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I stopped by a friend's house the other day and he and a couple other buddies were watching "Prophecy" (the mutant bear movie) on Beta.  What a big bulky thing it was!  (the bear & the player...hehe!)
I never did bother to ask him where he got it.

Do any of you own an old Beta player and/or movies for it?

What year did the Beta player make its debut and about what year did it fade away into electronics oblivion when it was replaced by the VCR?

Was there ever an Alpha player?

Anyone know?



Post Edited (11-09-03 23:50)

Before coke vs pepsi it was VHS vs betamax. (my friends made fun if you owned a beta). The VHS VCR my folks bought cost around $800 (that was probably around 1979 or 80) and it was fairly sleek although pretty heavy in comparison to today's.  I vividly remember going into video stores and seeing the "beta section" which didn't usually have as good as a selection as the VHS.

I think it was mid 80's when it faded out from life as I knew it. I think as I recall Sony was the betamax giant which were the first VCR's out there until it received competiion from JVC with the VHS...but all that was sometime in the 70's which is why I don't know the specifics...too young.

I seem to remember that the betamax were more expensive which is probably why more people moved over to the VHS. My folks still have their first VCR, even tho it's broken and a tape is stuck in it..I guess when you pay that much for something it's hard to let go. Hell they still have their original stereo equipment from the early 70's. They just don't make things as durable and dependable as they used to.

My parents owned Beta before finally switching to VHS. As a plus, Macrovision didn't work on Beta machines, so copying commercial tapes was no problem.

My first VCR was a Beta.  I got it around 1979/80, I think.  If I remember correctly, it cost over $600.  It was a big, clunky machine and weighed a ton.

My father STILL has it and even has a few movies for it (but I'm not sure which ones).  I have begged him to get rid of it (he saves EVERYTHING).  But he claims that he still uses it occasionally (which probably means that he used it once about 2 years ago).  I even offered to buy him DVDs of all the Beta movies that he has.  But he won't get rid of the damned thing.

I grew up in a big Beta town; all the video stores' Beta sections were at least as big as their VHS sections. As a four-year-old with a VHS player, I was constantly dissapointed to find all the good movies on Beta.

I was at a record store recently, and resting in one of the windows was a Betamax tape of the Sex Pistols, with a post-it note reading "REAL punks watch Beta!"

I've heard that the Betamax players were actually superior to the VHS players at the time.  However, they were too expensive and restrictive to garner a large user base, so they failed.

" What a big bulky thing it was! (the bear & the player...hehe!)
I never did bother to ask him where he got it.

Do any of you own an old Beta player and/or movies for it?

What year did the Beta player make its debut and about what year did it fade away into electronics oblivion when it was replaced by the VCR?"

We have two betas and are about to get a third.  We have...  Probably 200 tapes I would say.  

VHS and Beta didn't really come out that far apart..  Maybe a couple years?  Dunno exactly.

In the old days, Beta was far superior to VHS.  This was really true up until the 90s when the quality of VHS caught up to Beta.  It wasn't that  the tape itself was better, as they're the same material (you can even unspool VHS tape into a Beta cassette and it will work fine), it was just better recorders.  Nowadays, VHS is the equal or better of the old Beta recorders.  

There were two key faults that led to beta's death: First, Sony wouldn't license out the technology, meaning no cheap knockoffs, and early on the recordable tapes were only an hour compared to VHS's two.

I bought a BETA  in 1983. It wieghed 12 times that of todays VHS recorder. I kinda liked the smaller tapes. In Asia they remained the main video player in that region of the world. Now I heard they like VCD rather than DVD. Not entirely sure about that though.

As I understand it, the manufacturers of VHS subsidized the production of VHS tapes of movies.  This made it cheaper for video stores to stock up on VHS tapes which made VHS tapes generally easier to find.  Since people wanted to get something they could rent movies for, they went with VHS even though Beta was actually a better product in terms of picture quality.  Because video stores wanted simplicity in their stock, they quit buying Beta tapes and the rest is history.

I was a kid back then, but I definitely remember my dad saying he bought our first VCR (a VHS top-loader with wire-connected remote) because "you can't rent movies for Beta."  The first movie we watched on it?  Krull.

 I was told when I got my first BETA that Sony invented the vcr concept and made it in both formats. They sold the rights to the VHS because they felt that the BETA was the superior format. Hence the BETA format was only made by Sony so the competition couldn't underprice each other which, of course, drives the price down.
 I still have approx. 200 movies on BETA and keep threatening to convert them in case the machine dies but............wel hell, you know how it is...............

My mom still has our old Beta vcr and a bunch of movies for it (I had 'The Wall' on Beta...must get it on dvd...).  At the time (late 70's early 80's), the video quality of Beta was considered better, though the shorter tapes were a disadvantage (especailly when cam corders for home movies became popular).

One of the things that killed Beta was that VHS came out with longer recording time capabilities and a lot of people chose that over the better picture quality that you got from Beta.

  I like a lot of bad movies, I saw all reviews from badmovies.org. I need to buy some movies that I saw like "Microwave Massacre". I liked to watch that review, that's great.

Our Beta player is sitting in the 'electronics' pile in the corner of the guest bedroom - with the SEGA systems and the defunct cable converters...hubby bought it for a buck or two at a yard sale...makes a great doorstop.

Asia in general adapts new formats much quicker.  VCDs are very popular in Asia, but DVDs are very popular as well.  It is hard to say which is more popular.  It is interesting to note that another lesser known format,  SVCDs, were created because DVD's licensing costs and production costs were prohibitively expensive in the early days of DVDs.  SVCDs are quite nice comparable to DVDs if they're well-made, but most movies are on 3 discs, so they're a bit of a hassle.  LDs were also very popular, but they are basically dead there as well (Japan still gets some stuff on LD though).

Susan wrote:

>  My folks still have their first VCR, even tho it's broken and a tape is
> stuck in it..I guess when you pay that much for something it's
> hard to let go. Hell they still have their original stereo
> equipment from the early 70's. They just don't make things as
> durable and dependable as they used to.
>

My parents still have their  first Microwave! A huge, great, bulky beast circa 1982. They've kept it around because" Hey, still works like new". But, it doesn't!! You see, you have to puse like a bastard on the buttons, and it continues microwaving even when the door is open! I'm certain that's not healthy!

Now...as to the topic. My old man bought a Beta around '85-'86, convinced it was the wave of the brave new future. He'd rent a title on beta and copy onto vhs. Seems like it was around '87 or '88 when you just couldn't find a beta flick, either in shops or catologues. Their beta machine is long gone, but for some reason, they still have a beta copy of Blue Thunder!!!

>>My parents still have their first Microwave! A huge, great, bulky beast circa 1982<<

Mine kept theirs until just a few years back - that thing was great and I haven't seen microwaves that big since (which is too bad since they are generally too small as it is) They bought one of those radiation detectors that you could hold against it to see if it was leaking- which it never was. It worked perfectly until they got rid of it too, the only reason they did is because they wanted to get one of those that sat over the stove.  The funny thing is I remember when we first got that microwave it was so novel me and my brother had mischevious shanannagans with putting stuff in there we weren't supposed to.

>>My old man bought a Beta around '85-'86, convinced it was the wave of the brave new future.<<

Really? I thought they were on their way OUT in the mid 80's

Beta was starting to lose ground in the mid 80s, but it really didn't start to totally die until the early 90s.

Here in Australia Beta went out early 80's - but yes, Beta is the better. Learnt this at an appenenticeship at a tv  station - where they still use Beta.

if anyone can help me my wifes grand father needs a beta video tape plaer. he has soo many tape & wishes to watch them. it would be too costly to convert them.
is there a site that has some new or used plaers? you would think sny has a warehouse packed with these 1950 john deer tracktors. please help an old man.
thanks, kenman.

Deej wrote:
> still works like new". But, it doesn't!! You see, you have to
> puse like a bastard on the buttons, and it continues
> microwaving even when the door is open! I'm certain that's not
> healthy!


Deej,

This is very dangerous!  They have a bad disconnect switch in the door
that they should fix.  A guy on another forum accidently microwaved his
hand for just a few seconds because of a problem like this and severely
damaged his hand.

I know, you wouldn't think a few seconds would do any damage but
his hand is really messed up!

Just thought you should know,
Mike

>if anyone can help me my wifes grand father needs a beta video tape plaer. he
>has soo many tape & wishes to watch them. it would be too costly to convert
>them.
>is there a site that has some new or used plaers? you would think sny has a
>warehouse packed with these 1950 john deer tracktors. please help an old man.

Can't help you out with where to buy a player, but if he does get one, I'd recommend that you hook up some other type of recorder (VHS, DVD etc) and have him copy each tape as he watches it. Eventually, you won't be able to get a Beta machine anywhere.

My parents still have the Beta machine that they bought me for Christmas some where between 1979 and 1981.  The machine weighs about 1,000 pounds and is an eye-sore.  My mother wants to get rid of it, but my father won't part with it.  He saves everything.  He still has a stack of electronics trade magazines from the 1960s!  Anyway, he has about 6 movies on Beta (all recorded from TV, I think).  He keeps saying, "I still watch these tapes occasionally." (He doesn't).  Someday, that machine will be worth $1 million, and we will all consider my father to be a genius for saving it.

Glad now my parents made the VHS choice when the VCR wars were raging, they already made the mistake of going with 8-tracks rather than cassettes when we bought a home stereo. I remember our video store was one of the few that had a better selection of beta movies than VHS, except most of the kids videos were VHS. I even remember when they had their "great beta tape sell off" around 86 or 87.

I loved the "Cowboy Bebop" episode where that tape came for Faye and Spike and Jet had to go hunting around in the bowels of some building on the ruined Earth looking for a VCR, thinking they were all the same when they found them. Only to have to go back and get another one, once Ed pointed out they had the wrong format.

">Here in Australia Beta went out early 80's - but yes, Beta is the better. Learnt this >at an appenenticeship at a tv station - where they still use Beta."

Regan, I grew up in Melbourne & my Dad bought a Betamax VCR in 1984 & we continued renting Beta movies up until at least 1988.

Yes you are sort of right in saying television stations use Beta..... except they don't use the domestic Beta like we all did in the 80's, which was Betamax BTW, the industry standard for well over a decade is/was BetaCAM SP, which I still shoot on occassionally (I'm a freelance cinematographer). The tapes look the same, they just run at a faster speed.

Can I ask what was your apprenticeship?

Beta would've been the better choice had Sony licensed the technology, but they decided to go the way Apple did and stay proprietary.  This is why it died. JVC licensed to everybody.

does anyone know where i can find a beta player??  i need to play 2 old beta tapes i have

Flea markets, vendor's malls, and eBay are places I would check. Since the older Beta players are generally heavy, be prepared to pay hefty shipping if you get one on eBay.

You might also check at Goodwill or Salvation Army thrift stores, or any thrift store like them.



Post Edited (04-10-05 18:28)

In the early 80's my Dad and I would go to the video store on a regular basis, usually each week, and borrow some action blockbuster, weird scifi or B-grade martial arts flick (my Dad has cool taste in movies).

Over a period of a few months,  I noticed that certain movies were ONLY on Beta.

"Dad," I said, "Maybe we should get a Beta video?  We could watch THIS movie!"

"No way," he snorted.  "The titles are limited and Beta is on its way out.  You just watch, it'll be gone in another few years."

We never bought a Beta, but we did have a very large National VHS that worked for years and years after we got it.

Now there are DVD HDD recorders that do everything I've ever wanted to do, with the exception of recording three stations at once.  Cut, edit, super fast forward, instant playback, no messing around with video tapes, no quality degradation over repeated viewing, near-instant permanent backup on DVD, preview of whatever you've recorded, plug in the DVcam and burn home movies for everyone...

Ah, technology...

~Archivist~