Old Beta Players

[Ash]

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)

[Susan]

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.

[JohnL]

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.

[The Burgomaster]

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.

[Vermin Boy]

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!"

[Mofo Rising]

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.

[Jim H]

" 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.

[Scott]

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.

[Eirik]

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.

[Ted]

 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...............

[ulthar]

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).

[The Burgomaster]

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.

[Paulo Rodrigo]

  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.

[Newt]

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.

[Jim H]

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).