Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

[tutusue]

My daughter wants to convert some old, family betamax tapes to DVD. She found an inexpensive way to do that. My untechie tutu questions are...If she converts to HD DVDs, will they play in a standard DVD player, albeit not with HD quality? Will they record to standard DVDs? TIA...

[tutusue]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

My daughter wants to convert some old, family betamax tapes to DVD. She found an inexpensive way to do that. My untechie tutu questions are...If she converts to HD DVDs, will they play in a standard DVD player, albeit not with HD quality? Will they record to standard DVDs? TIA...

Hmmm...might this converter be an April Fools joke or am I reading it wrong?

[Frankie's Market]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

Hmmm...might this converter be an April Fools joke or am I reading it wrong?

Sue, play the video on that Think Geek page and see what it says at the end.

As if the cheap price wasn't already a dead giveaway, you have to figure that it would be a longshot for any electronics company to mass-produce a component that caters to two formats that failed in the consumer market.

Even if such a device existed,.... no, you can't play HD-DVD discs on a DVD player.

[tutusue]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

Thx, FM. I keep encouraging my (middle age!) daughter to research via the web so I didn't pay much attention to the first URL as I trusted she had already done her research. Still, I'm a mom so I decided to search for reviews because of the price. It just didn't make sense. Sure 'nuff, she hadn't done her research! I really appreciate the HD DVD info.

[TuNnL]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

My daughter wants to convert some old, family betamax tapes to DVD.

Despite the April Fool’s joke, there is a bonafide way to convert those tapes that is thankfully, inexpensive. It’s called a video conversion card. In simplest terms, it’s a go-between your Betamax player and your computer, using the player’s RCA output and your computer’s inputs. Once you have the video saved on your computer, simply burn in to DVD using your computer’s DVD burner (assuming you have one — most computers built in the last 6-7 years do). I used this device to easily convert my mother’s “Jane Fonda Workout Video” from Betamax to DVD in just over an hour.

[tutusue]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

Thx, TuNnL. Unfortunately we don't have a betamax player available which is why this April Fools gag caught my daughter's eye. She's found a company that will convert for $8.99/tape. My guess is that price is for SP and not EP. Or did betamax even have EP?! I'll let my daughter figure it out!

ETA: Aha!

For consumers, the most immediately obvious difference between the two formats was the recording length. Standard Betamax tapes lasted 60 minutes — not long enough to record a movie. Conversely, the 3-hour VHS tapes were perfect for recording television programmes and movies. Sony did adapt and offer various solutions for longer recording, but it was too late. The issue of recording time is often cited as the most defining factor in the war.

[Frankie's Market]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

Thx, TuNnL. Unfortunately we don't have a betamax player available which is why this April Fools gag caught my daughter's eye.

I figured that the lack of a working Beta player was the roadblock you were facing, as it would be for most people in trying to get their old Beta tapes transferred to a digital format.

She's found a company that will convert for $8.99/tape.

If they do a good job on the transfer, that's a fair price to pay.

My guess is that price is for SP and not EP. Or did betamax even have EP?!

The most widely sold blank Beta tapes were the L-750 cassettes, which offered 90 minutes for Beta I speed, 180 minutes for Beta II, and 270 minutes for Beta III.

[tutusue]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

[...]
If they do a good job on the transfer, that's a fair price to pay.

Not only do we not know what several tapes contain, we don't know the condition or the quality! None of us are willing to toss the tapes without finding out just in case one contains a little jewel!

The most widely sold blank Beta tapes were the L-750 cassettes, which offered 90 minutes for Beta I speed, 180 minutes for Beta II, and 270 minutes for Beta III.

Aha, I thought I remembered various speeds then the quote I posted above caused me to change my mind! I think I also remember both beta and vhs tapes originally costing in the $20 to $25 range...each!

[Kaonohi]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

I have a VHS-DVD converter I bought years ago to transfer my Blade Runner tapes (3different versions!) to DVD - but I didn't get to it before the so-called "final cut" came out, which included all versions from everywhere, every time.

I never even opened the box, it cost me $300, I will take $100 if you get to me before my yard sale this Sat., 9-13, I think, or get here before someone else grabs it.

47-649 Ahuimanu Road, Kaneohe. 239-6990 if an HT person wants to reserve it.

[salmoned]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

Not to discourage anyone, but VHS to DVD = mighty poor quality recordings, image-wise.

I'ma tossing all my VHS tapes - if I like the show, I'll buy it in digital format. Thankfully, I have no home-movie tapes.

[Kalihiboy]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

If you can believe it, I have more beta tapes than VHS or DVD probably combined. It is in the thousands, maybe 2500 or more I'm guessing dating back to 1976 when the tapes ran one hour and were called K60 tapes.

I LOVE the beta format, which was far superior than VHS, but lost the popularity war obviously. I think I have the 2003 World Series on beta! I did not tape it on beta, someone else did, but just goes to prove people were using the format and it hasn't completely died yet. LONGS and SHIROKIYA sold blank beta tapes until I'm guessing 2007...or whenever SHIROKIYA closed their electronics department. It seemed LONGS stopped carrying blank beta tapes around that time too.

[TuNnL]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

I LOVE the beta format, which was far superior than VHS, but lost the popularity war obviously. I think I have the 2003 World Series on beta! I did not tape it on beta, someone else did, but just goes to prove people were using the format and it hasn't completely died yet.

Oh, c’mon Aj. You and I both know it wasn’t popularity but price that killed Beta. VHS was and continues to be awful, but it’s CHEAP. (Well, back then. These days DVD is the cheapest!) Besides, you being an industry man, you know the fact that BetaCam was being snapped up like crazy by the broadcast peeps nationwide encouraged Sony and others to keep BetaMax around — at least for the Japanese.

[Frankie's Market]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

Oh, c’mon Aj. You and I both know it wasn’t popularity but price that killed Beta.

AJ can speak for himself, but when he talks about "popularity," I believe he's referring to the number of machines of each format that consumers purchased. As far as the overall US national market was concerned, VHS players outsold their Beta counterparts. Thus, it was more "popular" and won the format war. That concept is simple.

As to the reason why VHS outsold Beta,.... that is where some debate takes place and people have varying theories.

VHS was and continues to be awful, but it’s CHEAP.

VHS hardware was cheaper than Beta? You're generalizing here.

By the early 1980s, Sony wasn't the only company manufacturing Betamaxes. There were also Sanyo and Toshiba-branded Beta players. In particular, Sanyo's players targeted the down-market and retailed at prices comparable to entry-level VHS players. In fact, they were years when Sanyo outsold Sony when it came to Beta machines.

As to why more American consumers chose VHS over Beta prior to the mid-1980s, my friend (who worked as a salesperson at Shirokiya's electronics dept. and later became a manager over at Samsung Plaza) always gives people a quick answer to that. Blank-tape recording length. A salesperson could talk all day espousing the virtues of Beta's advantages when it came to image stability, tape-loading mechanisms, etc. But as soon as the customer found out that a VHS T-120 could record up to 6 hours in SLP mode while the longest Beta tape (the L-830) could only go up to 5 hours in Beta III mode, they flocked over to the VHS shelves. IOW, people chose quantity over quality, more than anything else. (You might have a different theory on the matter, Tunnl. But I'll take the word of someone who actually had to sell the merchandise for a living.)

This early sales advantage and market penetration gave the VHS format a leg-up over Beta when it came to pre-recorded movie sales. When the Hollywood studios saw their VHS inventories vastly outselling their Beta stock, one-by-one, the studios abandoned Beta. So by the late-1980s, the reason why consumers were buying VHS over Beta was because fewer and fewer new movies were available to buy/rent on Beta. (Remember the Married With Children episode where Peg could only find "Oh Heavenly Dog" to bring home from the store because the Bundys had a Betamax?)

Besides, you being an industry man, you know the fact that BetaCam was being snapped up like crazy by the broadcast peeps nationwide encouraged Sony and others to keep BetaMax around

I'm skeptical of that idea. Other than the physical tape mechanism/outer shell looking alike, the focus and features of these two recording formats were quite distinct from each other. The Betacam system was developed strictly to meet the needs and requirements of broadcasters/professionals, while Betamax was primarily for consumer/home use. That the broadcast industry, by-and-large, embraced Betacam meant diddly-squat in the consumer format wars. Marketing to the pros and the general consumers are two very seperate things when it comes to electronics.

[Leo Lakio]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

Plus, when Sony offered their first portable digital audio recorder (the F1), they designed it to be compatible with Beta tapes. So when we started doing concert recordings digitally, we got a lot of stuff on Beta. Later, when we transferred the material to DAT (don't get me started on THAT disaster area!), we found only one place in town where we could rent Beta machines --- an adult-video store; they had several machines in stock!

[Kalihiboy]

Re: Betamax to HD-DVD Converter

Blank beta tape prices aside I still remember buying blank VHS tapes for $16 a piece back in the late 1980s. When I think how much I spent on these things it is mind boggling. I don't know if this is true or not, but I have heard that the major reason formats switch from betamax to vhs to dvd to blue ray, etc. has something to do with the buyer demands of the porn industry. They far outsell Disney in terms of volume sales of "movies", so if this is true I most certainly believe it.