“I hope all this settles before my current TV dies. I hate format wars, I always bet wrong.”
I’m a broadcast television engineer. I knew with out a shadow of a doubt that Beta was the way to go. But it was MARKETING that decided that one, VHS meaning “Video Home System.”
Betamax became Beta, then Beta SP, then Digital Betacam, then Beta SX, all of them used in every broadcast facility worth its weight in videotape.
Except Beta wasn’t the way to go. Beta had one serious problem that’s why it lost the battle: time. By the time Beta broke into 4 and 6 hour land VHS had already effectively won. The superior audio and video capabilities were barely if at all noticeable on the common equipment of the day, so it was no advantage. But people wanted to record as many of their shows as possible on one tape. And that gave the field to VHS.