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Originally Posted by dazzalam
wich was a better system betamax or vhs, betamax far more superior, so why did vhs outlive it because it became the industry standard, and the retailers and video rental stores killed it off,
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Having worked in the AV industry the reason we in the UK ended up with VHS where as a lot of teh world used Beta was commercial. During development at Sony teh first system developed was what we know as VHS. The developers weren't happy with the quality of picture so continued and eventually came up with Betamax. Sony therefore made Betamax video recorders under their name. At the time JVC and ferguson came togther and bought the license for the inferior VHS system from Sony. They started making video recorders under their own names. As the price of these monsters was high(£1K+) the majority of the public couldn't afford to buy them and so tried to rent them. The big players in the rental market(Granada, Radio Rentals etc) approached Sony to buy their better quality recorders. The only thing was that they wanted to rebrand the machines under their own names. Sony didn't want this so refused. They then approached JVC/Ferguson who were only too happy to sell them anything they wanted no matter what name was on the box. This way they majority of machines out there were VHS. As such the rental shops stocked more VHS tapes than Beta. New customers who were thinking of buying/renting a machine would go into the shop and see 3 walls of VHS and 1 wall of Beta tapes. They would then go and get a VHS machine as there was more choice. Hence we are were we are.
Now who can tell me why it is called Betamax? I'm not a rich man but 50 Ackers to whoever gets it.
Ian