Betamax
Betamax is the brand name of a system developed by Sony in the seventies half-inch magnetic tape system for recording analog video and audio signals. Betamax was developed for the consumer market and was published in 1975 for the first time in the U.S. and Japan on the market. The introduction in the Federal Republic of Germany took place in 1978. Betamax providers were Sony ( system developers), Fisher, NEC, Sanyo, Toshiba, and Vega.
Betamax was unable to prevail against VHS by JVC in the format war.
Betamax was also a political issue. Film production companies did not want that individuals themselves could copy movies. The protracted litigation was also the so-called Betamax ruling from 1984 in the U.S., which Sony from the accusation to make the Schwarzkopiererei aid acquitted. This judgment has gained new importance with the advent of music file sharing on the Internet.
The halt in production for the last Sony Betamax equipment EDP -9000 and SL- 200D was announced on 27 August 2002. Until then, Sony sold a total of 18 million worldwide Betamax players, including four million in Japan.
Formats
Betamax
The commercial standard format was the L -750 cassette, which has a playing time of 195 minutes. Less common was the L -830, with a maximum duration of 215 minutes. Other formats are L -125 (30 minutes), L -165 (45 minutes), L -250 (65 minutes), L -370 (95 minutes), and L- 500 (130 minutes). The number stands for the length of the tape in feet.
The tape transport speed was in Germany at Betamax (PAL) 1.95 cm / s This corresponds to a width of the band of one-half inch in turn about 2.5 cm ² / s For comparison, the VHS (PAL / SP) tape transport speed: 2.34 cm / s This corresponds to the width of the strip approximately one-half inch to 2.97 cm ² / s VHS had a 20% lower density and thus consumed 20% more band material per season.
The Betamax standard also provides the option of recording in addition to the hi-fi stereo PCM - encoded digital sound. Some devices thus have five audio channels (mono longitudinal track, stereo left and right PCM left and right).
Super Beta
A further development of the Betamax system introduced the introduced the mid- 1980s Super Beta format dar. Super Beta was backwards compatible with the normal Betamax format, ie all Super Beta recorder could record and play back cassettes in standard Betamax format. Super Beta Betamax had compared to a significantly higher resolution and lower image noise, but did not quite match the quality of also published at this time Super - VHS system.
ED - Beta
Sony's last attempt to get the Betamax format alive was ED - Beta, which in turn was an evolution of Super Beta system. ED - Beta was with a video frequency response of 10 MHz, corresponding to a resolution of about 600 lines corresponds to ( comparison: S -VHS 400 lines, VHS 250 lines), the best analog video system for home use and could well also with the commonly used today digital formats such as DVD and DV compete. Also, ED - Beta was backward compatible to its predecessors and Betamax Super Beta. ED Beta cassettes resembled the conventional optical Betamaxkassetten, but used a special metal- coated tape.
ED Beta existed only in the United States and Japan, but also disappeared there very quickly from the market so that no more attempts were made to commercialize the system in Europe.
Betacam and other formats
Sony developed in the early 1980s from the Betamax format video systems for professional and broadcast applications. In this high-priced area were using at that time completely new time-multiplexed award process first Betacam, Betacam SP, and later in the mid- 1990s, Digital Betacam, Betacam SX and later introduced HDCAM and IMX (a type of MPEG- Betacam ). These formats are however not compatible with Betamax and partly also with each other.
The cassette format from Betamax is also eligible for the professional Betacam - systems for application. However, these cassettes contain higher bands and use next to another track image also different tape speeds. There are also at Betacam and its derived systems, a large cassette (L size ), which is not available because of the since in any case already extended term in Betamax.