Betamax collectors/

Quote from bigdaikon : Beta is better- by far. To be clear it is a difference that you can both see and hear - not just a difference on paper. FWIW - VHS won the war because of porn. BETA tried to not have porn so people used VHS. When finally BETA tried it was by then too late.

Quote from kakomu : I've seen this written a lot, but there's nothing to substantiate this claim. I don't think pornography on video tape is nearly as prevalent as people imagined it to be. Definitely not nearly as prevalent as compared to Hollywood movies and home made family videos. Rather, VHS probably won due to a combination of lower retail pricing and longer recording time on tape.

Quote from kakomu : The original time of a Betamax tape is 60 minutes long. 60 minutes could hold, say, a full hour TV show, but couldn't hold a Hollywood movie. This is in comparison to VHS, which initially could hold 2 hours. Eventually Beta tapes had a 4 hour recording time (VHS tapes eventually had up to 12 hours of recording time), but by that time, Beta's high price had already killed it pretty dead.

Don't know about the porn angle. If I remember correctly, porn sold for roughly $70 to $80 on either format.

I heard the demise of Betamax was the combination of the shorter record time along with the licensing fee Sony charged for their technology. Most companies were unwilling to pay the fee. JVC didn't charge for its technology. With no competition, the prices for Betamax machines remained high while the price of VHS machines steadily declined.

Since I figured Sony hadn't learned from the Betamax debacle, I went with the HD-DVD format.