[Ffmpeg-devel] Re: American quality standards.

[Ivan Kalvachev]

2006/3/15, Corey Hickey <bugfood-ml at fatooh.org>:
> Dieter wrote:
> >>>Oh yes, anything other than RF and composite is rare in NTSC-land.
> >>
> >>Ouch, you're kidding me!? Do American viewers not care at all about
> >>picture quality?
> >
> >
> > Some do.  Most don't.  Did you not notice that VHS outsold Betamax?
> > 20 years ago the VHS picture was absolute crap.  But a VHS tape
> > held more hours of this crap than a Betamax tape, so VHS won
> > in the marketplace.  Recent VHS machines have a much improved picture,
> > maybe almost as good as a 20+ year old Beta machine (*).  But VHS tape
> > handling is still crap and always will be.  Miss a bit of dialog
> > and want to rewind a few seconds?  KLUNK!  KER-CHUNK!  WHAM!
> > Whirrrrrrrrrrrrr!  THUNK!  KER-KER-KER-CHUNK!
>
> What was different about Betamax that made it better at rewinding? I've
> never even seen one.
>
> I guess I was alive during the latter part of the VHS-Betamax war, but I
> wasn't aware of any alternative at the time. Most of our electronics
> were pretty old. My dad had to frequently clean the tape handling
> mechanisms of our VHS player to keep it working. The player didn't work
> when it was too cold, either, so on some evenings my dad would put it in
> the oven for a while, and then we would run it propped up next to the
> wood stove.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=173366&cid=14424932

I read slashdot only to find comments like the above. In short : in
explains that VHS win the format war because of  cheaper price and
because of the appearance of video rentals. Sony haven't realised this
kind of use and missed the boat.