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Compared with VHS, the size of the cassette is smaller and is widely said to have a better picture quality than VHS, though this was in fact an electronic trick that could easily have been applied to VHS (but wasn't). Other claimed advantages included a straighter path for the tape though the machinery, making it start up much faster after inserting the cassette—but this was in fact a false marketing ploy by Sony. Transitioning from play to fast forward or rewind was faster, but only because (unlike VHS) the tape was not unthreaded from the mechanism first. This also led to somewhat greater wear on the tape during fast winding.

For home use, Betamax lost over VHS despite a huge marketing push by Sony. In his autobiography, Sony founder Akio Morita attributes this to Sony's refusal to license the format, allowing the technically inferior VHS format to get "critical mass." Others believe that the shorter recording time of Betamax was the factor that retarded its early consumer adoption, a problem that led Sony into a race in the 1980s to increase the capacity of the format, one they never were ahead in for very long.

Once VHS had achieved a critical mass in terms of the installed base of home video recorders, the rest of the Betamax marketing chain collapsed. Subsequent developments such as "VHS-HQ," and multi-head technology saw VHS equalling the technical superiority of Beta. Eventually, Sony started producing its own VHS format recorders, effectively conceding the " format war." The last American model appeared on the market in 1993, and overseas production of Betamax VCRs had completely halted by 1998. Sony continued manufacturing a limited number of Betamax VCRs for the Japanese market until 20022002 is a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). 2002 was the first palindromic year since 1991 and the last until 2112. 2002 was also designated: International Year of Ecotourism and Mountains National Science Year in the United Kingdom, when they officially announced the end of the Betamax consumer line.

The process by which VHS won over the apparently superior Betamax format has become a classic case study in marketingMarketing is the craft of linking the producers (or potential producers) of a product or service with customers, both existing and potential. Some form of marketing arises naturally in all capitalist societies but is not limited to capitalist societies., to the point of the creation of a nounal verb "to Betamax" where a proprietary technology format is overwhelmed in the market by another format that allows multiple competing licensed manufacturers, as in " Apple Betamaxed themselves out of the PCThe term personal computer or PC has three meanings: IBM's range of PCs that led to the use of the term see IBM PC. A generic term used to describe all microcomputers (mentioned here). A generic term sometimes used to describe a computer based on IBM's or market."

Surprisingly it appears Sony never learned the Betamax lesson themselves, and have repeatedly attempted to introduce similar technologies with similarly limited appeal. For instance, it appears that the recent Memory Stick system offers no technical advantages at all over the almost identical MMCMB Multi Media Card Multi Media Card (MMC is a solid state disk or flash memory data storage device. It is based on Toshiba's NAND-based flash memory, and is therefore much smaller than earlier systems based on Intel NOR-based memory such as Compact Flash system, yet Sony continues to advertise Memory Stick and offer it as the only removable media standard on their own consumer electronicsConsumer electronics is electronic equipment intended for use by everyday people. Consumer electronics usually find applications in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Some categories of consumer electronics include telephones, audio eq and computertower of a personal computer. A computer is a device for making calculations or controlling operations that are expressible in numerical or logical terms. While factually accurate, this definition and those found in other dictionaries are so broad that ths.

Technologies such as Betacam evolved from the Beta format and became the most widely used professional recording format by television stations until it was surpassed by digital media at the end of the 1990s. The Jerry Springer Show records all shows on Betacam.

One other major result of the introduction of the Betamax technology was a lawsuit, Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before the legality of home videotaping was finally determined. The court judgement held that home videotape recorders were a legal technology since they had "substantial non-infringing uses."

See also: video cassette recorder, VHS, network externality, whole product, tipping point