darn!
Good think I started hoarding them decades ago. LOL
Bring back Betamax. Think of all the Betamax jobs! Bring back Betamax!
People still use Betamax?!!! Talk about Luddites.
This is HUGH!
1.21 Jigawaats.
Well, I still have my VCR (vhs) hooked up to my television set. Mainly because I have well over a hundred old films on tape that to this day are completely unavailable on dvd or streaming services, and haven’t even been aired on cable for three decades.
Sometimes I just shake my head in wonder.
Right now there is a trend toward 80s tech as a retro-chic hobbyist thing. Bands are releasing casettes, short films on VHS and that sort of thing.
And Sony decides rather than capitalize on it, to cut off a potential revenue stream from Hipsters and their parents cash..
One of Chris Rock’s funniest lines: “What are you, a Betamax? Do they still make you?”
Maybe I should stock up on thermal fax paper before they stop making it also.
This is awful. Next thing you know they’re going to quit making eight-track tapes.
Same here. I dumped my Betamax about a year after I bought it, and went to VHS. Time may be distorted by the years, but I didn’t wait long.
darn!
Still the standard for pro video, I thought? Different tapes than consumer machines, no doubt.
Had one of these ca 1980. Paid around $850 for it, as I recall.
wow....
I had no idea that Betamax tapes were still in production.
I have a small business that does tape conversions (www.american-video.com) and once in awhile I will see a random Beta tape come in. I have two decks, a Sony and a Sanyo. There was your main reason the format failed when it was hands down the superior consumer video format of the day. Sony only licensed out to Sanyo who would make their own brand as well as private labels like Sears. Because of the very limited licensing of the technology the end user costs were higher. Beta decks were pricey, the tapes were pricey (longer length than T120 VHS as Sony wanted a single tape that could record a professional baseball game) As VHS was being developed by JVC they didn’t license and actually asked other electronic corporations for help with the format so you wound up with competing hardware choices and therefore lower prices...
I bought my first VHS in 1984 at an electronics shop in Hinesville Georgia while stationed at Ft Stewart. I got it as a wedding present for my sister but used it for a couple of months before the wedding. It was a Sylvania top loader and it cost $750. In 86 while at Schofield Barracks I bought a JVC VHS and 25” TV for $500 each. I still have the TV down in the basement and would work with a digital tuner but why.... its just a collectors piece to me. I got the video bug way back then and here I am 30 years later still playing with it.
I remember taping tons of stuff in the 80’s on Beta. Liked the format but Sony screwed itself on the licensing. Had a ton of blank tapes leftover from PD Magnetics (may have to look for them). Still have my player because I have maybe 200 tapes saved in Beta format.
Betamax has survived to date - up until they went digital, almost every professional news camera was Super Betamax.
Just damn, next thing you’ll be telling me that I can’t buy Edison wax cylinders anymore.....