Betamax
Sign in to saveBetamax (also known as Beta, and stylized as the Greek letter β in its logo) is a discontinued consumer analog videocassette recording format developed by Sony. It was one of the main competitors in the videotape format war against its primary rival, VHS. Betamax was introduced in Japan on May 10, 1975, and launched in the United States later that year.
Key facts
- Storage medium.use
- Home movies, home video
- Storage medium.name
- Betamax
- Storage medium.logo
- frameless|class=skin-invert|upright=0.25
- Storage medium.image
- Betamax blank top (modified) (tape only).jpg
- Storage medium.type
- Magnetic cassette tape, -inch
- Storage medium.encoding
- NTSC, PAL, SECAM
- Storage medium.capacity
- Up to 5 hours
- Storage medium.read
- Helical scan
- Storage medium.write
- Helical scan
- Storage medium.standard
- 525 lines, 625 lines
- Storage medium.owner
- Sony
- Storage medium.discontinued
- Recorders discontinued ;Blank cassettes discontinued
- Storage medium.dimensions
- 15.6 × 9.6 × 2.5 cm (6 × 3 × 1 inch)
- Storage medium.extended to
- Betacam
via Wikipedia infobox
Article
19 sectionsContents
- Original version
- Launch and early models
- Industrial and professional usage
- Court case
- Later developments and offshoots
- HiFi audio upgrade
- SuperBetamax / Hi-Band {{anchor|superbeta|superbetamax|highband}}
- <span class="anchor" id="ed_beta"></span><span class="anchor" id="edbeta"></span><span class="anchor" id="ED-Beta"></span> ED-Beta (Extended Definition Betamax)
- Portable equipment and Betamovie camcorders
- Discontinuation and legacy
- End of production
- Legacy
- Technical details
- Comparison with other video formats
- Tape lengths
- In popular culture
- See also
- References
- External links
Betamax (also known as Beta, and stylized as the Greek letter β in its logo) is a discontinued consumer analog videocassette recording format developed by Sony. It was one of the main competitors in the videotape format war against its primary rival, VHS. Betamax was introduced in Japan on May 10, 1975, and launched in the United States later that year.
Betamax was widely regarded, in part due to Sony's marketing, as offering superior picture quality compared to VHS. Its initial β1 speed provided 250 horizontal lines of resolution, compared to VHS's 240 lines, but early Beta tapes were limited to 60 minutes of recording time, making them impractical for recording movies or sporting events. To address this, Sony introduced the β2 speed, which doubled recording time to two hours but reduced resolution, negating its technical advantage.