William Sommerwerck wrote:
Most color TVs had no more than a 3MHz luminance bandwidth. Within that
limitation, Beta could record and play back with only a slight loss of
quality. This was a far cry from VHS, which was crap, crap, crap from the word
"go".

VHS took off because the European countries wanted to place quotas on VCRs.
They really did not want people to own them, and even with very high taxes,
they were selling well.

So the VHS companies got together and decided it was better to sell NTSC
VHS VCRs at a loss than it was to reduce production capacity. They
limited the number of PAL or SECAM ones and no quotas were enacted.

Eventually the sales of VHS outsripped BETA to the point that Sony could
no longer sustain the home market and left it.

Geoff.



--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM/KBUH7245/KBUW5379
It's Spring here in Jerusalem!!!