My memory is a little fuzzy but as I recall, Sony developed both the Beta
and VHS formats and held patents on both. They were not doing much to
promote the VHS format and Matsushita stole it and promoted the hell out of
it to the point where it captured the major market share. Sony sued and was
awarded a large settlement but Matsushita came out way ahead on the deal and
the Beta died. I have some good Beta tapes and no working player. I much
preferred the Beta format. /jmac
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Andrew Fildes
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 4:07 PM
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OM] Re: Kyocera Dumps Cameras
Standard industry practice? Are we bagging Olympus for producing a
dedicated bayonet instead of a universal mount? They even modified the
M42 mount so that it was unuseable elsewhere. OEM companies almost
always protect themselves in this way, don't they? (yes, I know that
there are exceptions) and then claim that it's so that people don't use
substandard peripherals, or accesssories, or parts, or inks. There is
an element of truth in this justification, as well as considerable
self-interest, as many people have managed to clog their inkjets with
cheap and nasty inks, for instance.
As a mere consumer, I've bought a number of Sony items and borrowed
some off friends and have usually been impressed by the quality. I'm
looking directly at one of their monitors now. It was my understanding
that the Beta tape system mentioned here was superior to VHS, smaller,
more robust and more reliable due to a less convoluted tape path. And
that it appeared almost simultaneously to VHS but that the latter
reached the 'tipping point' earlier and Beta was driven out by the
video hire industry. Isn't that why the ENG industry still uses Beta?
It's harsh to criticise a company for being innovative and failing,
surely, even though the consumer gets burned at times. Popularity is a
poor measure of success at times. If it was, we'd all be singing the
praises of MS instead of cursing the fact that far superior systems are
not the industry standards.
AndrewF
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