Betamax vs. VHS

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More

Gary Arndt

Education, History

4.7 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a war erupted in the world of video technology. Two competing video tape formats fought to gain supremacy in the market. In the end, one format crushed the other and was left as the victor. However, legend holds that the inferior format was actually the victorious one. Learn more about Betamax vs. VHS videotape wars and if the inferior technology actually won on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Expedition Unknown Find out the truth behind popular, bizarre legends. Expedition Unknown, a podcast from Discovery, chronicles the adventures of Josh Gates as he investigates unsolved iconic stories across the globe. With direct audio from the hit TV show, you’ll hear Gates explore stories like the disappearance of Amelia Earhart in the South Pacific and the location of Captain Morgan's treasure in Panama. These authentic, roughshod journeys help Gates separate fact from fiction and learn the truth behind these compelling stories. InsideTracker provides a personal health analysis and data-driven wellness guide to help you add years to your life—and life to your years. Choose a plan that best fits your needs to get your comprehensive biomarker analysis, customized Action Plan, and customer-exclusive healthspan resources. For a limited time, Everything Everywhere Daily listeners can get 20% off InsideTracker’s new Ultimate Plan. Visit InsideTracker.com/eed. Subscribe to the podcast! https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a war erupted in the world of video technology.
0:05.0	Two competing videotape formats fought to gain supremacy in the market.
0:09.0	In the end, one format crushed the other and was left as the victor.
0:12.0	However, legend holes that the inferior
0:15.0	format was actually the victorious one. Learn more about the Beta Max versus VHS
0:20.0	videotape Wars and if the worst technology actually won on this episode of
0:24.6	everything everywhere daily. There are some of you listening to this who will remember the videotape Wars quite well,
0:45.0	or if you don't remember the format war, then at least you remember videotapes.
0:49.0	For those of you too young to remember videotape, back in the days before Netflix and the internet, you could
0:54.3	store video in an analog format on magnetic tape. The tapes were extremely popular and most
0:59.8	households and developed countries had them. You could buy or rent movies on tape, record directly from television, or record your own videos on tape. Before I get into the Beta Max versus VHS formats, I want to give a brief history of videotapes because, quite frankly,
1:15.3	this seems like an entire appropriate place to do so. If you remember back to my episode on
1:19.9	the history of audio recordings, during the Second World War, American radio
1:24.0	engineers noticed something odd about German radio broadcasts. The quality of
1:28.4	their repeated episodes was just as good as the quality of their live
1:31.8	episodes.
1:33.4	This was not the case in allied countries where recordings had to be made on a wax disc.
1:38.3	After the war it was discovered that the Germans had developed magnetic tape that could record audio at very high levels of quality.
1:45.0	The technology spread rapidly after the war and began being used for audio recordings in the
1:48.8	early 1950s.
1:50.7	This is why there was such a great leap in audio quality in the recordings from this era.
1:55.0	The same magnetic tape it was realized could be used to record signals from the new medium of television.
	...

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