Betamax

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Sony's Betamax is the 12.7 mm (0.5 inch) home videocassette tape recording format derived from the earlier, professional 19.1 mm (0.75 inch) U-matic video cassette format. Like the video home recording system VHS introduced by JVC in 1976, it had no guard band, and used azimuth recording to reduce cross-talk. The "Betamax" name came from the fact that when the tape ran through the cassette it looked like the Greek letter "Beta". Sanyo marketed its version as the "Betacord", but it too was referred to as "Beta" for the same reason Betamax was. As well as Sony and Sanyo, Betamax video recorders were also sold by Toshiba, Pioneer, Aiwa and NEC. 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 Quelle in Germany sold Beta format VCRs under their house brands as did the Radio Shack chain of electronic stores. Sony introduced the Betamax home video system in 1975. The format was most popular in 1983, gaining almost a third of the UK video recorder market, while Sanyo celebrated the VTC5000 being the top selling UK video recorder. However by 1985 the market had turned sharply towards VHS.

The world's first camcorders were of the Betamax format and were labeled "Betamovie." Image:Sony bmc100p.jpg

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The legacy of Betamax

The VHS format's defeat of the Betamax format became a classic marketing case study, now identified with the verbal phrase "to Betamax", wherein a proprietary technology format is overwhelmed in the market by a format allowing multiple, competing, licensed manufacturers, as in: "Apple Betamaxed themselves out of the PC market." Sony's confidence in its ability to dictate the industry standard backfired when JVC made the tactical decision to engage in open sharing of its VHS technology. JVC sacrificed substantial potential earnings by going the open sharing route, but that decision helped to win the standards war. Equally significantly, JVC realised the importance of content licensing and thus the first movies available for rental were only available on VHS. Within a few months, video rental became the driving force in the marketplace. By 1984, forty companies utilized the VHS format in comparison with Betamax's twelve. Sony finally conceded defeat in 1988 when it too began producing VHS recorders. However, Sony may be said to have had the last laugh in this saga as its Video-8 small-format videotape is essentially a scaled-down version of Betamax, and Video-8 dominated the home camcorder format for the next 15 years with the rival VHS-C format only gaining a small market share.

One other major consequence of the Betamax technology's introduction to the U.S. was the lawsuit Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios (1984), 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").

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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 started the ENG (Electronic News Gathering) industry. The professional derivative of VHS, MII, faced off against Betacam and lost. Once Betacam had become the de-facto standard of the broadcast industry, its position in the professional market mirrored VHS's dominance in the home-video market. On a technical level, Betacam and Betamax are similar in that both share the same videocassette shape, and both record linear audiotracks on the same location of the videotape. But in the key area of video recording, Betacam and Betamax are completely different. (Unlike Betamax, Betacam uses a component-video encoding system.)

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 that connected to a Betamax recorder. Many recording studios used this system in the 1980's and 1990's to make their first digital master recordings.

Despite the sharp decline in sales of Betamax recorders in the early 1980s and subsequent halt in production of new recorders, the format is still being used by a small number of people, most of which are collectors or hobbyists. New cassettes are still available for purchase at online shops and used recorders are often found at flea markets, thrift stores, or on internet auction sites.

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Pop Culture

BetaMax is commonly shown on the television series The Simpsons as being the format of choice for the Simpsons family and most likely the rest of the town of Springfield. The family has been shown renting videos at The Beta Barn on a number of occasions, although it later became VHS Village. In more recent episodes, the Simpsons have been shown using LaserDiscs rather than the popular DVD format.
The Betamax was also used by the Bundy family in the television series Married... with Children.
In an episode of the sci-fi anime series Cowboy Bebop, an unlabeled Betamax video tape is delivered to the main characters. Because the technology is so ancient, they go through a hellish process to swipe a player from an abandoned technology museum in order to view its contents. However, they end up swiping a VHS player by mistake. Near the end of the episode, the characters receive another mysterious delivery in the form of a Betamax player.
In an episode of the BBC comedy The Mighty Boosh, a villain made of tape is called The Betamax Bandit. He is referred to several times as 'an obsolete format'.
In The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, where Billy thaws a million year old caveman trapped in ice, he describes the caveman's time with the usage of betamax tapes.
In Malcolm in the Middle, where Francis finds a dead janitor, he finds a pornographic film and remarks, "Damn, Beta."
In an episode of The Red Green Show, Red Green uses old Betamax tapes as laundry rope, and utilizes the VCR to bring the clothes back and forth between the house and the field.