March 16, 2023 – Betamax

Happy Throwback Thursday! Our throwback year today is 1975, the year Sony introduced Betamax! It was released in Japan in May of 1975 and here in the U.S. in November of that year. Betamax’s biggest competitor was the VHS, which was released in 1977. While Betamax offered superior quality and were about half the size of VHS tapes, there was a huge problem for the average home consumer: Betamax tapes could only record up to an hour, while VHS offered the ability to record up to 10 hours of footage. Betamax was also much more expensive. The first Betamax device introduced here in the U.S. in 1975 was part of a console that also included a 19-inch color TV. It sold for $2,495 – that’s more than $13,500 today! VCRs and VHS tapes, on the other hand, were much less costly. Sony was confident that consumers would pay more for better-quality recordings. However, they didn’t take into account that people were more interested in price, recording time, and the compatibility with other machines. By 1980, VHS controlled 60% of the North American market. Not all Betamax products were failures, however. In 1982, the Betacam was introduced, targeting professional filmmakers. For a time it was the most used format for electronic news gathering. Despite being dominated by VHS, Sony manufactured and sold Betamax recorders until August 2002, and Betamax cassettes were sold until March 2016. Learn more here.