1975 Sony introduces the Betamax 1/2" videotape cassette
Between 1971 when U-matic was introduced as a home VCR and 1975 when Sony brought out Betamax, more than 40 million new VCR ready color TV sets had been sold in America. Many of these were from Japan, and all were transistor design. 1972 was the first year that color set units topped B/W units sold, the day of the Muntz 5-tube wonder set was fading fast, and Sony was ready to go to market again. Indeed the very meaning of Beta is a second try.
For one thing, Sony now had a lot of its own brand of TV sets in the market, and had developed a loyal customer base. Sony had a perfect reputation for quality products. Indeed one of the dirty little secrets of this era was there were only 2 models of color TV sets that actually could display full resolution color signals. One was the RCA Mural and the other was by Sony, both had 30 inch tubes. The big tubes were necessary because the dot pitch was very high. It was not until computers needed VGA color monitors that picture tubes were made with fine dot pitch. The other factor was that most sets did not decode the NTSC composite properly. Quite often they would feed straight video to the CRT cathode. Where the picture had high chroma subcarrier, this would become rectified as a DC voltage to falsely increase screen brightness. In other cases, high frequency luminence detail was not stripped off and the chroma circuits would detect this as false color. Almost every TV station had either the RCA or Sony set to show off color at its best to prospective advertising clients.
But one did not need a perfect TV set to watch Beta. That's because the format reduced luminence to only 240 lines, which is all that could be displayed on a 13" set anyway. And it processed color so that in factory pre-recorded tapes at least, the chroma had no interleaved luminence, so that poor NTSC decoding was no longer a problem. In fact, Betamax tapes would actually look better than a full broadcast quality program on a cheap TV set.
Technically, Betamax did not innovate much. It was essentially the proven U-matic format replicated on 1/2" tape. In fact Sony made industrial models that were designed to work side-by-side with its U-matic system. They did not catch on with broadcasters but some corporate board rooms bought them (ie Jack-in-the-Box). Tape speed was reduced from 3.75 ips to 1.66 ips. Audio from a TV set was not high fidelity, so linear track response could be less than broadcast spec, and this was nearly the same record speed as used in the Philips audio cassette that everyone was so crazy about. Even the 1 hour maximum record time was not changed from U-matic.
Despite the 1 hour limit, consumers still wanted to record movies. And this got the attention of the Hollywood film industry. They were willing to provide pre-recorded movies of old outdated shows, at $80-$120 each for home use, but the recorder function was scary. Even worse, the new HBO had just started distributing complete uncut recent release movies and cable subscription was jumping out the roof. What if people should start recording these? Why would HBO or TV stations continue pay high license fees if people already had free versions recorded at home?
The film industry was indignant, they felt sure that congress would pass a law requiring each blank videotape sold to carry a hefty fee to be paid directly to Hollywood, on the presumption that piracy of movies would be the principle use of blank tape. This was viewed as a protective tariff, to protect the movie industry from unfair Japanese import products. The problem with this view is it was not just a Japanese thing, 3M stood to make $10 each for making the blank tapes. And they didn't take their case to Congress but rather the Supreme Court because what they really wanted was to make the record function illegal, period.
Sony came to market expecting to battle shoddy TV sets, but not the US Supreme Court. This effort took precious time and money out of its marketing plan. Sony eventually was completely vindicated but winning this battle meant that it would lose the war. VHS waited a year to come out in 1976 and was not named in the litigation. (However obviously the film studios could apply any ruling against Betamax to other systems as well.) This gave VHS a protected environment to be nurtured without having to face the full fury of both Sony and Hollywood. And the standard VHS tape played 2 hours, more than adequate for most movies.
With respect to copyrights, television (and cable) is not "selling" a movie to the consumer. It is considered rather a "performance". As such, the time shift function of recording meant that playback was still a performance, and has not changed in purpose. Home recordings are effemeral, that is most usually they would be re-recorded over once viewed. While it would be illegal to record a performance, and then create a product by selling copies, there was no reason to presume any blank videotape sold is so intended. And finally, what people did in the privacy of their homes was not any business of Hollywood. (Actually a few things done privately are the subject of Hollywood's business)
Sony cut the speed in half (BetaII) to 0.83 ips which fixed the time problem, and added AFM recording (BetaHiFi) to fix the audio response. But while fighting Beta in court on the one hand, Hollywood's other hand was shamelessly cutting deals for VHS distribution. So when the dust settled, it was not technological issues that killed Betamax but rather the 8 year lead time VHS had in securing pre-recorded movie titles. And as another twist of irony, when the price of pre-recorded movies dropped to $15- $25 (cost of two theater tickets), American's showed an almost unsatiable appetite for them. Indeed, video sales now tops theater, television and cable distribution combined for providing income to Hollywood, and is credited by many for saving the financially troubled American film industry. Producers can't wait to get new releases out on video to make some real money. And to think they almost killed the golden goose.
A unique approach to the portable VCR, this 1983 model from Sanyo offered a one touch TV tuner/timer, HiFi Stereo Audio with VU meters, carrying handle for use at the beach, NP1 battery, and lotsa input/out connectors including 14 pin Beta camera and TV antenna. Similar portable models of the era required a separate home "docking station" to handle TV tuner functions. Still in use at R-VCR for field audio because of the excellent 3 hour record time.
Next on the history of videotape, 1981 Kodak 8mm, year of the Camcorder
Speaking of Betamax, we still have a ton of unused L500 tape, make us an offer! webmaster