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Betamax is/was still a thing?

I thought this died off in the 80's... :( Ohhh... We're talking about Micro MV tapes. That makes more sense.
Sony says goodbye to Betamax tapes

The firm revealed on its website that it will also stop shipping the Micro MV cassette, used in video cameras.

It has not produced a compatible camera for the Micro MV since 2005.

Sony launched the format in 1975, a year before JVC's rival the VHS cassette - which eventually became the market leader after a long battle between the two brands and their fans.

Although many felt Betamax was the superior format, most cite the longer recording length of VHS tapes - three hours versus one - and the cheaper manufacturing costs for VHS machines as the main factors as to why VHS eventually won out.

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Posts

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    And unlike Pioneer's Laserdisc, we didn't even get a handful of high-budget okay-writing visual masterpiece OVAs courtesy of AIC.

    I kid, of course. I'm shocked cassette tapes were still being manufactured, actually.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    Betamax was actually used by most TV news stations in North America when the two formats were fighting for dominance. So there are years of archive footage in local TV stations all over this continent sitting on betamax tapes. It's kind of crazy to think about.

    I know one local TV station around here that, at least as of about 6 years ago, had 2 betamax players. One was hooked up, and every so often they'd actually grab a beta tape out and grab some archive footage from it. The other was actually still new in box, in case the "production" one died.

    Ideally they'd like to digitize all of that content, but the reality is that it is a pretty manual process that has to be done in real time, so it is kind of hard to do.

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  • majanzmajanz Registered User regular
    wunderbar wrote: »
    Ideally they'd like to digitize all of that content, but the reality is that it is a pretty manual process that has to be done in real time, so it is kind of hard to do.

    They don't have interns? Summer interns are the best!

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  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited November 2015
    majanz wrote: »
    wunderbar wrote: »
    Ideally they'd like to digitize all of that content, but the reality is that it is a pretty manual process that has to be done in real time, so it is kind of hard to do.

    They don't have interns? Summer interns are the best!

    coffee-internship-free-work-workplace-ecards-someecards.png

    They probably would, but when you consider that there's probably at lease decade of content where there's on average of around 7-8 hours of footage per day, that would take... a lot of summers to digitize. Especially when you consider that again most of these TV stations probably have 1, maybe 2 players left. You can't even do more than 1 or two tapes at any given time.

    wunderbar on
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  • TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    I still have a player in storage at the old house.
    When I was a kid my parents had one. And then local video chain liquidated their entire betamax collection, so they got several large boxes of movies for like, 20 dollars.
    So then if our player broke, or someone broke into our house and stole it (happened at least 3 times, but the jokes on them!) we got a new one because 95% of our video collection was betamax.

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  • Alistair HuttonAlistair Hutton Dr EdinburghRegistered User regular
    Somy takes formats seriously. They were the last decent manufacturer of 3.5 inch floppies.

    I have a thoughtful and infrequently updated blog about games http://whatithinkaboutwhenithinkaboutgames.wordpress.com/

    I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.

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  • SmokeStacksSmokeStacks Registered User regular
    edited November 2015
    I found an old forgotten Betamax player while spelunking in the attic in the house I was staying at in high school (right after the turn of the century). There were a bunch of un-labeled tapes with it. I hooked it up, grabbed the top tape from the stack, and threw it in.

    It was Tango and Cash.

    It was awesome.

    That's really the only contribution I have to a conversation about the Betamax format.

    SmokeStacks on
  • nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    Synthesis wrote: »
    And unlike Pioneer's Laserdisc, we didn't even get a handful of high-budget okay-writing visual masterpiece OVAs courtesy of AIC.

    I kid, of course. I'm shocked cassette tapes were still being manufactured, actually.

    In professional video work all digital processes being the standard are very new. Like last 5 years old.

  • ZiggymonZiggymon Registered User regular
    There was a BBC article on it recently, but in Japan since a lot of businesses are SMEs, they are very, very slow to adapt and move on towards new technologies, so things like Fax machines, cassette tapes etc are still being made, but also services like Skype, and Cloud storage are not being used despite having such an awesome internet infrastructure.

    bbc.co.uk/news/business-34667380 There it is.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited November 2015
    Ziggymon wrote: »
    There was a BBC article on it recently, but in Japan since a lot of businesses are SMEs, they are very, very slow to adapt and move on towards new technologies, so things like Fax machines, cassette tapes etc are still being made, but also services like Skype, and Cloud storage are not being used despite having such an awesome internet infrastructure.

    bbc.co.uk/news/business-34667380 There it is.

    It's barely related, but something weird I've noticed is that fax machines are still nearly mandatory equipment in American businesses (at least in my part of the country), if not outright mandatory. Academia much less so (which is surprising, you think it would be slower to adopt new hardware since otherwise it almost always is).
    Synthesis wrote: »
    And unlike Pioneer's Laserdisc, we didn't even get a handful of high-budget okay-writing visual masterpiece OVAs courtesy of AIC.

    I kid, of course. I'm shocked cassette tapes were still being manufactured, actually.

    In professional video work all digital processes being the standard are very new. Like last 5 years old.

    Yeah, probably. Obviously animation, particularly in high-budget, short-running OVAs, are an entirely different beast. In middle school, I learned how to do video editing with VHS cassettes because, well, doing it from DVDs wasn't viable, and forget about video legally procured digitally (much less illegally, of course, which was still somewhat novel 15 years ago). It wouldn't surprise me it took this long for all the standards to catch up on the production side either.

    Synthesis on
  • schussschuss Registered User regular
    The prevalence of faxes is basically tied to lawyers and doctors not understanding/trusting technology, since it's usually finance/contract related or medical records related.

  • BigityBigity Lubbock, TXRegistered User regular
    And title companies and county clerks.

  • schussschuss Registered User regular
    Bigity wrote: »
    And title companies and county clerks.

    Which themselves are really driven by lawyers, generally.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited November 2015
    Again, basically mandatory for all small businesses that involve more than a single computer.

    Not really surprising they get built into so many printers in retrospect.

    Synthesis on
  • ZiggymonZiggymon Registered User regular
    Synthesis wrote: »
    Again, basically mandatory for all small businesses that involve more than a single computer.

    Not really surprising they get built into so many printers in retrospect.

    Does make me think if it is something more shady like the Texas Instruments Calculator thing in US schools?

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    Ziggymon wrote: »
    Synthesis wrote: »
    Again, basically mandatory for all small businesses that involve more than a single computer.

    Not really surprising they get built into so many printers in retrospect.

    Does make me think if it is something more shady like the Texas Instruments Calculator thing in US schools?

    Except I'm pretty sure a very wide number of companies make fax machines, or at least used to. I can't really think of a particularly dominant one that stands out.

  • ZiggymonZiggymon Registered User regular
    Synthesis wrote: »
    Ziggymon wrote: »
    Synthesis wrote: »
    Again, basically mandatory for all small businesses that involve more than a single computer.

    Not really surprising they get built into so many printers in retrospect.

    Does make me think if it is something more shady like the Texas Instruments Calculator thing in US schools?

    Except I'm pretty sure a very wide number of companies make fax machines, or at least used to. I can't really think of a particularly dominant one that stands out.

    It doesn't need to be a single company making a product to be involved in this sort of thing, however, I doubt it would be quite as bad as the calculators.

  • LD50LD50 Registered User regular
    Oh man, ti calculators... They're shit calculators too.

  • BlackDragon480BlackDragon480 Bluster Kerfuffle Master of Windy ImportRegistered User regular
    LD50 wrote: »
    Oh man, ti calculators... They're shit calculators too.

    Hey now, the TI-83 played a mean game of Tetris and helped me through the desolate hellscape that was AP Physics and AP Calculus.

    No matter where you go...there you are.
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  • LD50LD50 Registered User regular
    LD50 wrote: »
    Oh man, ti calculators... They're shit calculators too.

    Hey now, the TI-83 played a mean game of Tetris and helped me through the desolate hellscape that was AP Physics and AP Calculus.

    My dad is an engineer, and when I started taking advanced math in high school he bought me an HP calc and taught me how to use it in lieu of the TI calculators. Damn there is a world of difference between them.

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    yea, Fax machines
    LD50 wrote: »
    Oh man, ti calculators... They're shit calculators too.

    Hey now, the TI-83 played a mean game of Tetris and helped me through the desolate hellscape that was AP Physics and AP Calculus.

    Drug wars man, it was all about drug wars. I learned more about economics from that game than I did in an actual economics class.

    I'm kidding. Maybe. Kind of.

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  • Ghostly ClockworkGhostly Clockwork Registered User regular
    Ahaha, oh man, Drug Wars on the TI...man, that brings me back.

    FTC: honk.
    FTC: HONK.

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  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    LD50 wrote: »
    LD50 wrote: »
    Oh man, ti calculators... They're shit calculators too.

    Hey now, the TI-83 played a mean game of Tetris and helped me through the desolate hellscape that was AP Physics and AP Calculus.

    My dad is an engineer, and when I started taking advanced math in high school he bought me an HP calc and taught me how to use it in lieu of the TI calculators. Damn there is a world of difference between them.

    Carly Fiorina, shit person, calculator genius?

  • majanzmajanz Registered User regular
    LD50 wrote: »
    LD50 wrote: »
    Oh man, ti calculators... They're shit calculators too.

    Hey now, the TI-83 played a mean game of Tetris and helped me through the desolate hellscape that was AP Physics and AP Calculus.

    My dad is an engineer, and when I started taking advanced math in high school he bought me an HP calc and taught me how to use it in lieu of the TI calculators. Damn there is a world of difference between them.

    Carly Fiorina, shit person, calculator genius?

    <Nerd Rant>

    Carly is a f@&%$#@g marketing weasel! Its her and her ilk that gutted HP's R&D section insuring that they will never again make anything that anyone will consider 'cool'!

    </Nerd Rant>

  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    Betacam (which is not exactly the same or compatible with Betamax) is still the defacto standard for all things TV.
    It's obviously digital and HD nowadays.

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