The VHS cassette was more clever than Beta - YouTube

Hello! And welcome to the first video of No-Effort November!

A series of videos for the month of November where no effort is made.

Today, we are doing another Beta and VHS comparison.

But, unlike ye olde format war, we’re not focusing on things like recording time,

picture quality, or silliness of their respective names.

Instead, we are going to look at their actual videocassettes,

and I think you’ll find that the VHS cassette is a fair bit cleverer than that of Beta.

I’ve made a lot of videos covering the format war which can you check out through the card

that should be popping up right about now,

though YouTube seems to have problems lately getting the card to --

oh, there it is.

See, that joke might not have worked for some of you because it actually didn’t appear!

Anyway, there’s also a link in the description for the inevitable case of the card not appearing.

Now we just have to hope that I remembered to put it there.

Moving on then, I have a pair of almost-randomly-selected videocassette recorders in front of me.

One of them is, of course, a VHS machine.

And the other, is a Beta machine.

Now, the age difference between these two doesn’t matter because what we’re after

in this here video is a closer look at the way their tape transport mechanisms interact

with the tape in the cassettes.

Take a look at the bottom of a Beta cassette, and you’ll see two sprocket holes, and a

gaping triangular hole carving a nice little canyon down towards the center.

It annoys me very much that they didn’t go all the way and instead made a trapezoid.

Oh well.

By the way, in North American English it is indeed pronounced “bay-da”.

Not “bee-tah."

Feel free to comment on why we’re wrong.

You’ll find the write-protect tab down here, as well as a notch in the upper right which

contains this little wedgey thing that unlocks the lid of the cassette.

A pokey thing inside the VCR pushes the wedgey thing in, which unlocks the lid, and the action

of the lid opening unlocks the spools of the tape and allows them to rotate.

This locking device makes it rather difficult to open the lid with one’s hands, which

arguably makes it a better design for protecting the tape, but comes with the tragic downside

of making the cassette a terrible fidgeting device.

Look at the bottom of a VHS cassette and you’ll also find a pair of sprocket holes…

which I realize... sprocket holes is not the correct word.

I believe I meant cogs for the tape reels.

Anyway.

And, you’ll also see a larger and wider variety of other holes, including

this one that you may have never even noticed before.

Such subtlety.

Notice how these two both have curves.

This one accommodates the absolutely chunky tape reels that JVC crammed in here because

they, rightly, knew that recording time was gonna be important.

But this one is way more subtle.

You’re gonna love what that curve is for when I tell you.

Now, we’ve also got this hole, which a spike inside the VCR will rudely insert itself into,

and that unlocks the tape reels, and this bigger one is for lightbulbs on sticks which

help the VCR detect when the end of the tape has been reached.

VHS cassettes have the lid unlocker placed here, which is excellent because it makes

the cassette a much better fidgeting device.

Now, if you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, you’ll have undoubtedly been told that Beta was a

much more well-engineered product, and that VHS was just a sloppy knock-off.

Well, I don’t know about you, but this gaping hole sure seems to leave more of the tape

exposed and vulnerable.

Yeah there are these half-width guards that help, a little, and you could totally still

stick your fingers in the two larger holes of a VHS cassette, but on the whole

(pause with an obnoxious smirk)

the VHS cassette seems to do a better job protecting the precious tape.

And all those holes are there for specific purposes.

Let’s now take a look at the VCRs.

The first thing to know is that all videocassette recorders will contain some sort of device

that makes your heads spin.

That’s the shiny silver drum

here, and

here.

Of note is that the Beta drum is a fair bit larger, which means that the speed the heads

travel at is a little bit higher than that of VHS, because both drums spin at the same

rotational speed.

This is one of the many reasons people would tell you back in the ‘80s that Beta had

a better picture quality.

Which, from my admittedly decades-down-the-road experience I find to be a fairly dubious claim

(or at the very least, largely insignificant) But ya know, better point it out!

There are people out there who are still mad that Beta didn’t win the format war, and

it’s a fair bet they’ll let you know about it in the space below this video.

Anyway, while I do love pressing buttons, let’s move on.

♫ dubious and largely insignificant music ♫

One thing that inevitably comes up whenever I or presumably anybody makes a video comparing

Beta and VHS is the fact that Beta continued to be used in the professional market for decades.

So, yes it failed in the consumer market but because the professional market continued

to use Beta we know that it was truly the better product and consumers were idiots for

backing VHS.

Now, I will agree that consumers often make silly choices.

However!

You are not talking about Betamax.

You’re talking about Betacam.

Betacam was the professional version of Betamax which continued to be used for many decades

after the format war ended.

Now, I understand why you would confuse the two.

They’re both called “Beta something” and in fact Betacam cassettes look an awful

lot like this, some are identical in fact (they just say Betacam, not Betamax) but they’re

not the same formats.

You can’t play a Betacam tape in a home Beta VCR and expect anything good to come

out of it, if anything at all.

Betacam continued to be updated through the years, in fact it was eventually moved to

HD and even digital signals.

So, yes, Betacam did keep going in the professional realm but it is very much only tangentially

related to Betamax.

Anyway, let’s continue.

Both of these machines have to get the tape out of the cassette, and make sure it touches

a laundry list of items.

Of course, it needs to wrap at least 180 degrees around the head drum, but it also needs to

pass by the erase head, the audio and tracking heads, and in the case of the Beta machine,

these two sensors (which I will explain shortly).

Now, with a cassette in place, but not yet threaded, you’ll immediately see a few differences

between these formats.

First is that the head drum on the Beta machine is quite a bit farther away from the cassette

than the VHS drum.

You’ll also notice that there’s a not-insignificant amount of space behind it as well.

The VHS transport was always a fair bit more compact than that of Beta, and while in the

early days of the format war it’s not like that mattered at all since the machines were massive,

in our soon-to-happen lust for miniaturization this would prove kind of annoying for Sony.

While their Betamovie camcorder solved that problem in a very clever (though incredibly

compromised) fashion, VHS enjoyed a more compact mechanism from day one, perhaps somewhat ironic

when you consider that the cassette itself is significantly larger.

But then again, that larger cassette allowed them to create the VHS-C format and use simple

adapters for use in full-size VCRs.

Anyway, the component I deliberately left out of the discussion of all the things the

tape needs to pass through so I could save that for right now is the capstan.

Tape-based formats generally use Captain Stan over here to move the tape through the transport

at a steady speed.

A rubber pinch roller will squeeze the tape between itself and the capstan, and the constant

rotational speed of the capstan in turn causes the tape to move through the transport at

a constant linear speed.

Now, let’s look at where the Capstan’s Quarters are for both of these machines.

VHS puts it right here, and you’ll see its accompanying pinch roller right next to it.

On Beta, it’s way the frick over there for some reason.

And its pinch roller is nowhere to be found.

Ah!

Now we’re getting to the point of this video.

See, Beta and VHS used entirely different methods of removing the tape from the cassette shell.

VHS uses what’s called an M-load.

The two largest holes on the bottom of the cassette

(manages to completely miss)

-- those two --

allow these two moveable

tape guides to slip behind the tape when it’s lowered on top of them.

When the transport is engaged, these move towards the rear of the machine, looping the

tape around the drum, and a little helper will usually swing out once the guides have

passed it to pull the tape against the erase head.

Since this kinda-sorta forms the shape of the letter M, the name M-load was chosen.

Now, going back to Beta, look around a little harder and you’ll eventually find the pinch roller…

here.

Nowhere near the capstan.

In a Beta machine, the pinch roller does double duty.

Just as the VHS cassette gets lowered on top of the tape guides, the Beta cassette is lowered

on top of the pinch roller.

When it’s time to get the tape out of the cassette, it

(along with the tape guides flanking it on either side)

YANKS OUT about a mile of tape

and makes a very, and literal, roundabout trip to the capstan.

Once it’s there, a little lever dude will put pressure on the pinch roller, pushing

it against the capstan, and now the tape can be moved through the mechanism.

This loading mechanism is essentially just a miniaturized version of the U-load system

Sony devised for their earlier U-matic.

You see, if you look at this from overhead, you’ll find that the tape makes the shape

of the letter U.

Now, somehow, this got named the B-load system when it was moved to Betamax, and it’s said

that the name Betamax came from the fact that this resembles the greek letter Beta.

I am to this day baffled by that anecdote,

as I cannot seem, no matter how I try, to imagine this shape as reminiscent of that shape.

But whatever.

So, there are two things worthy of note, or noteworthy.

First is this explains why the hole on the Beta cassette is so fricken big

as the rather large pinch roller and those tape guides all need to fit behind the

tape in that space.

And second is that once the tape has been removed from the cassette, none of the tape

transport components are very close to it at all.

Sony designed the Beta cassette as just a container of tape.

The machine removes it from the box, and from that point on it might as well not exist.

But the VHS cassette is much more clever.

It is designed to become *part* of the tape transport.

The fact that the head drum is closer to the cassette is no coincidence.

Everything is closer to the cassette.

And some things are even inside of it.

That small hole up there is designed to accommodate the capstan.

When the cassette falls down into the loaded position, the capstan is already behind the tape.

And that curve in the plastic is there so that the pinch roller can squeeze the capstan

without rubbing against the cassette itself.

Such an elegant solution!

In this particular machine we find a rather small pinch roller, and an additional tape

guide occupies the curved space.

And of course, let’s not forget about the lightbulb on a stick!

If you’ve got much of any experience with a VHS cassette you’ll have undoubtedly noticed

that the tape leaders, that’s the bit of tape at each end that’s meant to be a little

stronger to protect it from breaking, are clear.

The cassette is designed with a light path between the center of this big hole and these

two smaller holes hiding under the cassette lid.

Light sensors that sit right next to these holes will see the light pass through the

cassette when the end of the tape has (been) (but he didn't say been) reached.

That’s pretty clever, if you ask me.

A newer machine like this will instead use a couple of infrared LEDs on a stick.

Still.

Same concept.

Beta, meanwhile, went much more old-school.

The tape leaders on a Beta cassette are not clear, but metallic.

Located near both ends of the tape transport are what basically amount to metal detectors,

and these sense the end of the tape.

Let the record state that Sony used the technology of the 8-track to signal the end of the tape

in Betamax.

While we’re talking about the differences in tape handling, I’d like to address a

claim made by some of the Betamax loyalists out there.

It was often claimed that the Beta transport was more gentle to the tape, as unlike in

a VHS machine where the tape has to make two 180 degree turns,

“there are no sharp curves in Beta”.

Excuse me, but what is this?

That looks darn near like a 180 to me.

And up here in a VHS machine, the tape makes two 90 degree turns, not a 180.

Sure, maybe you wanna call that a 180, but

let’s count the places where the tape touches something.

First, beta;

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

And now VHS;

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

Now.

Are each of the things the tape touches gonna put the same amount of wear on the tape?

No.

And does the number of things the tape touches change from VCR to VCR within the same format?

Yes.

But this claim seems so incredibly backwards to me that I felt I needed to bring it up.

Also of note is that on a VHS machine, the entire top half of the drum spins, whereas

on a Beta machine, only the heads spin and the drum itself remains motionless.

This was another thing brought up in favor of Beta,

since obviously that’s better for the tape.

But I think this is actually wrong.

It may be counterintuitive, but the spinning drum of a VHS machine can create an air curtain,

meaning that the tape actually just floats above it.

Now, obviously only the top half of the drum spins so the tape does rub against the motionless

bottom part during some of its travel, particularly at the end of the drum, but you can clearly

see on this Beta machine that, after years of tape dragging across the motionless drum,

its surface has actually been polished a little bit.

That can’t be good for the tape.

Regardless of the particulars, there is certainly a delicious irony to the fact that the Beta

transport works like this.

Beta cassettes are smaller, right?

And they contain less tape, right?

That’s the main reason Beta failed, as it just never had the recording time of VHS.

And no, it wasn’t pornography, that’s a myth.

You could get porn on Beta, Sony had no control over what content was being distributed so

stop saying “Sony wouldn’t allow porn” because that’s nonsense and easily disproved.

Anyway.

For a system so short on tape, you’d think that this

“let’s just yank out all the tape!” method would have been avoided.

Want to see exactly how much more tape the Beta machine

needs just to make it through the transport?

Great!

So do I!

Let’s just do a little snip snip and compare.

Just look at the difference!

The Beta machine needs

(obviously recorded later) TWELVE

more inches of tape!

That’s about

(again, recorded later) THIRTY

centimeters!

Keep in mind that this entire length here can never be used, so while the actual distance

from the first head to the last might not be all that different compared to VHS, this

whole return path can never be recorded onto at the start of a tape.

Now, since that’s obviously a tiny portion of the overall tape in the cassette,

does it really matter?

No!

Of course not!

None of this matters!

We’re talking about two dead formats here as if

their pros and cons matter in the slightest in 2019!

They don’t!

It’s over!

It’s done!

It’s history!

If you bought a Beta machine, feel free to keep being smug about it.

But you backed the wrong horse, oh well, life sucks sometimes.

Now, where’s my HD-DVD player?

♫ second-rate smooth jazz ♫

Hey there.

So, I just wanted to add here at the end that history is weird and there were indeed some

VHS machines that used a U-load system like Betamax.

If memory serves they were all made by Philips.

Whether there were any Beta machines that used an M-load, I’m not sure.

But I kinda doubt it, given how reluctant Sony would be to change things up, and given how

few third-party manufacturers there were making Beta machines compared to VHS.

In a similar vein, it’s worth nothing that not all VHS machines (or indeed Beta machines)

would put all the components in the same places.

Some VHS machines used this rather odd arrangement whereby the pinch roller would be lifted up

and out of the way so that the capstan could be placed in front of the cassette.

I have no idea why this arrangement was used as it seems like it offers no practical advantage

and also comes with increased mechanical complexity, but it serves as an example of the fact that

just because the standard of the format never changed, doesn’t mean those specifications

weren’t achieved in weird and wacky ways.

But this one is a way more subtle.

Is “a way more subtle curve”.

That’s how the line should have been written.

...they rightly knew that tape recording /time/...

Tape /recording/ time.

/Recording/ time.

/Recording/ time.

...that mattered at all because since… because since!

Because since!

I said because and since!

That’s because I’m not reading the line as I wrote it.

It YANK…

(awkward pause).

Oh.

No I needed to read that!

*silly noise*

A light bulb on a steck.

If...

ON A STECK

...the heads move and the drum remains the motionble eugh bleugh ble

Usually I'd put a joke or something here, but it's No Effort November and I can't be bothered.

Oooh, but is this a joke, then?

That's an interesting conundrum.

Not as interesting as, say, air travel though.

That's some interesting stuff.