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> Betamax was "better" than VHS if you only compare 1 dimension such as "picture quality". It's a myth that Betamax had better picture quality than VHS. They w
by wl 9y ago
> Betamax was "better" than VHS if you only compare 1 dimension such as "picture quality".
It's a myth that Betamax had better picture quality than VHS. They were virtually identical on that metric. It seems that people confuse Betamax with Betacam, a professional format using the same size tape that was superior to VHS in picture quality.
- cwyers 9y agoBetamax was better in visual quality in practice because it's a function of tape speed, and Betamax wouldn't let tape run as slow as VHS would, which is also why VHS had longer runtimes.
- dvtv75 9y agoNot true. As recently as 2013 I was using VHS, Betacam, Betamax, and others (DV Cam, DV Mini, occasionally even 16mm film, blah blah) in a commercial role. VHS was a last resort, because the image was absolutely awful. Even fresh VHS recordings were lower quality than many of our older Betamax recordings. (Side note: We eventually had little choice but to digitally capture the whole stock, so if you were to go to my previous employer, which unfortunately you can't, you would be able to do a side-by-side comparison.)