(via) Engineering wonk Bill Hammack is fascinated by the old fight to the death between Betamax and VHS, the two main commercial formats for video recording/playback in the 1970s and 1980s.
“In 1976 Sony introduced the Betamax video cassette recorder. It catalyzed the “ondemand” of today by allowing users to record television shows, and the machine ignited the first “new media”; intellectual property battles. In only a decade this revolutionary machine disappeared, beaten by JVC’s version of the cassette recorder. This video tells the story of why Betamax failed.”
TAKE ANOTHER BREAK
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There is a lesson in the fact that industry sued to stand in the way of this technology, just like they sued to try to block MP3 players. The media industry likes things just the way they are, thank you very much, and if that means throwing the consumer under the bus they will go that route every single time.