Sony has announced that it is all set to stop producing its Betamax tapes. The company said that it will stop producing the tapes in March 2016 and thus will stop selling the 2L-500MHGB, EL-500B, 2L-750MHGB and the L-25CLP cleaning tape.
The Betamax was considered as superior to the recording format over the VHS due to its resolution. At the moment there are many formats, out of which many are looking forward to become the industry standard. Today there are better formats in place of the VHS like DVDs, which have been replaced on a large scale by the online streaming technology.
Sharp and Mitsubishi continued the trend with JVC and launched a VHS player in the year 1976. Due to this the Japanese government had to abandon its video format plans and the eventual war. A while later the VHS arrived with longer record times after which the interest of the public shifted away from Betamax. But gradually Betamax took over the a quarter of the market and the same thing happened during the 80s during the infancy of home video.
In the year 1984 the popularity of Betamax peaked when it shipped a few 50 million cassettes. It was only in the mid 2000s the affordable home DVD video recorders arrived and pushed away the VCRs.
Photo Credits: NBC
