Word: vhs
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...made many major blunders, but the way it marketed Betamax was a beaut. The famed Japanese electronics firm started a home-entertainment revolution when it introduced Betamax, the original home-videocassette recorder, in 1975. Before long, however, competitors arrived in force with another type of VCR, dubbed VHS, which offered buyers more recording capacity. Sony gradually lost all but a tiny fraction of one of the richest markets in the consumer electronics business. Last week Sony said it will begin selling VHS players, in addition to Beta models, later this year. Inevitable as the move may have been...
Sony officials probably knew they were in trouble years ago, when consumers began to use the terms VHS and VCR interchangeably. The company had made a crucial mistake. While at first Sony kept its Beta technology mostly to itself, JVC, the Japanese inventor of VHS, shared its secret with a raft of other firms. As a result, the market was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the VHS machines being produced. In just the first year of VHS, Sony lost 40% of the VCR business to the upstart competition. By 1987 VHS accounted for more than...
While both types of recorder are fairly simple to use, there are differences in the technology. Most important, tapes for one machine cannot be played on the other kind; the VHS cassettes are larger. Proponents of the Betamax format insisted all along that its picture quality was superior to what VHS offered, but most consumers either did not know that or did not care. Says Leonard White, president of Orion Home Video: "Beta is the perfect example of a better technology being outgunned by consumer preference...
Berkman stole his Panasonic VHS from his older brother--"he stole one from my father, who bought himself a new one." The Quincy House resident says, "It's for those times when you want to sit at home with a whole bunch of people and just hang out. I mean, you can't pass beers around in a movie theater. And you can always stop the movie when you have to go to the bathroom...
Owner of both a Sony Betamax and a Scott VHS, Marcus Henzer '89 agrees that watching films on tape has taken the place of going to the movies. "It's much more of a social activity--you can stop, rewind, fast forward. Unlike in a theater, you always feel free to talk," he says...