On Thu, 3 Apr 2008, Tony Smith wrote:

> Oh, right, you're trying to record three hours onto a two hour tape.  "Ha
> Ha!"  You should have brought a VHS instead.  There ya go, that's why Beta
> sucks, it's because it doesn't do what the customer wants.  (The customer
> really wants 100 hour tapes, but never mind.)  You'll just have to put up
> with VHS 3/4/5 hour tapes + slow play + extra slow play then.  (5 hour tapes
> may be a figment of my imagination and/or dodgy memory)
> 
> Every 'Beta was better' proponent I've encountered has come up with the same
> answer when asked "Just why was that anyway?".  "Errr, mumble mumble mumble
> the wotsit in Beta had 0.2% more grommet oil than VHS, so the diagonal
> stabilisers had better damping blah blah".  All bollocks, technically, there
> wasn't much difference.

Beta came standard with 4 heads, VHS with 2. The picture looked much 
better on Beta than the equivalent VHS.

>  It's like saying .WAV is better than .MP3.  Well
> yeah, but MP3 takes 1/10th the space and sounds the same.

Actually, it's more like comparing free to air digital and analog TV.

> 
> Bluntly, Beta had shorter tapes, and didn't really do slow play to get more
> recording time.  Lose.

Ah, VHS slow play - ultra sucky incompatible mode. I made the mistake of 
recording some stuff I wanted to keep in long play once. Then I tried 
playing it on a new VCR. Yep - didn't work!

3 hour Beta tapes were readily available in the high street stores.

Interesting how VHS evolved to 4, 6 and 8 heads after Beta died. I guess 
the lack of competion allowed the manufacturers to jack the price and 
improve the performance to the same level as Beta :-P

Regards
Sergio
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