I Want the Kind of Tapes that Hold Porn

On TV tonight was the story about Sony vs. JVC. It was "Modern Marvels," and this episode was about the technology of the 1980s. They had Steve Wozniak, who put 10 million bucks into the US festival, which was a rock show with a sideshow of geeky stuff to gawk at.

I have fond memories of the days when only one person we knew, named Art, had a betamax machine. He used to hold parties at his cramped Turners Falls apartment where we'd all go watch tapes of Saturday Night live, in 1980, on his big betamax that sat like an exotic beast in his living room. Many of us worked at the Valley Advocate in those days, and we all worked on the weekends, so Tuesday was Saturday night back then.

According to the TV show, One factor in the ultimate victory of the VHS tape format over betamax was that VHS tapes could hold 2 hours, and betamax tapes were larger, with better quality, but thus provided shorter time, only 50 minutes on early models. So you couldn't put a whole movie on the damn thing.

Another factor in beta's demise was porn. In more and more stores, there were fewer movies on beta, and thus, the porn all came on VHS tapes. That tipped the scales and pushed beta into the realm of professionals who still use betamax tapes today.