Format War | ![]() |
When the Japanese formats first appeared in this country, they had already been on sale in the US and Japan for some years, and the companies knew how to attack each other. At first, the key battleground was recording time, both for the convenience of having a whole film on a single tape, and due to the high cost of tape. Betamax was initially launched with a maximum of one hour (like VCR), so VHS responded with two hour tapes. Beta fought off this attack with the "extended play" Beta II; the VHS standard was modified to allow thinner tape and three hour recording. By the time the Japanese formats arrived in Europe, three hours was standard (3h15m for Beta), and recording time was much less of an issue. Thus the four hour recording offered by SVR, with five hours "real soon now", had little effect on its fortunes.
On a more technical level, Betamax's more sophisticated lacing system meant a faster response to operating keys, and cleaner "edits" between recordings. There was also the possibility for cue and review (picture search) in the future, which VHS, with the tape unlaced during fast-forward and rewind, would find difficult. SVR, advertised at the same time as the first Beta and VHS machines, offered the most sophisticated timer, the best picture quality (due to the highest head-to-tape speed), and full logic-controlled electronic operation - which would make full-function remote control a realistic proposition. But as it turned out, technical features had almost no impact on the much-touted Format War; marketing and distribution were the pivotal issues.
As the Japanese formats arrived in this country, the Thorn-EMI group backed VHS and flooded their many high-street TV rental shops with low-cost VHS machines. Sony, meanwhile, were concentrating on quality, and so Beta became a format to buy while VHS was the format to rent. Unfortunately, most people preferred to rent, particularly when the simplest machine cost around £700 [1994: £1200]. This process was then self-reinforcing, because the presence of two formats made people reluctant to commit to one and risk picking the eventual loser - and so they rented and waited to see what would happen. By 1980, out of an estimated 100,000 homes with VCRs, 70% were rented.
Then there was the explosion of tape rental. Cine-film rental clubs had been around for years, but were not particularly popular (In 1980 it was estimated that there were only 100,000 16mm projectors in the UK, and a film on this gauge cost around £200 to buy [1994: £400]) No-one could have forseen how the public would take to video rental; by 1981 rental clubs had appeared; within a few years there were rental shops in every street, and every corner shop had a rack of tapes. But the Betamax suppliers were slow off the mark, and released less films on the format. As more people bought VCRs and started to rent tapes, the greater choice had its effect and VHS started to pull ahead even more rapidly.
By this time, Video 2000 had appeared (and SVR disappeared). In fact, in 1980 it seemed that the battle would be between VHS and V2000, since both systems had access to rental outlets - Radio Rentals, DER and Multibroadcast were all subsidiaries of Thorn-EMI, while Philips had access to the Visionhire and Rediffusion chains. Beta was poorly represented in the rental market, although the hugely successful and sophisticated Sony C5 and C7 machines would change this. The other Beta companies, particularly Sanyo, concentrated on producing simple and low-cost machines to compete directly with VHS, and for a time Beta was significantly cheaper than VHS.
VHS machines were also cheaper to repair, since parts cost less. Whether this was a natural consequence of the technology, or a cunning move by the manufacturers is unknown, though it is hard to see why VHS parts should be inherantly cheaper than Beta. Whatever the reason, this was another incentive to buy VHS - and another to avoid V2000, which as time went on gained a reputation for unreliability. One survey (in Which magazine) found that 59% of V2000 machines had been returned for repair, compared with around 25% for the other two formats.
By 1980, only a year or so into the battle, VHS had captured nearly 70% of the market. Beta could initially claim the rest, but V2000 arrived to complicate the picture. The first generation of V2000 machines were poorly specified and expensive, so despite its undisputed technical merits the format failed to capture the public imagination. Theives raiding an electronics warehouse in 1983 cleared out all the VHS and Beta machines, but didn't take a single V2000 deck...
By 1984 V2000 could only manage a market 3% share, and it peaked at 7.5% in 1986. By this time Beta's fortunes were plummeting, and it was also running at 7.5%. With VHS controlling the remaining 85% the war was effectively over, and despite continuing assurances from the manufacturers, the public could see that it was only a matter of time before Beta and V2000 joined Quadraphonic and 8-Track cartridges in that great attic in the sky. Their sales dwindled away, and VHS emerged victorious - despite being the least sophisticated of the three main rivals.
Betamax: b.1975 d. 1988
Sony have never officially abandoned the Betamax format (indeed there is still one machine on sale, the SL-HF950 HiFi deck), but in January 1988 Sony announced that they were to start making VHS machines, and this is generally held to be the date on the tombstone of the format - at least in the UK. The situation in other countries is not so clear-cut; in Japan, Betamax (and its enhanced high-band descendants) still accounts for around 40% of sales, and in some South American countries up to 90% of VCRs are Beta. In the USA, the Betaphile Society was formed in 1988 to try to keep Beta alive, This had about 2000 members, and lasted until 1991. (A link to the Betaphile Society can be found at the enquiry desk.)
Beta also survives in the world of the professional news-gatherer; super-high quality derivatives, Betacam and Betacam SP are common formats, often used by the jostling cameramen who can be seen on any news report, anywhere in the world. Betacam uses a higher tape speed and more sophisticated tape coatings to achieve broadcast-quality results.
Speaking of quality, you will often hear Betamax fans claiming that Beta was technically better than VHS. However, on closer inspection this turns out to be something of a myth; any advantage Beta might have had was quickly matched by VHS, and anyway was only apparent using sophisticated test equipment. In fact, independant tests of picture quality at the time actually put VHS ahead, the scores over four tests being VHS: 2, Beta: 1, No difference: 1. This urban legend probably reflects Sony's marketing rather than any actual quantifiable difference.
V2000: b. 1980 d. 1985
Before the V2000 format was finally abandoned there had been talk of a long-play version, doubling the maximum time available from a tape to 8 hours a side. This was never launched, though Grundig tapes labelled "2x4 / 2x8 hrs" did go on sale. Similarly, Philips were talking about a compact version using a cassette-adaptor like VHS-C (see the Portables & Miniatures display), and an auto-reverse system which would make both sides of the tape accessible without having to eject it. None of these became a reality - it is hard to see how auto-reverse could ever have been achieved, since the head drum and tape mechanism would have to be completely re-aligned for each direction, unless the tape was physically turned over by the machine...
Video 2000 was officially cancelled in 1985, and Philips went on to make VHS machines. In fact, they started selling VHS hardware in 1984 (while they were still promoting V2000), producing identical machines in both formats, with common parts wherever possible and a removable module containing all the format-specific mechanisms and circuits.
VHS-C vs. Video8
Although VHS-C is still a popular format for camcorders, particularly at the lower end of the price range, Video8 currently seems to be pulling ahead. Unlike the home VCR market, however, there is room for more than one portable format, and there is no reason why both should not continue. Anyone with any sense copies their valuable originals onto normal VHS for general playback anyway, so the format of these originals is completely irrelevant. JVC themselves have been guilty of muddying this issue; a recent campaign stressed the compatability of VHS-C with the home VHS recorder, as if this makes any difference at all. This presumably shows that they are worried about the rise in popularity of 8mm.
In reality, the Video8 format has many benifits over VHS-C: longer running time, smaller & lighter mechanism, and the built-in capability for PCM digital sound and time-coding. These latter features have not been exploited until recently, but their presence from day one means that the format can be improved without losing compatability with existing users - so called "future proofing". Time coding, for example, which is very useful for editing as it allows edits to be accurate to a single frame, has recently appeared in top-of-the-range camcorders. Unlike rival formats' timecoding systems, it can be written onto tapes after they have been recorded, because the format has always reserved "room" for it even on machines which can't themselves handle it. The other formats can only timecode tapes as they are recorded, because the codes have to be crammed in with the other signals. The same applies to 8mm's PCM digital sound, which is written in bursts at the end of each video track, rather than being mixed with the picture as for VHS's HiFi sound.
The most obvious benifits of Video8 for the average user, however, are the extra recording time, improved sound quality (even from non-PCM machines), and of course reduced size. The modern 8mm "palmcorder" is staggeringly tiny - weighing well under than a kilogram including battery and tape. In fact they have become so small that many have to have built in "image stabilisers" to cope with the difficulty of holding them still while recording!
War in Court
The Philips formats were available in the US (under the brand Norelco), but made very little impact so Betamax was effectively the first domestic video format to become available there. Its arrival shook the film studios badly, and in 1976 - a year after Beta arrived - the mighty Walt Disney corporation, along with the equally mighty Universal Studios, decided to take Sony to court, alleging that taping films and other programs off-air constituted copyright infringement. This clearly threatened the whole basis of the home video revolution, as a ruling in favour of the studios could cause an outright ban on VCR technology.
After three years, in late 1979, the court ruled that taping for private, non-commercial use was legal. The studios promptly appealed, and the appeal court overturned the decision in October 1981. For a while it looked likely that a huge levy would be forced on the manufacturers, to pay royalties for the programs being taped by taxing the machines and blank tapes. But Sony took the case to the supreme court, and finally, in 1984, home taping was legal again. Of course, by this time there were so many VCRs humming away in homes across the continent that any ruling would have been somewhat academic!
Here in the UK, the problem of copyright was only partially resolved; in 1988 the law was changed to make home taping legal, provided that the recordings were erased within 28 days. This extraordinary law is of course completely unenforcable, in the grand tradition of the British legal system
Later technology would cause even greater tremours amongst the film and music producers. Digital recording formats, such as DV, DAT and DVD, are potentially capable of making copies which are as good as the original. Hence most of these systems incorporate a copy-protection system of some kind, though how effective these are is open to debate. The original DAT anti-copying system, for example, was shown to distort the actual playback of the original recording!
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