Beta-VHS clash offers insights into coming DVD war

This is an interesting article as it does a very good job of recounting the Betamax vs. VHS competition for the consumers heart in the last century. There are certain parallels too, in that one of the primary failures of the Betamax format was it's lack of capacity. When introduced, it could only hold 1 hour of content, but it was the only circus in town at that moment. When the VHS was introduced a bit later, it rocked the world with it's two hour storage capacity.

Oddly, it was the vision of Sony's chairman at that time, Akio Morita, who had dreamed of a videocassette small enough to fit in a coat pocket, that would ultimately lead to the demise of the Betamax format. It simply could not hold as much tape as the VHS and therefor constantly lagged behind on capacity.

Many of the patents used with the Beta had been shared by Sony with its rival. JVC, a division of Matsushita, as part of an earlier business deal. Nonetheless, Sony assumed it would have the home video recording market to itself. The company was shocked when JVC announced that it, too, was building a home recorder. There were numerous technical differences between the systems, but one of the most obvious was that JVC's cartridge was 7 1/2 inches in length, or 1 1/2 inches longer than Beta's. Sony viewed that bigger cartridge as an example of the technical inelegance of its competitor's offering. In fact, the bigger cartridge would lead to VHS's eventual triumph. Sony's product came out first, late in 1975, costing nearly $2,000 and recording an hour of TV. But the VHS system, with its bigger cartridge, could hold more tape. Combined with other innovations, that meant a VHS cassette could record for twice as long as a Beta could.

Sounds familiar doesn't it? One side claiming a superior technology than the other competing format, a more elegant solution. The one side pointing out a greater capacity than the other. However, this time around, Sony has produced a product that when capacity is compared layer to layer with HD-DVD, Sony has their bases covered. As we all know, Blu-ray can hold about 25GB and HD-DVD around 15GB per layer. We can all do the math and see that this will not be a weakness this time around for Sony, but is it a weakness? One hour as opposed to 2 hours is significant, but we have to wonder if initially the extra 10 gigabytes is that big of a deal.

At any rate, the author of the article over at the Post Gazette has done a great job outlining the last battle and it can indeed help us to look into the future to understand how and when this new modern day battle will be won. Why not give the article a look, then please come back and give us your thoughts on this important issue!

Source: Post Gazette