poll: vhs vs betamax

[givemesugarr]

i was just wondering how many phoronix users still remember the "epic" battle between vhs and betamax.
i cannot be the only one to still remember it...

[bridgman]

Beta all the way for me. It was a sad day when I had to finally give up.

It's funny though -- all the way through the HD battle everyone was saying "HD-DVD is VHS, BluRay is Betamax", now BluRay seems to be winning but everyone is saying HD-DVD is technically better

[givemesugarr]

Beta all the way for me. It was a sad day when I had to finally give up.

It's funny though -- all the way through the HD battle everyone was saying "HD-DVD is VHS, BluRay is Betamax", now BluRay seems to be winning but everyone is saying HD-DVD is technically better

well, i've always thought of hd-dvd as superior from the beginning, but after looking at the specs on wikipedia i've seen the new 50gb blu-ray which from the specs seems a lot better. anyway, the main problem with it still remains the high price when compared to hd-dvd. from the point of view of pure technics the hd-dvd might be indeed better since it was created from the dvd that was ported to increased capacity, while bd was a new format. well, let's just stay and see what happens.
anyway: betamax forever. i still have a working betamax player (yup, my father spent quite a lot on it) and some supports for it and they're still looking pretty good now, after almost 30 years from the production. the vhses i possess are all a bunch of crap and i've devoured from the 80's 4 players, of which 1 two head recorder and one 6 heads recorder. i'll now have to buy another vhs to port to rip out the vhses before they become unreadable. ah, how many times i've spent out time recording tv shows with the recorder... and how difficult the adul movies were to hide from the parents when i was a teenager...
sob, i'm really getting old...

[Thetargos]

Blast from the past! I do remembr that epic war. Darn! HD-DVD Vs Blue-Ray is kid's play in comparison!

[givemesugarr]

Blast from the past! I do remembr that epic war. Darn! HD-DVD Vs Blue-Ray is kid's play in comparison!

i was trying to find the third competitor, if i remember well there was also a third one in the fight at the time, and got into this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...omment.comment

it's really awesome!!!!!!!!! read out how this guy speaks about how vhs was superior and more fun, why.

yep, i was remembering right: here it is the third guy: video 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_2000

it wasn't a bad idea. too bad it came too late for it to be the master of the market. from what i've now read on wikipedia.it it seems that the player was able to rewind or to forward till a desired point and that had a piezoelectric piece that would follow the track during reading, making it perfect even in still or in fast mode . i've never tried this hw personally, but from i've now read it makes me want to go looking for a shop that would sell one.

[DarkFoss]

In the end it was the porn industry putting their product on vhs
that sealed betamax's fate.

[Thetargos]

In the end it was the porn industry putting their product on vhs
that sealed betamax's fate.

And currently it is made irrelevant as the Internet revenue from the same industry seems to be blasting off, even though there are increasing cases of such companies worried about p2p networks and such, the plummeting of their DVD sales (allegedly due to said p2p increased traffic, though maybe it also has to do with their own Internet revenue), and the fact that most likely users of such products will most likely be archiving their downloaded films into BlueRay Discs, etc.

Their leverage this time around seems to be made irrelevant. And even though companies such as Microsoft have stated an interest to drive industry into the downloads domain, there are still many brick walls to walkthrough before that even happens:

• First and foremost, bandwidth. The US, Asia and some countries in Europe enjoy high bandwidths, while other potential markets are 'bandwidth constrained'. For example, the Latin American market (roughly about a 500 million consumers market) has great disparity and low broadband penetration.
• The second most important factor, is human nature as such. People like to "collect" things, and as such they'd do whatever to "physically have" the stuff. Hence the hard copy of movies on disc I highly doubt will disappear any time soon, and if companies moved to a download-only solution, piracy in disc form would be rampant.
• DRM, it already proved to be a flawed idea and only promoted two things: consumers to stop buying products, and increased piracy of the same contents without DRM. Still most likely a download-only approach would require more draconian DRM schemes and what not.

Those are the main factors I see for the near future impeding a download-only approach, most likely we'll see a long lasted 'transition' with mixed media (both hard copy and downloaded)

[Luis]

I remember the war. My uncle had a video rental store that mostly (or only?) had Beta movies in the beginning. Then VHS came in. Also video 2000. Soon the VHS section started to grow and the Betamax to shrink. Video 2000 never had a chance, though he said it was the best.

As for the download approach, I'm all for it.

• First and foremost, bandwidth.

Yes, bandwidth is a problem, but not a showstopper in the long run (hopefully).

• The second most important factor, is human nature as such. People like to "collect" things

Ah, we should really change this nature.

• a download-only approach would require more draconian DRM schemes and what not.

Not necessarily. DRM doesn't stop piracy (it never will). It just bothers customers.

The 2 main reasons for piracy are free vs. expensive and convenient vs. inconvenient. With the download approach it would turn into free vs. cheap and convenient vs. more convenient (it's always more convenient a legal download than an illegal one). So maybe instead of having 20% of the world population buying and 80% pirating (or whatever), they could get up to 40% to buy (paying a reasonable amount for more convenience + being in the legal side + supporting the industry is not a bad deal) and make more money. After all, downloading is a cheap and efficient solution (and environment friendly), so it should be the way to go.

[Bleak_Outlook]

Wow BetaMax holds even more wonder for me.
As i small boy when the "man from the pub" (somebody my dad knew)came round and i got to look in the boot of his car and choose my vhs tape for the week (these were less then legal dealings we are talkin about here)the "man from the pub" rented his porn on BetaMax only
the cardboard slip cases tempted me and the single eye of the cassette told me it was something special

as far as the HD-DVD/BLU-RAY war i think thats a given.
shame as now sony has no need to work to improve or bring down the cost
lack of competition only means the paying public lose out

i personally wanted blu ray to fail and fail big
not for any reason like my love of HD-DVD (personally i liked what was possible with HD DVD better but meh either or i didnt mind)
what i hated was the way playstation3 forced you to buy into the whole blu ray thing and pay top dollar for the privilege
it was a snide way of placing a player in front rooms
if blu had of failed as at the begging it looked as if it might sony would have been stuck with blu ray as a games only media which would have prevented a price reduction.
basically risking customers cash on an unproven highly risky venture is inexcusable
but alas it seems to have worked blu ray has all but won the war
despite having more expensive and less featured media
more expensive players/hardware all but 1 of the major film company's have joined blu rays ship

spose those yellin for HD DVD built into xbox360 feel a little bit luckier now
would microsofts support have changed the outcome? possibly
but then one camp would have had to of lost out
and in the end the only person who really loses out in these situations is the little fellah indoors

[Thetargos]

I don't see it that way... Sure, BlueRay was rushed, because HDDVD was going to beat them at the debut, and they had to rush it out. I'm no BD apologist, or anything of the sort, but technically speaking the format had, and still has, the upper hand. And I'm all for better (pricier on introduction) products than "good enough" ones. HD-DVD has its merits, and it launched being feature ful, while BD had a half baked, not fully implemented feature list upon its release. According to some sources, they should have waited at least one year prior BD's launch to have all its features "stabilized", alas they did not.

I'm amazed how people lay all the blame onto one single company, regarding BD: Sony; yes, they're a big player in the BD ground, but there are others, many others, with even deeper pockets than Sony. And there are all sorts of dirt in the closet in both sides of the 'HD' war, like the multimillion deals with companies to have HD-DVD exclusives, or the supposed fact that Microsoft was forking $100 million a month on the format. Whatever the reasons, one thing is clear: Consumers globally have spoken.

I personally don't intend to dive into the HD formats any time soon, not after BD 2.0 speced players are available and have a good time on the market to "cool down".