Are all hournalists idiots?

[Trevor Wilson]

**I just read this twaddle:

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/...technologys-biggest-flops-20101207-18o61.html

The claim that the Sony Betamax was a failure rankled me. Sony produced
Betamax machines for *only* 27 (TWENTY SEVEN) YEARS! Yep, that's a huge
failure. Not quite as successful, nor long-lasting as VHS, but hardly a
failure.

 

[Mr.T]

Which reminds me - I'll have to get a few blank minidiscs
while I can still get them. There's a format that goes
closer to being able to be called a failure.

No argument there.

A decade ago MD
was huge in radio broadcasting, but has all but been
replaced by computerised systems now. It was expensive and
short-lived. But very very good at what it does.

You would be alone in thinking that. Nothing more than an expensive optical
disk with a proprietary compressed format. The concept was flawed on many
levels, and it's time had gone almost before it began. Why you would want to
buy MORE disks is the bigger question?

MrT.

 

[Mr.T]

As a broadcast medium it is extremely capable. The editing
ability is extremely easy to use and fast. Add the ability
to cue multiple tracks with gapless playback and it is a
very capable performer in the broadcast studio.

In what way is it better than the standard broadcast wave format?

Even now, when the computer is king for retrieval of music /
promos etc, MD is still very useful for on-the-fly recording
& editing. It really shines in off-air callback/requests
where you can quickly cut the uhm's and aah's and swear
words etc, and have a smooth edited track ready to put to
air after the current song finishes. It can be done on
computer too, but I find MD quicker and easier.

Right, it can be done far better on a computer, and you are one of a very
few who prefer MD. You are welcome to use whatever obsolete methods you
prefer of course, the rest of the world has simply moved on without you it
seems.
Whilst I still have my reel to reel tape recorders, I'm not looking to buy
more tapes

MrT.

 

[keithr]

AFAIK it was the first digital recordable disc medium.? probably
rewritable too ?

I remember seeing adverts for CD burners for over $4000 at sometime in
the 1990's - no idea what the discs cost or how well they worked.

but MD was about $1000 for a portable unit ?

It was in use at a local community radio, would have to have been
during 1994-5

I bought my first MD recorder in 1994 for$500 in Osaka. In 1996 I bought
a a kit with a recorder that went into my stereo stack together with a
portable player for $400 here in Australia. The stuff was advanced for
the time, it had optical I/O and the input was buffered so that you
could set it to start recording from a second or so before you pressed
record, it could also be set to start automatically at the start of a
track, and the tracks were namable, and could be displayed on the player.

In the mid 90s, it was the best portable music system around, it beat
the hell out of portable CD players, and even the early solid state
units. The disks were tough, you could carry them around in your pocket
without problem. I kept mine right up until the iPod Nano came out (in
fact it is still probably in the roof somewhere). The main reason that
it failed was because Sony were too greedy, the disks originally were
$20 a pop and that was just too much, you could buy the original CD for
less.

 

[keithr]

Admittedly VHS was the number 1 format in use,

AFAIK Betamax video cameras were the industry standard in broadcast
news etc up until digital came along, Also the Betamovie camera was a
good seller as it was self contained and portable (to the standards of
the day).
Due to their smaller size, Beta tapes were likely a natural choice for
portable cameras.

I think that you are getting a bit mixed up there. The cameras that were
the standard in news gathering were Betacam not Betamax. They used the
same cartridge, but the video recording method was completely different:-

"On a technical level, Betacam and Betamax are similar in that both
share the same videocassette shape, use the same oxide tape formulation
with the same coercivity, and both record linear audio tracks on the
same location of the videotape. But in the key area of video recording,
Betacam and Betamax are completely different. BetaCam tapes are
mechanically interchangeable with Betamax, but not electronically.
BetaCam moves the tape at 12 cm/s, with different recording/encoding
techniques. Betamax is a color-under system, with linear tape speeds
ranging from 4 cm/s to 1.33 cm/s."

Betamax was a technical success, but a marketing failure, Betacam was a
technical success, and in the professional sphere, marketing is a lot
less important.

 

[Trevor Wilson]

I think that you are getting a bit mixed up there. The cameras that
were the standard in news gathering were Betacam not Betamax. They
used the same cartridge, but the video recording method was
completely different:-
"On a technical level, Betacam and Betamax are similar in that both
share the same videocassette shape, use the same oxide tape
formulation with the same coercivity, and both record linear audio
tracks on the same location of the videotape. But in the key area of
video recording, Betacam and Betamax are completely different.
BetaCam tapes are mechanically interchangeable with Betamax, but not
electronically. BetaCam moves the tape at 12 cm/s, with different
recording/encoding techniques. Betamax is a color-under system, with
linear tape speeds ranging from 4 cm/s to 1.33 cm/s."

**All correct.

Betamax was a technical success, but a marketing failure,

**Nonsense. 27 YEARS of continuous manufacture is not a marketing failure.
Sony probably made huge profits from Betamax. Sony has, OTOH, been involved
with a number of failures during is existence. The ElcassetteT is the one
that strikes home. It was a technically brilliant system, completely (and
justifiably) ignored by the public. Sony dumped it after only 4 years.
Clearly, a marketing failure.

Saying that the Betamax was a marketing failure would be like saying the
Model T Ford was a failure, because it was dumped after only 19 years of
continuous production. The reality was somewhat more prosaic, because Ford
SHOULD have dumped the Model T long before they actually did. Sony kept the
Betamax production lines running for as long as they remained profitable.

 

[Mr.T]

I think its getting that way where the CD is slowly coming to the end
of its life as a preferred consumer music storage in favour of MP3 /
PC / Ipod devices.

With the emphasis on slowly, since the first is a distribution/archival
media, and none of the others are. Only when everybody is happy to download
their music and work out their own archival arrangements will CD become
obsolete. That will need the companies to stop charging more for downloads
at least, where the customer must pay the download charges and storage media
costs as well!

MrT.

 

[Mr.T]

I think that you are getting a bit mixed up there. The cameras that were
the standard in news gathering were Betacam not Betamax. They used the
same cartridge, but the video recording method was completely different:-

Yep, but he's not the first to rant on the superiority of Betamax over VHS
without knowing what they are talking about. The real differences were so
minor as to make most people yawn, and choose whatever was most available at
their local video library. As always, marketing and other factors drove
customer acceptance more than any slight technical differences.

MrT.

 

[keithr]

**All correct.


**Nonsense. 27 YEARS of continuous manufacture is not a marketing failure.
Sony probably made huge profits from Betamax. Sony has, OTOH, been involved
with a number of failures during is existence. The ElcassetteT is the one
that strikes home. It was a technically brilliant system, completely (and
justifiably) ignored by the public. Sony dumped it after only 4 years.
Clearly, a marketing failure.

Saying that the Betamax was a marketing failure would be like saying the
Model T Ford was a failure, because it was dumped after only 19 years of
continuous production. The reality was somewhat more prosaic, because Ford
SHOULD have dumped the Model T long before they actually did. Sony kept the
Betamax production lines running for as long as they remained profitable.

Longevity doesn't mean success, by 1980 VHS had 70% of the market, by
1988 Sony was selling VHS machines. Staggering on with a few percent of
the market is failure.

 

[Trevor Wilson]

Longevity doesn't mean success, by 1980 VHS had 70% of the market, by
1988 Sony was selling VHS machines. Staggering on with a few percent
of the market is failure.

**More nonsense. Apple has/had a very small share of the personal computer
market, compared to IBM 'clones'. However, Apple's total number of computers
produced was still (and still is) a significant number of units. Enough to
ensure that Apple (computers) remains both a large and profitable company.

Let's examine your figures for a moment. VHS had 70% of the market and Sony
had (by inference) 30%. There were 7 companies who manufactured Beta
machines and another 3 or 4 that rebranded mostly Sony machines under their
own label. Let's say that Sony manufactured around 30% of the 30%. That's
around 10% of all home video recorders were Sony manufactured machines. In
later years, that figure rose, as other manufacturers switched to VHS.

At it's peak, around 40 companies were selling their own branded VHS
machines. For 70% of the market. Many were probably re-branded JVC (or
other) machines. It is highly unlikely that any one VHS manufacturer was
actually building signifiantly more machines than Sony was building Betamax
ones. In fact, except for JVC and possibly Matsushita, Sony probably made
more Betamax machines than anyone else.

The experience taught to us by Apple (and Betamax) is that the absolute
market share is not necessarily a measure of success. It is the number of
machines produced and the profitability of those machines produced that are
a measure of success. I am not privy to the profit figures from Sony, but it
is highly likely that in TWENTY SEVEN years of continuous production of
Betamax machines, Sony made a healthy profit.

 

[Mr.T]

Also, Sony realised fairly early on that they lost
the battle for the consumer market, so they focussed on
their strength - the professional market with targetted
advertising which would cost less than marketing to the
masses. This market is also more tolerant of premium pricing
than the mass consumer market, which would mean Sony could
hold a higher sell price.

Well Betamax was a failure in the professional market IMO. As you have been
told already, Betacam was the big seller there, I bet even U-Matic was more
widely used than Betamax for *professional* use. (Without the consumer
market to cover development costs, I'm sure they would have lost money on
the professional market alone)

Overall I would hazard a guess
that Sony made more profit out of Betamax/cam than any
individual company made out of VHS.

Why not just include every product Sony ever made if you think there is no
difference between Betacam and Betamax? On that basis Sony has done pretty
well for itself. In any case just because Sony made a profit from Betamax (I
doubt there is any argument there) it doesn't mean Betamax was *much*
superior to VHS as you originally claimed. VHS was also a good profit maker,
and there is no correlation between quality (or performance), and profit in
any case. The one thing I will agree on though is that Betamax was not a
failure by any reasonable definition of the term.

MrT.