.jpg)
Betamax, also known as Beta, is a consumer-level analog recording and cassette format of magnetic tape for video, commonly known as a video cassette recorder. It was developed by Sony and was released in Japan on May 10, 1975, followed by the US in November of the same year.
Betamax is widely considered to be obsolete, having lost the videotape format war which saw its closest rival, VHS, dominate most markets. Though Betamax tapes had higher quality image, the longer VHS tape ultimately became the standard.
Despite this, Betamax recorders continued to be manufactured and sold until August 2002, when Sony announced that they were discontinuing production of all remaining Betamax models. Sony continued to sell blank Betamax cassettes until March 2016.
The first Betamax VCR introduced in the United States was the LV-1901 model, which included a 48 cm Trinitron television, and appeared in stores in early November 1975. The cassettes contain 12.7 mm videotape in a design similar to that of the earlier, professional 19 mm, U-matic format.
Like the rival videotape format VHS (introduced in Japan by JVC in September 1976 and in the United States by RCA in August 1977), Betamax has no guard band and uses azimuth recording to reduce crosstalk. According to Sony's history webpages, the name had a double meaning: beta is the Japanese word used to describe the way in which signals are recorded on the tape; and the shape of the lowercase Greek letter beta (β) resembles the course of the tape through the transport. The suffix -max, from the word maximum, was added to suggest greatness.
In 1977, Sony issued the first long-play Betamax VCR, the SL-8200. This VCR had two recording speeds: normal, and the newer half speed. This provided two hours of recording on the L-500 Beta videocassette. The SL-8200 was to compete against the VHS VCRs, which allowed up to 4, and later 6 and 8, hours of recording on one cassette.
Initially, Sony was able to tout several Betamax-only features, such as BetaScan -a high-speed picture search in either direction- and BetaSkipScan, a technique that allowed the operator to see where they were on the tape by pressing the FF key (or REW, if in that mode): the transport would switch into the BetaScan mode until the key was released. This feature is discussed in more detail on Peep Search.
Sony believed that the M-Load transports used by VHS machines made copying these trick modes impossible. BetaSkipScan (Peep Search) is now available on miniature M-load formats, but even Sony was unable to fully replicate this on VHS. BetaScan was originally called Videola until the company that made the Moviola threatened legal action.
Sanyo marketed its own Betamax-compatible recorders under the Betacord brand, also casually referred to as Beta. In addition to Sony and Sanyo, Beta-format video recorders were manufactured and sold by Toshiba, Pioneer, Murphy, Aiwa, and NEC. Zenith Electronics and WEGA contracted with Sony to produce VCRs for their product lines. The department stores Sears (in the United States and Canada) and Quelle (in Germany) sold Beta-format VCRs under their house brands, as did the RadioShack chain of electronic stores.
In early 1985, Sony would introduce a new feature, Hi-Band or SuperBeta, by again shifting the Y carrier -this time by 800 kHz. This improved the bandwidth available to the Y sideband and increased the horizontal resolution from 240 to 290 lines on a regular-grade Betamax cassette. Since over-the-antenna and cable signals were only 300-330 lines resolution, SuperBeta could make a nearly identical copy of live television.
On November 10, 2015, Sony announced that it would no longer be producing Betamax video cassettes. Production and sales ended March 2016 after almost 41 years of continuous production.
More information: Kodak Digitizing
which makes it easier for the artists to tell
their stories and paint the pictures they want.
George Lucas
No comments:
Post a Comment