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elahrairrah
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Post subject: Re: Last Beta movie released? Posted: 12 Oct 2011, 17:00 |
Young Padawan |
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Joined: 30 Aug 2005, 15:38 Posts: 3422 Location: New Jersey Has thanked: 79 times Been thanked: 150 times
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Interesting question. I imagine this is the guy to ask if you haven't asked him already . . . http://www.betainfoguide.net/But I think his expertise might only be for the North American market. Since the last Betamax VCRs ever made rolled off the assembly lines in Japan in 2002, the Japanese market might have supported Beta a little longer.
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elahrairrah
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Post subject: Re: Last Beta movie released? Posted: 13 Oct 2011, 14:06 |
Young Padawan |
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Joined: 30 Aug 2005, 15:38 Posts: 3422 Location: New Jersey Has thanked: 79 times Been thanked: 150 times
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mikeystoyz wrote: That is crazy, though newsrooms have used beta for almost the whole time until now. They have only now began the changeover to digital I believe. I believe they used Betacam and not actually Betamax.
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elahrairrah
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Post subject: Re: Last Beta movie released? Posted: 13 Oct 2011, 14:58 |
Young Padawan |
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Joined: 30 Aug 2005, 15:38 Posts: 3422 Location: New Jersey Has thanked: 79 times Been thanked: 150 times
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Indeed, Betacam is a component video format with 300 lines of resolution (even higher with Betacam SP) with 120 lines of color, while Betamax is a color under format like VHS. So they're not compatible. Here's a really interesting page that describes the many different video formats over the ages (including Betamax, Betacam, Betacam SP--oh yeah, and Laserdisc too!): http://www.videointerchange.com/video-history.htm
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elahrairrah
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Post subject: Re: Last Beta movie released? Posted: 13 Oct 2011, 15:20 |
Young Padawan |
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Joined: 30 Aug 2005, 15:38 Posts: 3422 Location: New Jersey Has thanked: 79 times Been thanked: 150 times
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Back to the subject of last movie on Beta, I first thought that since Sony bought Columbia Pictures that the movie might have been a Columbia title, but according to this LA Times article . . . Sony Finally Throws the Betamax on ScrapheapThere's this tidbit of info Quote: The last Hollywood studio that routinely put out movies on Betamax tapes, Korpsak said, was Walt Disney Co.'s Buena Vista, which abandoned the format in the mid-1990s. After that, Paramount would put a movie out on Betamax for orders of 20 or more, Korpsak said, but "they stopped that a couple of years ago." So I'm surmising that the VERY last title might be from Disney or Paramount.
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elahrairrah
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Post subject: Re: Last Beta movie released? Posted: 14 Oct 2011, 19:46 |
Young Padawan |
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Joined: 30 Aug 2005, 15:38 Posts: 3422 Location: New Jersey Has thanked: 79 times Been thanked: 150 times
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This is kind of amusing. For fun, I decided to do a search for beta movies on YahooJapan to see if they supported the format further than the US. Came across this title on Beta: Hershell Gordon Lewis' 'Scum of the Earth'And saw on the cover that the movie was put out by "Box Office Spectaculars." Now the only "Box Office Spectaculars" I know about was the company that released Lucio Fulci's Cat in the Brain in 1999: http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/10446/BOS ... rain-(1990) So I was thinking, "Wow! This might be the latest Beta release I've ever seen!" But then I did a search on Box Office Spectaculars, turns out that this particular Box Office Spectaculars was a film distribution and production house back in the 60s. Might have been HG Lewis' own since they seemingly only released his movies: http://www.imdb.com/company/co0080238/So . . . yeah, got a little ahead of myself there!
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rixrex
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Post subject: Re: Last Beta movie released? Posted: 10 Nov 2011, 07:19 |
Advanced fan |
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Joined: 17 Jul 2004, 23:40 Posts: 593 Location: United States Has thanked: 0 time Been thanked: 5 times
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Last Sony Beta VCR made was 2002. Might seem surprising but Beta was pretty big in some asian and South American markets through the 1990s. Interestingly, Sony made some of the best VHS machines around in the 1990s and early 2000s.
It's not hard to understand the reasons why Beta didn't take hold in the US if you understand some things about it. It's quite a case study in business management and marketing as well as Japanese culture and manners.
To put it in brief, Sony saw itself as the premier electronics firm in Japan, and still does, and with that mantle comes certain responsibilities and rights in Japanese business culture that we in the US don't see quite the same way, as we have a history of competitive business culture (at least up to that time). In a way, Sony execs felt it was their right to dictate the VCR format due to their prominent position, and the responsibility of others to follow suit. Of all the other electronics firms, only JVC was willing to stand up to Sony's dictums and planned their own VCR format.
At about this same time, RCA execs went to Japan to discuss business matters with Sony regarding marketing Beta machines under the RCA label. RCA had certain things in mind to present, such things as a longer record time, longer than the 1 hour Beta record time. This was a major problem. Sony did not want to lower the quality of Beta recordings by slowing the tape to record 2 or more hours. RCA couldn't understand why not and insisited on it, after all, Americans would want to record movies and sports programs. Sony was offended.
Neither giant would budge. Much of it had to do with temperment and ego. RCA execs left and Sony bid them farewell, thinking they'd come back eventually. RCA went to JVC and were quite pleased that JVC had a system that would record 2 hrs on the fastest speed, with only slightly lesser quality than Beta, 220-240 lines vs 230-250 lines and 4 hrs on the slower speed at a slightly lesser quality, with plans to go to 6 hr speed, and an only slightly larger cassette. And all at a better price.
This is what RCA wanted, so VHS became a staple of the one American electronics firm that knew the American public, and marketing to it, fairly well. At least they did at this time. We all know the eventual result of the Beta-VHS battle. In a fair and competitive open marketplace, the winning format was the one that delivered what the public wanted at a low price.
The quality of Beta 1 vs VHS SP is not up to debate, Beta is technically better. However, the quality of Beta II vs VHS SP, the speed that pre-recorded movies use, is slightly better on VHS. The apparent quality visible to the general public on a 19" or 25" CRT, the common TV sets at the time is not significantly different nor noticable. In such a situation, the lower price and wider availability of VHS machines was the deciding factor in the US. It was not due to any big X-rated VHS tape demand like modern news media "pundits" like to state. I heard such a comment recently by one idiotic local newscaster who took offense when I wote him a letter pointing out his lack of real investigation. He demanded my qualifications to say such things, and when I sent them to him, I never heard back. This fellow now does weather and traffic reports, where no real investigative skills are necessary, since all the information is spoon-fed to the studio by others.
Anyway, in other foreign markets, Sony had a good head start and Beta remained popular as those nations' citizenry could ill afford to toss out one VCR already purchased in favor of another. And RCA did not have the same presence there either.
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signofzeta
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Post subject: Re: Last Beta movie released? Posted: 16 Jan 2016, 01:11 |
Jedi Knight |
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Joined: 14 Jan 2010, 09:44 Posts: 6005 Location: Ann Arbor Has thanked: 1301 times Been thanked: 1115 times
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I never noticed this thread before.
I don't know that we'll ever know for sure, not just with Beta but with lots of things. Even LD, which had comparatively few pressing plants compared to VHS tape factories or whatever...still we don't know. Everyone used to say it was Tokyo Raiders, then it was supposed to be the Dragon's Lair bootleg, but now we know that TONS of LaserJuke disks were released for years a years after DL.
The only ones you can be sure about are situations where all the manufacturing was done by the format's license holder, like MiniDisc, video games, stuff like that. I assume Sony wasn't still manufacturing all the Beta by the end so...good luck.
_________________ All about LD care, inner sleeves, shrink wrap, etc.
https://youtu.be/b3O-vHpHRpM
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