Affordable Universal HD disc player...would it make the "format war" moot??? (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

No one worried about "explaining format differences" with VHS and Beta. We had a successful winner.

Confusion was a minor aspect of the failure of DVD-A and SACD.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

 

[Steve Berger]

Believe it or nor Beta was selling in Japan up until about 2 years ago. (maybe 3) They had blocked shipments to the US about 2 or 3 years before that. It's hard to promote DVD quality when you have a 500 line horiz. resolution tape machine (ED Beta at Beta1-s)

Top end Beta machines often sell for $1000 used.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

is about right for consumer Beta in the U.S.A. Maybe, even as early as 1998. Anyone?

 

[Steve Berger]

ED Beta would have been considered "Pro-sumer". It was the equivalent to S-VHS but higher res and better color system.

The last Japanese models were just high end SuperBeta HiFi machines. I think the professional Beta machines (like BetaCam) are still around but DigiBeta is the more typical TV station item; although the quality would seem to indicate that they have switched to the smaller digital units (lots of blocking errors from the unstable DV mechanisms).

The actual cutoff date in the US is hard to determine since the last units were on a preorder (and prepay) only basis and they never seemed to show up when promised. Sony USA would claim that they had to hold the orders until they had a certain quantity before they would send the request to Tokyo. Warranty rates were still listed for the Beta machines in 2003 (and 2004 I think).

The "blocked shipments" I referred to were the threats they made to the Japanese dealers. If they shipped units out of the country they would pull their dealerships. You could walk into a store, buy one, and bring it back, but not order one and have it shipped. (Caterpillar is my area and they have a lot of people who travel internationally; that's where the threat info came from; I can't absolutely verify it myself)

 

[RobertR]

Or they responded to surround music with a big shrug.

When the hidef formats are introduced, people are going to want to know simple things:

Which is better? If they don’t see a difference in picture quality, that basis will go away. If they don’t see a big enough improvement over DVD, the formats are in big trouble, and everything else is moot. Which has nicer features (that they really care about)? Which is cheaper? Can they play their old DVDs in the new player? I don’t see much potential for confusion on these points, nor do I see a need for a technical explanation.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Have you read any of the post here???
People have tons of questions.
"People are confused".
"People "need [for] a technical explanation"!!!

 

[RobertR]

Not as many when the stuff actually starts selling.

 

[Steve Berger]

Ed, I will try to be as brief as possible on tape resolutions; all of which underwent revisionism (lies) when Sony started selling VHS machines.
VHS: 230 lines (including all HQ variants)
SVHS: 400 lines
Prerecorded VHS: 240 lines if done on high speed duplication machines, otherwise 230.
Color system, VHS & SVHS, 4 line averaging (rotary chroma). This is why tape to tape copies look so bad.

Beta: 250 lines
BetaHiFi: ~255 lines
Prerecorded on high speed 260 but many small dup. houses used SLHF750s so 250-255 more common.
SuperBeta HiFi: 270 lines BetaII and BetaIII speeds. SuperBeta was a 10% increase over standard but no prerecords in this format.
SuperBeta HiFi: 300 lines in BetaI-s speed
ED Beta: 500 lines. This was comparable to SVHS but more bandwidth.
Color system, 2 line averaging. This is why a 2nd generation Beta copy looked as good as a VHS original.

DVD: 500 lines if I remember correctly.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Thanks Steve.

525.
To LD's 425. DVD's actual (real) rez was 475, which is not that much better than LD, except letterbox LD is 375 to anamorphic DVD's 475.

I have S-VHS and it did a very good job picture wise recording LD's & a great job with sound. Never saw pre-recorded S-VHS. Pre-recorded Beta, at 250-255, doesn't seem like I missed that much. Was it that much better than 240 VHS?

 

[Steve Berger]

I don't have the manuals here (they are on microfiche at the shop) but I found some service bulletins from 1989 and the last field notes from 2000. There were only a couple of models listed in ESI (EDV7500 and 9500). My guess would be from '88 through '95 oe so. (I'll know more on Monday; I don't work weekends)

The quality difference with Beta was with the color system, a never publicised fact (probably too "technical"). Generally, if you recorded OTA TV, you could not tell the difference between tape and live unless you fast forwarded or paused the pic.
Live recording: much better; Prerecorded: slightly better.

I think there were some S-VHS prerecords but they were pretty rare, like the prerecorded 8mm tapes.

There was also an audio system difference. VHS Hi-Fi had two problems. You can track the video or the HiFi but not both since they were recorded with two different heads on the drum. Playing back with a second machine could cause problems with sound or pic or both.

Second, if you look very closely, the audio signal will produce a slight interference pattern in the video when there are extremes (high and low) of audio or video levels. Try explaining that one to a customer with a new $800 VCR.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Did not know about the "problems". Just people were recording CD's onto tape and geting hours & hours of great sound. I believe S-VHS sound was superior to VHS (HiFi).

Sure hope there's more news on the Uni Front soon, so we will not have to keep taking trips down memory lane!