Betamax myths

How many times have you heard someone say that Betamax was superior to VHS? That's mostly a myth, and then they often add a 100% myth on top of that, saying something like, "Betamax lost the format war because Sony didn't allow porn to be distributed on Betamax tapes."

The first one is only true if you're comparing certain early Sony Betamax consumer VCR models to a non-HQ VHS VCR. In those cases, Betamax was better in terms of picture quality because of basic math:

- NTSC Betamax recording at its standard (fastest / highest quality) "βI" speed moves the tape at 1.575 inches per second (IPS) across a head drum rotating at 1,800 revolutions per minute (RPM).

- NTSC VHS recording at its standard (fastest / highest quality) "SP" speed moves the tape at 1.313 IPS across a head drum rotating at 1,800 RPM.

So Betamax had a higher tape speed than VHS and therefore a slightly higher amount of video bandwidth, which results in more resolution, all else being equal (and all else was indeed pretty much equal, as they both used "color under" recording onto 1/2" magnetic tape).

The problem for Sony was that VHS's standard tape (T-120) had 2 hours of recording time at its standard SP recording speed, while their own standard tape (L-500) only had 1 hour of recording time at its standard βI recording speed, and that was a huge advantage / selling point for VHS.

Sony was stuck with that problem because they'd designed their system around a tape cartridge that was physically much smaller than the VHS tape cartridge, so no matter what they did to increase recording time, VHS could (and did) always beat them in that area.

To get 2 hours of recording time on their standard tape, Sony had to cut the tape speed in half, which they called βII speed.

So at that point VHS had the advantage in picture quality (1.313 IPS vs. 0.787 IPS) when comparing equal recording times on their respective standard tapes. Granted, Betamax machines have a larger head drum (74.5mm vs. 62mm diameter), but a head drum that's 20% larger in circumference doesn't make up for a linear tape speed that's 40% slower than VHS's.

You might say, "Well, you could always record at βI speed if you wanted to in order to get better picture quality than VHS, right?" For most people, the answer was no, because Sony soon ditched the option for the βI recording speed altogether from most of their consumer models. Very few Betamax models made in the 1980s (which is when the format war was at its peak) could record at βI speed.

On top of that, when JVC introduced "HQ" circuitry in 1985, it pretty much eliminated the picture quality advantage that Betamax's now-rare βI speed had, and put it even further ahead of Betamax's βII speed.

As for porn, Sony had no say whatsoever over what type of content could be distributed on Betamax tapes, and there were in fact plenty of porn titles released on Betamax.

Sony lost the format war mainly because of recording time. Other reasons include Betamax machines typically being more expensive than VHS machines, and Betamax being a "closed" format (as opposed to VHS being an "open" format) that Sony kept a tight leash on, so few manufacturers other than Sony produced Betamax machines, resulting in far less choices for consumers compared to VHS.