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you made the intelligent choice with betamax. Unfortuantly there are more people that drive while chatting on their phone and spit their gum on the sidewalk. These people chose VHS because it could do a low quality recording of six hours while the betamax could only handle four hours of high quality recording. Quantity over quality. When I took some production classes about ten years ago there was still a fair amount of commercial work done on betamax.

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RedLanternRacing, builders of the fastest cars in last place.
Success is not an option.
1981 Scirocco, "Vera"

I hear ya-- we thought the same thing. Oh well. I seem to have a long history with that sort of choice. It will be interesting to see how the whole HD -vs- Blu-ray war plays out but I'm out of that one since I don't care enough about movies and such to warrant choosing a side at this point.



If I'm not mistaken, that is/was still the case. I did some work for a couple of video production companies a few years ago and all their production equipment was still betamax-based. I think it was a higher grade than the consumer stuff we had way back when but it was still based off of the same technology. I'm guessing the "digital revolution" has changed some of that recently but I'm way out of the loop on that one.

Jim

You're right Jim. I know that Channel 11's helicopter records in Betamax and I believe 5's does also. I may be wrong about channel 5 as they now have a HD camera ball hanging on their helicopter.

Also, the handhelds that they bring out when they are flying to the coast are all betamax.

On the remote control thing, I remember when we got cable and had a box with a small slider that selected the channel. My Dad realized that when my brother and I were outside playing with our friends that he would have to get up and change the channels himself. Well this wasn't good, so he drilled a hole in the floor behind the TV and ran the cable down it, along the ceiling of the basement and back thorugh another hole to the end table. That was a great day when he did that!!!

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Todd Breakey
STS 42 - 1992 Sunburst Miata
Dammit!
"You souldn't play leap frog with a porcupine. You might get hurt." - Eliza

That's American ingenuity right there.

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Carl Fisher

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqQhQSbe ... ed&search=

this should be the turkish rally.. the one where timo geta pole up his arse.. this sux..

ROFLMAO!!!

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"Ruttin' is racing"

Chris Suich
Apex, NC
AutoX 2012 Nissan Leaf (Quietly changing the world)
AutoX 2003 Mini Cooper S (on sabbatical)
RallyX 1993 Nissan Sentra - "Le Tigre"
FunX 1970 Camaro LT1 ('95)

WOW I bookmarked that

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To continue the Betamax hijack...



I worked at a store while in college that the bread and butter was consumer recorders, camcorders and movies. IMHO it was a combination of record time, licensing issues and cost that killed Betamax. My view is that Sony missed the mark regarding recording time (which obviously was a serious interest to consumers) and then shot themselves in the foot with how they licensed the technology. For the average consumer, the image quality differencet between Betamax and VHS was not as huge as something like VHS vs. DVD is today. If anyone, I blame Sony for the screw up. There are plenty of business studies into the entire Betamax failure.



As Jim mentioned, I think you are talking about a related technology. It is called "Betacam". Since both were created by Sony, you get the "Beta" part for both product names. Early Betacam used the same tape cart as Betamax, but the recording formats (how audio and video are stored on the tape) are different. From the start Betacam was designed to be a professional format and it became the defacto standard for a long time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacam

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Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.com
Money can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.