Is this Betamax vs. VHS wars II?
Yes, this is similar to the Betamax vs. VHS war of the late 1970s and 1980s, but it is a different war
and the outcome will not be the same.
Beta vs. VHS only involved consumers and consumer electronics companies at the outset. The primary
intent of both formats was to allow consumers to record television programs so that they could watch it at
some later date (time shifting). There’s a general feeling that poor marketing of its recording capabilities
is what doomed Betamax. RCA decided to support the VHS camp, (led by JVC and Matsushita the parent company
to Panasonic), when it requested and got the VHS format altered to allow 4 hour recording onto a single tape.
RCA heavily marketed the 4 hour recording capabilities of VHS when they introduced models into the North
American market.
For Hollywood movie studios, VHS and Betamax were seen as a way to get additional revenue from older films,
whose time in the movie theater had come and gone. Everyone that became involved in the conflict was not
fully aware of the size of the dollars that would ultimately be at stake. VCRs were not used as the
inventors intended, they were primarily used to play back pre-recorded tapes. One of the running jokes
about VCRs was the flashing 12:00 time, as most consumers didn’t bother to set the timers to allow for
pre-programmed recordings. By the end of the Beta vs. VHS war, most manufacturers had eliminated the front
panel LCD timer clock. DVDs were introduced to the world as a technology for playback of movies because
that’s the way VCRs were typically used.
The Blu-ray/HD DVD war is very different. For one, Hollywood got involved from the outset. At the
beginning of the VHS/Beta war, it took years after a movie had its run at the box office before it would be
released to video tape. Many studios brazenly stated that some of the most popular movies would never be
converted to videotape. Now it’s about 7 months from the time a movie opens in the theater to the time
it’s available on DVD. Some movies don’t even make it to the theater; they are made and released directly to
DVD.
Another difference in the Blu-ray Disc (BD) vs. HD DVD war is it involves more than just consumer
electronics giants and the home video market. The information technology sector is involved, as the line
between computers and traditional home entertainment equipment blurs. Don’t let the absence of a keyboard
and mouse fool you, stand alone BD and HD DVD players are computers, complete with an operating system,
motherboards, CPU, memory, Ethernet ports, upgradeable firmware, etc. Many I.T. companies have expanded
their product offerings to include home entertainment products (e.g. HDTV sets, Windows Media based PC,
WebTV, I-Pods, I-Tunes and now Apple TV). The massive storage capabilities of both BD and HD DVD along
with the price of the media put the storage cost per GB in line with LTO-3 tapes. Storage capacity will
continue to increase on both formats, Toshiba has announced a 3 layer 51 GB HD DVD disc, and a 100 GB four
layer Blu-ray Disc has also been announced, by the Blu-ray Disc Association. As well, the price of
recordable media will continue to fall with increased usage. With Sarbanes-Oxley and other legislation
requiring long term storage of accounting, e-mail and other types of data, the economics and physical
robustness of both formats makes them viable alternatives to long term storage on tapes.
Yet another difference between the wars is we now know that rival formats can survive and co-exist.
Back in 2000 /2001 another format war flared up that was being portrayed as Betamax vs. VHS II. Unless you
work in the I.T. field or you are a computer technology hobbyist, you are probably unaware that this war
happened or the outcome. The war was over what would be the DVD writable formats. On one side there is
Hitachi, Maxell, JVC, Mitsubishi, Pioneer and TDK. Their formats are DVD-R (write-once), and DVD-RW
(re-writable). On the other side, you have Philips, Sony, Dell, HP, Thomson, Yamaha, Verbatim and Ricoh.
Their formats are DVD+R (write-once) and DVD+RW (re-writable). The DVD forum (the governing body for the
DVD format) officially recognizes the DVD-R/RW as the writable format for DVD. The majority of DVD
recordable devices being sold today can read and write all the formats. Chances are that if the computer
you’re using right now has a DVD recordable drive, it’s the multi-format DVD+/-RW drive. We already have
one multi-format high definition player on the market, the LG-BH100, which can play Blu-ray, HD DVD and all
formats of DVD. Betamax and VHS were so different that it was not technically or economically rational to
attempt to produce a dual format device.
Finally the two battles are different for consumer electronics companies. In the Beta /VHS era, the war
was primarily a single front war, fought over consumer videotape player/recorders. The current war is a 3
front affair. Blu-ray and HD DVD revenues will not only come from the sale of traditional stand-alone
players, (and likely player/recorders somewhere down the line), but from video game consoles (Playstation3
and Xbox 360), and from computers (PC’s, laptops, servers and sales of network backup devices).
Over the lifespan of these formats, there will be a few hundred billion dollars of revenue generated;
enough for all companies to get a piece of the action.
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