Comments by "Neil Forbes" (@neilforbes416) on "Why Sony's Beta Videotape System Failed--and failed hard (Part 1)" video.

  1. In the PAL system, VHS cassettes were branded as E-30(30 mins); E-60(60 mins); E-120(2 hours); E180(3 hours) and E240(4 hours).
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  2. Beta goes back further than 1975. Early prototypes were developed in 1972. One was on display in Newcastle NSW, Australia in 1972, in a hi-fi shop in Hunter Street, just a little east of the then-still-new Hunter Shopping Village. The recorder was on display but not demonstrated as the shop assistants had customers to attend to. They didn't have a lot of time to demonstrate this "new-fangled gadget", Beta VCR. The Beta format was itself predated by the Philips N1000 "VCR" system which time had proven to be the worst joke of the age.....cardboard cassette shells, concentric spools(one above the other) and forever mangling their tapes.... the N1000 system was a disaster. Beta fared better as it found its niche in TV stations for ENG(Electronic News Gathering) purposes.
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  3. Beta predated VHS by 4 years! I saw a beta VCR on display but not being demonstrated in 1972 at a Hi-Fi shop in Newcastle, NSW Australia. The shop was low on staff so had no-one available to demonstrate the device. Australia got Colour TV in 1975 so there wasn't any point in marketing a product that wasn't going to have any practical use at that time.
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  4. Matsushita OWNED JVC-Nivico, so therefore Matsushita OWNED the patent on VHS, so there was no need for Matsushita to apply to JVC for a licence to manufacture VHS VCRs if JVC was but a division of Matsushita. Matsushita's other division was National, which evolved into Panasonic and Technics.
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