Did you love Laserdisc? Were you bonkers over Betamax? Do you cry yourself to sleep because BeOS never hit the big time? Fret no more -- superdork Captain Tech is here to travel back in time and save the format losers that should have triumphed.
2. Betamax
3. Laserdisc
4. 8-track
5. High-definition audio
7. BeOS
8. DTS
9. Atari ST
10. What life would be like
Betamax
What it was
A videotape format created by Sony that enabled people to record their favourite programmes and rent pre-recorded ones, which was launched shortly before VHS.
Why it lost
Betamax never had the support of enough hardware companies to flourish, keeping the price of the hardware high and allowing VHS to undercut it. It was also harder to rent movies on Beta -- video stores had walls of VHS, but a much smaller selection on Betamax.
The lack of pre-recorded material meant the decks were most useful for home recording, but initially Betamax could only record for 60 minutes. This was rectified eventually, but it was a serious limitation. Ludicrous tape-changing mechanisms were launched to swap tapes when one became full, but this was hardly an ideal solution -- especially in light of Matsushita and RCA's four-hour Long Play system.
Why it should have won
Betamax was better than VHS in a number of ways. The tapes were smaller and the recorders were able to reproduce colour better than their rivals. They were also not unthreaded from the heads during fast-forward and rewind, which meant the Betamax decks responded better, returning to play or fast-forward quicker than VHS (although it couldn't spin the tape as fast).
Betamax also had a nifty trick that enabled 'bookmarking' at certain parts of the tape. Called APS, or Auto Programme Search, it was possible because the tape was always in contact with the play head. Essentially, the recorder put an electronic marker on the tape. When APS mode was engaged during fast-forward, the player would stop the tape at the start of each recording, negating the need to keep stopping the tape, pressing play to see where you were and then forwarding some more.
One of the last Betamax recorders released, the SL-HF2100, was one of the most sophisticated video recorders when it was released in 1991. It had features that put it far ahead of its time, including not having a single button anywhere on it. Everything was controlled with touch-sensitive displays and a funky LCD remote control with virtual buttons.
Our fantasy outcome
To win the format war for Betamax, Captain Tech would need to disco back to the 70s, win the support of the adult-entertainment industry and persuade them to release movies on Betamax instead of VHS.
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canberra_photographer
30/12/2007 01:16 AM
Doesn't wear out over time? Laserdisc was netoriuous for so called "laser rot" and the size and materials used meant that discs were easily scratched. I'll take VHS anyday, though I would have prefered beta!
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canberra_photographer
30/12/2007 01:32 AM
DTS a failure, every news Special Edition DVD has DTS from the major studios. They remastered the entire James Bond series into DTS and proudly make it a selling point. DTS is a success. MiniDisc over iPod, the iPod can hold uncompressed WAV audio, MP3, AAC. MD hold... ATRAC... and... well nothing else, just heavily compressed ATRAC. DTS is the only things in this list deserving of being saved. Even high def audio isn't. The world is moving towards digital content delivery through the internet.
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abuska
30/12/2007 07:07 PM
absolutely brilliant article guys.. thankyou
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Peterk
04/01/2008 10:59 AM
Our friend from the ACT is not aware of Hi-MD introduced in 2003/4. 1 gb minidiscs that could record many hours of music (highly compressed) and be used for jpeg, word and other comptuer files. ATRAC still sounds far superior to MP3
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canberra_photographer
11/01/2008 09:56 AM
An iPod is way better than those mini disc players because u would have to carry those mini-discs everywhere, and the iPod stores everything on its hard disk.
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two-ears-good,four-ears-better
29/05/2008 06:33 PM
Comparing iPod with Mini-disc is not really the point. The two are different products for different purposes. Can you do high-quality field recordings with an iPod? I doubt it. OTOH for the convenience of carrying around a great deal of reasonable quality music just to listen to, there are many MP3 hard-disc players around (not *just* iPod, let's remember!) which offer a more compact solution than Mini-disc. There are many other issues like battery life, battery replacement, add-ons, etc, etc. Neither technology wins on all points.
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