Betamax

Betamax was Sony’s consumer videocassette format, launched in 1975, and for a few years it was the future of home video. It let ordinary people record television off the air and play pre-recorded tapes at home — a genuinely new freedom — and by most technical measures it was the better system: a more compact cassette and, many argued, a sharper picture than its rival.

That rival was VHS, launched by JVC a year later. What followed became the textbook ‘format war’: two incompatible videotape standards fighting for the same living rooms through the late 1970s and into the 1980s. Betamax had the early lead and the engineering reputation. VHS won anyway.

VHS won because it got the things that mattered to buyers right: longer recording time — enough to tape a whole film or a sports game — cheaper machines, and, crucially, a licensing strategy that put VHS players from dozens of manufacturers into stores worldwide while Sony kept tighter control of Betamax. As VHS’s installed base grew, video rental shops stocked VHS tapes, which sold more VHS players, which led shops to stock still more VHS — a feedback loop Betamax could not break.

By the late 1980s the war was over; VHS held the overwhelming majority of the market, and in 1988 Sony itself began making VHS machines. Betamax lingered for niche and professional use, but it never recovered. Sony built the last Betamax recorder in 2002 and shipped its last Betamax cassettes in 2016 — a quiet end to a format whose name had long since become shorthand for the better product that loses.