defending Beta (was Re: DIVX & Circut City)

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

Steve Reindl said:
> I wouldn't even compare it to BETA. Beta
> was and is a far better technology than VHS has yet to achieve ( ever looked
> really close at the cameras the news crews use?) DIVX is just the same old
> crap with a little scam thrown in! Sony just tried to be greedy by not
> licensing the technology along the lines of, yuck, Apple.

I used to work as a master control operator of a TV station, believe
it or not.  While I was there, we got rid of a lot of our old
equipment, and replaced it with shiny new Beta systems.

It really is great technology, but Sony wanted everyone to pay them
large sums of money to use it.  So Sony's competitors came out with a
vastly inferior system (VHS) and basically gave away the specs for it.
Guess what won?

You can compare it to the situation with PCs and "real" computers.
PCs were, and largely still are, junk when compared to just about any
other computer (Macs, any RISC box, etc.).  Because the IBM PC was
built with OEM'd parts and somebody managed to reverse-engineer the
BIOS, *anybody* could build a clone with no licensing costs.  (Oh, and
DOS being available from M$ instead of IBM handed M$ a nice little
monopoly, but that's another story entirely...)  So, guess what won?

None of this changes the fact that professionals are willing to pay
whatever it costs for "real" hardware, whether it is a tape machine or
a computer...  It's just a shame that "Super-VHS" (I seem to recall
there really was such a thing) never went anywhere...  We might all
have broadcast-quality video recorders at home by now.  :-)

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
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Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/
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