Why VHS Was Better 419
otis wildflower writes "An article in the UK's Guardian describes why, in the end, VHS is better than Betamax. While this may not be terribly useful knowledge on its own, the author then makes a pretty convincing case that viewing something's success or failure purely on technical merit is not an entirely accurate way of looking at things. For better or for worse, success of new products and technologies is determined by a broad range of factors that make up "the whole product", quality being only one, and possibly a minor one at that. Kind of explains what happened to the Atari Lynx and Jaguar, dunnit?"
Re:Help (Score:0, Informative)
Start by slimming down. Go do some sports. Try brisk walking as a start. Eat a balanced, healthy diet. Greens are tasty if you cook and mix them right.
Acne, seek a good dermatologist's help.
You can use linux and still have a fruitful life.
Linux User (not=) No-life geek
Tip: the more effort you invest in searching for a girlfriend, the less likely you are gonna get one. Expand your social circle (join clubs etc)and let nature take its course.
Re:Not this crap again. (Score:3, Informative)
He says BetaMax's supposed edge was discernible only in the lab, not by people watching a tape, and that Sony's decision to package it in one-hour lengths made it unusable for movies.
Re:What a load of crap (Score:4, Informative)
I still use a Sony C20 Betamax which I bought brand new some, er, probably 18 years ago.
The picture quality is still embarrassingly better than our nearly new Panasonic VHS. ISTR that the Betamax has a technically superior tape path and is a sort of scaled down version of the U-Matic.
(The U-Matic was an industrial and ENG standard format some years ago and used 3/4" tape in a large cassette).
Re:good article (Score:3, Informative)
I think Sony have done rather well out of U-matic, Betacam and DigiBeta.
No longer are these machines changing hands for five figure sums - well, exceptthe most expensive DigiBeta deck, the DVW-A500, which is £24,995, excluding VAT (at 17.5%).
Sure, Sony sells consumer products, but the margins are so much lower - something I'm all to aware of since I'm buying A Sony DSR-11 DVCAM deck for our Media 100i non linear edit suite. This is the cheapest of all the DVCAM decks, and it retails for £1495 excluding VAT.
Re:real cameras (Score:1, Informative)
The reason why you don't see "DVHSC" is because there is no such thing. There was a S-VHS-C format, but it was for consumers, and is obsolete now. There was a competitor to Betacam; it was called M-II. So Betacam vs. M-II was roughly analogous to Betamax vs. VHS. Both formats were made for ENG use more than quality. The hands-down quality winner in the analog age was the 1" open-reel tape format, which used direct color recording. Betamax, VHS and U-Matic (a predecessor to Betamax, using 3/4" tape cassettes) used an encoding technique called "color under", which was technically inferior to direct color.
Random VHS fact! (Score:5, Informative)
It stands for Vertical Helix Scan
now you know and knowing is half the battle...
Re:real cameras (Score:3, Informative)
Pannasonic's professional video system is called DVC-Pro, and it is rather good. It uses the same size tapes as Sony's Pro format - DVCAM so there are machines that will play back both formats, but woe betide you try to mix them since they're not really compatible for reasons I won't get into here.
Sony has another professional format, the Betacam series, and this is the most widespread at the moment because a) Sony cornered the pro market a very long time ago with U-matic (3/4"), which while not compatible with Betacam, was very good for its time so TV companies and editing houses bought back into Sony when Betacam was released.
b) Betacam started as an analogue technology with Betacam Pro and Betacam SP and Sony evolved it into it's current incarnation, Digital Betacam. The important thing is that Betacam SP is compatible with the Digital version if you have one of Sony's editing recorders so you don't have to throw out all of your analogue cameras and VTRs, which cost tens of thousands of pounds/dollars/money to buy.
DVCAM is becoming more popular in non-linear systems because it's cheaper than DigiBeta and Sony's pro DVCAM decks will play and record consumer DV and MiniDV tapes, although obviously the quality is lower than DVCAM.
Err, back to the topic now..
Re:He's right... He's wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
Perl seems to be a wonderful example of reality - rather than trying for technically superiority it aims for utility. I'm no great perl hacker, I just dabble occasionally to get something done and it suits that purpose very well.
Re:real cameras (Score:2, Informative)
No, MPEG IMX doesn't sit above Digi Beta, but it is an important format.
Re:About Time! (Score:1, Informative)
Yes, VHS was an open standard. Anybody who wanted to subscribe could, and non-standard additions like LP mode, Hi-Fi audio, different head configurations and S-VHS were permitted. In contrast, Sony did something similar to Apple's treatment of the Mac clone market.
Re:A lesson the Linux worlds needs to learn (Score:1, Informative)
You haven't been in one of those lately I can tell.
Wise ass know-it-alls with the maturity of a 10 year old telling you to RTFM, and why did you chose THAT distro, everybody knows THIS distro is sooo much better. No it isn't, another one says. Yes it is. No it isn't. Get GCC 3.x. No don't do that because . And why do you use a USB mouse anyway. (Umm, it's the only one I have, works like a charm in Windows?) Then go back to Windows you n00b/M$ lover.
Amen to that.
In my experience *nixers are eliteist bastards the lot of them, no wonder people still use Windows.
Re:This will continue (Score:1, Informative)
BS!, Data MD was/is 140MB vs Zip's 100MB, a hell of a lot smaller (physically) too... They also developed a 650MB 4x density version in 1996, but nothing much ever came of it.
But yes, overpriced and badly marketed.
Re:Recording times (Score:3, Informative)
This is bullshit. (Score:3, Informative)
The demise of Beta was crappy marketing and high prices. Period.
Re:Tomorrow on Slashdot (Score:2, Informative)
Steel can be brittle, it depends on the carbon content and crystal structure. Damascus steel (or wootz or bulat) was very tough despite it's high carbon content (~1 to 2%), but that's because the crystals had been broken down by careful forging.