I was remembering my friend's father flipping the cassette over to the other side correctly! I've never heard of this format before, and for years I believed it must have been a Betamax machine and that my memory of the cassette being flipped to play the other side was wrong. The things I learn on this board. :bolian:
 
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