It may have contributed to the failure of Betamax, but there several reasons for the failure of that format.
It was expensive. From the cameras to the playback machines, even commercial distribution on Betamax tapes came with an expensive license and fee that VHS did not have.
Betamax tapes (initially) were limited to 60 minutes. The VHS tapes were initially 120 or 180 minutes.
Betamax machines and Betamax camcorders were much more bulky and heavier and more complicated to use than their VHS alternatives.
Despite its superior quality, Betamax came with a lot of drawbacks, all of which were the major contributors to its downfall. How much porn itself had to do with that, it’s probably not known, but it was not a major contributing factor.
Porn is probably a correlation with those other factors…
Also that quality was the only differentiation in the age of 480p seems a bit crazy to then try to get a licence fee out of it. I barely cared about the quality difference between VHS and DVD when it first came out until I got a better TV where I could actually see the difference, and I imagine the difference with beta max would be even smaller than that 😅
Back then, the TV and VHS picture quality was somewhere between 240p and 360p. Betamax was the first format available to consumers whose picture was 480p.
I did a university report on BluRay vs hddvd and successfully called the winner based on the vhs/beta case.
Essentially your point 1 affected the indie film and porn industry which struggled to afford or obtain a license. Turns out those industries were key adopters.
Didn’t Blu-ray win because it was basically neck and neck with the amount of studios backing HD-DVD vs Blu-ray. I think everyone was waiting to see what the final studio would pick (off the top of my head it was either Fox or Warner Bros).
Sony paid said studio basically a massive multi $m bribe to pick Blu-ray (to help promote their new console, the Playstation 3) which they duly did and that format was declared the winner.
HD-DVD would’ve been great as the winner as the specifications don’t include any form of region protection. But blurays hold more data and therefore allows for better quality encodes.
It seemed more like PS3 decided the winner to me at the time , since it came with a blue ray drive while the xb360 only came with a DVD drive and the HD-DVD drive was sold separately.
It may have contributed to the failure of Betamax, but there several reasons for the failure of that format.
It was expensive. From the cameras to the playback machines, even commercial distribution on Betamax tapes came with an expensive license and fee that VHS did not have.
Betamax tapes (initially) were limited to 60 minutes. The VHS tapes were initially 120 or 180 minutes.
Betamax machines and Betamax camcorders were much more bulky and heavier and more complicated to use than their VHS alternatives.
Despite its superior quality, Betamax came with a lot of drawbacks, all of which were the major contributors to its downfall. How much porn itself had to do with that, it’s probably not known, but it was not a major contributing factor.
Porn is probably a correlation with those other factors…
Also that quality was the only differentiation in the age of 480p seems a bit crazy to then try to get a licence fee out of it. I barely cared about the quality difference between VHS and DVD when it first came out until I got a better TV where I could actually see the difference, and I imagine the difference with beta max would be even smaller than that 😅
Back then, the TV and VHS picture quality was somewhere between 240p and 360p. Betamax was the first format available to consumers whose picture was 480p.
I did a university report on BluRay vs hddvd and successfully called the winner based on the vhs/beta case.
Essentially your point 1 affected the indie film and porn industry which struggled to afford or obtain a license. Turns out those industries were key adopters.
Didn’t Blu-ray win because it was basically neck and neck with the amount of studios backing HD-DVD vs Blu-ray. I think everyone was waiting to see what the final studio would pick (off the top of my head it was either Fox or Warner Bros).
Sony paid said studio basically a massive multi $m bribe to pick Blu-ray (to help promote their new console, the Playstation 3) which they duly did and that format was declared the winner.
HD-DVD would’ve been great as the winner as the specifications don’t include any form of region protection. But blurays hold more data and therefore allows for better quality encodes.
It seemed more like PS3 decided the winner to me at the time , since it came with a blue ray drive while the xb360 only came with a DVD drive and the HD-DVD drive was sold separately.
Except wasn’t hddvd cheaper and initially porn was using it?