Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 02:28:08 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: davids@webmaster.com (David Schwartz) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, dscheidt@enteract.com, jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org, erickw@taurus.oursc.k12.ar.us, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit" Message-ID: <199911180228.TAA25734@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <000001bf30b5$b82c5470$021d85d1@youwant.to> from "David Schwartz" at Nov 16, 99 08:39:22 pm
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> > You guys need to look into the relative merits of these two > > technologies before you argue about them. Beta is a vastly > > superior technology when compared to VHS, > > How is it superior? Picture quality and resolution. > Picture quality? Yes, and other factors, such as it being less likely to jam, given the tape path and load mechanism. Betamax (sic) machines that I used never "ate tapes". It's a relatively common occurance with VHS. > If picture quality is so all-important, why did SuperVHS fail? SuperVHS addressed an issue with chroma that simply did not matter in NTSC countries. In PAL countries, it was more of an issue, but since the data was modulated into an NTSC carrier between the television and the recorder in the US, and since the over-the-air and even cable broadcasts already had the chroma problems because of the NTSC standard, there was really no improvement in quality. Julian will be happy to tell you at length about PAL vs. NTSC, and why PAL countries call NTSC "Never Twice the Same Colour". > Actually, VHS is far superior thanks to the larger cassette > allowing longer recording times. Recording times are a matter of tape length, which is in turn a matter of tape thickness. In fact, VHS tapes can not be as thin as Betamax tapes, due to the poorer VHS loading mechanism. The reason Betamax recording times historically lagged behind those of VHS are a function of: 1) Variable head rates on VHS getting lower and lower over time, and those settings getting "standardized" into VCR's. 2) Betamax tape technology did not have the financial thrust behind it because of the initial lack of software making it a smaller overall machine market (much in the same way FreeBSD doesn't have FrameMaker available for it). To address your question from another posting, "why do people turn their tape speed to the slowest (sic) speed?", the answer is that they do so to get longer recording times, since the head rotation rate stays constant, and thus the scan stripes are written closer together on the slower moving tape as it sweeps past. NB: MacroVision(tm) copy protection works based on supressing the vertical blanking interval such that a tape-to-tape copy has annoying high-low-high-low brightness. This is based on an artifact of the flying VHS write head, and is the reason you can buy GenLock-like devices that fix the problem, as well as two deck spindle-synced VCRs. The reason the slower speed does not bother these people is directly attributable to how clean their source signal is; if you are recording broadcast television in the US, in which 50% of the population lives within 50 miles of a coast, and the other half lives in what is, in effect, very rural areas with few closely located, non-repeated television transmitters, then you won't really have very much less quality in your recording anyway. People with digital television (satellite or cable), or even analog cable generally get used to such high quality pictures (not ever seeing "sparklies" -- whiteout dots) that they do _not_ use such settings, because the resulting recording is unbearable to watch. > Both VHS and Beta exceed broadcast quality. They do not. Broadcast television recording has the same issues with vertical blanking interval synchronization and noise acting to suppress the effective vertical blank space that affect VHS VCR to VCR recording, without spindle sync. Even without an intentional supression of the vertical blanking as a means of "copy protection", the effect is pronounced enough for most broadcast television that one can tell the difference in the lower quality of the recordings. Even ignoring this, the rotating record head is away from the tape media for longer than the vertical blanking interval, and that means that you get a 1.5 reduction in frame rate. This reduction in frame rate is even more noticible because of horizontal retrace in PAL vs. NTSC. The result is that the 525 lines of vertical resolution are reduced to 200 for VHS, 400 for SuperVHS > And, in fact, in comparisons of the two formats, about as many > reviewers preferred Beta as preferred VHS. I can't argue this, because I don't know: 1) What reviews you were referencing 2) Whether your reviewers were average slack-jawed TV viewers, or discerning intellectuals > > and "VHS vs. Beta" is actually _the_ standard argument put > > forward during "Why The Best Technology Does Not Always Win" > discussions. > > Yes, and amusingly, the best standard did win, despite Sony's powerful > marketing and head start in the market. You have slyly changed this from "best technology" to "best standard"; one could easily argue from that point of view that VHS was a "better" standard from non-technological grounds, such as the fact that the purveyors of VHS were able to license movies for release on VHS, while at the same time prohibiting their release on BetaMax, via contract. This was technically an anticompetitive practice, such as Microsofts application division is guilty of by providing IE for HP/UX, but not for the obviously larger market segment, Linux. > > The market _did_ in fact lock us into an inferior standard. > > Bullshit. Plain and simple bullshit. This is really an urban > legend borne out of motivational speakers looking for examples. > There is no actual research to back it up, and in back the > research points the other way. See: http://www.v-i-t.com/CFM/cctv.cfm http://www.video-pro.co.uk/world.htm http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/5391/bt.html http://ww.urova.fi/home/pranta/usvidfaq.htm As for "urban legends", while I disagree that the quality is not discernable (perhaps "a recording of US broadcast TV in a poor reception area" will qualify as "a sensitive instrument" in your book?), the urban legends have been on you part, and we can start with the claim that Sony refused to license Betamax; see: http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/beta_vs_vhs.html BTW, the lack of betamax software has more to do with the chilling effect of the lawsuit by Universal and Disney against Sony. Sound familiar to any of you Linux and FreeBSD people? Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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