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Betamax offered some technical advantages to VHS, but look who won that war. The main reason they won is because JVC allowed other people to use their designs
by oomkiller 16y ago
Betamax offered some technical advantages to VHS, but look who won that war. The main reason they won is because JVC allowed other people to use their designs for a reasonable scale. Keep in mind in this debate that H.264 isn't free to use, and VP8 is. Are the technical merits of H.264 enough to outweigh the cost? In my opinion, no.
- yardie 16y agoWhile the licensing costs did play a part in the win of VHS I think the bigger problem was the price of the decks (1.5-2x price of a VHS VCR) and beta camcorders were incompatible. To watch a home video you had to play it back through the camera onto another beta deck. The only technical advantage it had was color reproduction and clarity. Every other metric (cost and convenience) it did poorly. It did go on to live a second life, as Betacam, in professional studios, where reproduction and clarity are important. And their ENG cameras are some of the sturdiest I have ever encountered.