My uncle still has my grandfather's Hi-Fi Betamax that he bought in '85. As old as it is, it just looks high-tech. It has the left and right audio signal strength meters, and pretty much every feature a VCR had up through the last 24 years.
"this is the best birthday i've ever had" LOL my primary school had a betamax player. i have no idea why, they were still using it in like the year 2000 when i was about 10.
The novelty of this is long gone. Now that everyone and their dog has a video camera, try pullling out a family video for "everyone to see" and they all give you glazed, horrified looks and quickly start making excuses to leave.
In 1979 and 1980, I think VHS had over 70 to 75% market share. Even though Betamax still had some market power, the format war was essentially over at that time, with VHS being the winner.
"That was the best birthday I ever had!" Until she turned 94, she was received a Blu-ray Recorder! But wait! There's no such thing as a Blu-ray recorder, unless if it's a BD-R drive on a Sony Vaio! Way to go, Sony! Rendering happiness through expensive and overpriced bells and whistles.
Plus I'm sure that you can find out more of the whole Betamax/VHS story online if you search. The television/film industry still utilize a form of the Betamax format as well.
1:05 "So tell me what you want what you really really want. I'll tell you what I want what I really really want." Ha ha, Spice Girls have got some answering to do, cause I think they made their songs based off of old commercials. LOL, or at least, that is what popped into my head when the narrator started rapping.
@ducklandwikeno Sony's "Betamax" format was first introduced in 1975 in the form of a massive Trinitron TV/VCR combo, it's promo can be found right here on RU-vid. Phillips's "VCR" format was released in 1972 & Matshashuita's "VHS" format dawned in 1977.
I get the feeling that this was being pitched as an alternative to the reel-to-reel projector for your silent eight-millimeter home movies. Taping TV shows wasn’t even considered.
And just to add, outdoor recording wasn't an option until a few years later when they came out with a model that would operate with a very large battery.
south park did not bring me here, i'm here because i love the classic cheese in these older commercials, and I am genuinely interested in beta... but i do wonder wthell this has to do with south park! haha
I have 10 beta systems. in good working order with 337 cassettes. I thought they would be worth someting but they don't go for much money. you can still get hold of them pretty easy. It seems to be the cassettes that are harder to get hold of..
Think network television is a little boring? At the time The Dukes of Hazzard was a new show, who would want to watch that with it's car chases, ramping and crashing plus Daisy Dukes sexiness. YAWN Give me a juggling grampa anyday!
@cruzerdoozer12 Half the people in the commercial were kids the same age I was back then. So those kids are most likely very much alive & in their 40s. The grandma is easily gone
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing... how did he edit in that last shot of Grandma blowing out the candles (WITH voice-over narration!) into his other tape of clips in less than 35 seconds?? Wow, Betamax must have been pretty advanced! Damn VHS... ;)
There's a whole long story as to why Beta fizzled out and VHS prospered, alot had to do with licensing, wider spread availability and affordability of VHS over Beta by the mid 80s. Plus people tended to go for the VHS longer tape format. Many will still argue that the Beta format was superior in sound & picture quality. I have Beta tapes from the 1970s that still play and look decent, but I have VHS tapes that arent as old but worn out.
Well, you didn't really have a camcorder in 1979. You had a fairly good sized video camera that would sit on a Tri-pod. It had a light on it, room light wasn't enough. It had basic zoom features. And a cord went from it to a video tape recorder. Back then, you had the tape recorder in one box and an over the air tuner in a similar sized box. They sat beside each other with the tv. When you went to record, you only took the tape recorder box and the camera.
not exactly. VHS was the competitor to Betamax. Funnily enough, the porn industry was a huge deciding factor in the world moving to VHS since the porn industry started using it first
Marketing problems, availability, price, and certain, tiny little factors. VHS won since it could record for much longer (originally 2 hours vs 1 hour for Beta) and in a few years, they had 6, 8, and even 10 hour cassettes. Betamax still didn't have enough time to record one evening of primetime viewing. Thus it died to the longer recording time of VHS. Also Hollywood movies were being shown more on TV, and people wanted to cram as much as they could on the (then) expensive blank cassettes.
@ConfusedSponge Yes with a cleaning cassette. Depending how good you're at dismantling things, i tend to take it apart and clean the heads with alcohol and a cottonwool bud, it cleans it a lot better than a cleaning cassette. But i wouldn't recommend taking it apart if you don't know what you're doing
@crazytim1987 I'm sure if you were her age 30 years ago you probably would've thought the same way too if you just found out about home video and what your family could do.
Wait a minute, Grandma Dillon's cake is shaped like a 70s Betamax deck. And she's 102 now, gee if she is still alive she might be mistaken for an incinerated corpse, judging by how she looked at 63.
