Learning From History: How VHS Beat Betamax

The saying goes that if we don't understand history we are doomed to repeat it. In the tech world, that's most mentioned in regards to the current war raging between Blu-ray and HD-DVD over which format will become the dominant high-definition DVD platform. Pundits like to point out the similarities between the current battle and the one between VHS and Betamax... but is it an accurate analogy? One writer says that we may not be understanding our history properly...

The conventional wisdom about the death of Beta was that it was better technology, but the players were more expensive and there weren't any movies on the platform. But the writer (anonymous, oddly) notes that when the first players were released, there were no commercial titles and no video stores. In fact, the lawsuit over VCRs (Sony vs. Universal, 1984) is a monument in copyright law.

Rather, people bought the first VCRs to tape programs off of live TV. And that's why Beta didn't make it: Blank Beta tapes were $15 each and could only hold an hour of video. Meanwhile, VHS tapes were cheaper and started at two hours of capacity, eventually stretching to six hours by slowing down the tape and sacrificing some quality. People who wanted to tape a movie or a sporting event really only had one choice, and that's why VHS won. (It helped that the decks were far cheaper, as well.) Quality didn't really play into the decision: Recording off of broadcast television looks like junk no matter what you tape it on. By the time video stores began to crop up, it was really too late. I still remember the forlorn section of Beta tapes, just a single rack of them, at the video store near my childhood home. So sad.

So how does this translate to today's market? Well, not at all, really. Nearly all optical formats (including high-def and DVD) are purchased to play back commercial media, either bought or rented. Since Blu-ray and HD-DVD titles cost about the same, this isn't a real factor in the decision between them... though since both are pricier than DVDs, it certainly plays into the decision whether to buy either of them at all. 

It comes down to player prices: At $199, I think people would be buying high-def decks instead of $80 to $100 DVD players. Now that they're scraping $300, the era of high-def may be upon us. And unlike the original VHS/Beta battle, title availability is a big deal now too, though in my mind neither HD-DVD nor Blu-ray have much to crow about on this front.

We're now well into the second year of the high-def DVD battle, with no clear winner in sight. Have you made up your mind? Blu-ray, HD-DVD, both, or neither? 

LINK: HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray - Are there parallels to the old Betamax vs. VHS video recoder wars?