MovieChat Forums > The Real McCoy (1993) Discussion > 'Nobody uses BetaMax anymore' line

'Nobody uses BetaMax anymore' line

posted 15 years ago by microbit
12 replies | jump to latest

TRMCoy is one of those old gems that's been languishing in my VHS collection. When I watched again tonight, the Betamax line caught me.
This always had been a common misconception, actually illustrating that you can get the consumer to believe anything, if you pump enough $$ into marketing.
The irony is that BetaMax was a much better system than VHS. VHS had massive marketing and thus became the "better" standard. Sadly so untrue.
In fact, in the '80s all high end(and professional) users that I knew used beta, not VHS !!!
The down side of course would have been that Sony probably would have monopilized and abused this monopoly (just like they have with broadcast video for so many years - or still do for all I know :-).
I thought it'd be interesting for those wondering about the story behind this old Beta vs. VHS argument.
The advent of DVD of course has made this irrelevant now, but still, it's a perfect example of consumer deception !!!

[–] danfixed 15 years ago

Betamax is used to this day for news and televison shooting.... this is because it is so much better then VHS

[–] microbit 15 years ago

Hmm, I always thought that broadcast uses/used Umax... (I've been told that Sony still rules all broadcast video gear..)
But in any case, no arguments there - Beta always had been a better system. It uses a slightly higher tape speed for starters... :-)

[–] danfixed 15 years ago

UMAX?

you made that up Microbit. lol

serious dont spread your lies. young tv students use this site for school projects..... ofcourse i am kidding

[–] microbit 15 years ago

Oops, wrong recall I realise now. IIRC It was always called U-matic, Sony's broadcast quality TV standard....

[–] HairyChestedLoveGod 15 years ago

Video 2000 was the best.

---THE WILD BUNCH (1969)---
--------IS---BETTER--------
---THAN-YOUR-FAVOURITE MOVIES

[–] tanmarkk 9 years ago

true nothing ever came close in quality to Video 2000.
but as usual the bigger company with market rules.

"violate me with a wine bottle"

[–] indisposedinmymind 12 years ago

It's also used for security by the police and other operations. You would think Basinger's character would know this, but I guess it was just there for a bit of levity and nothing more.

"You average, typical, blocking the view of a God-damn, average, victim Bastard!"

[–] eastcoastguyz 14 years ago

Yes, Betamax was better. I think for professional quality broadcast video it became Beta SP.

[–] microbit 14 years ago

Hey thanks !
I've been out of that game since a long time, so it's good to brush up a little.

Cheers
-- Kris

[–] lrh-4 13 years ago

Much better? Better picture yes but flawed in every other aspect (record time, price, camcorder use, etc..)

JVC simply gave the consumer what they wanted (affordable, 2-4 hour record time) and it was nothing to do with marketing.

Sony has a history of failed formats (Betamax, DAT, MiniDisc, MMCD, SACD, ATRAC, MemoryStick, UMD). Even Playstation has gone from 1st to 3rd place.

[–] waldenpond88 12 years ago

In Europe there was an even better video recording system called Video 2000 aka VCC (Grundig & Philips invented it):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_2000
You could record 8 hours on one side in regular speed and another 8 hours on the back side.
When we went on vacation for 4 weeks, I could program 16 hours worth of movies on long play.
I had this system from 1980 on and was disappointed when it got replaced by VHS which forced me to transfer my many Video 2000 tapes onto VHS. And again in 2003 I had to transfer them to DVD's in order to make them last.
Hopefully there won't be anymore transfers...

[–] 12 years ago

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