| In the late 70s and early 80s there was a consumer war, fought between two different VCR formats. In one corner was the little guy known as Betamax, and in the other the big bad VHS. Now you can argue all you want about how Betamax was better quality than VHS. Sure in the beginning it was, but as the technology race for longer playing times on single tapes kicked in, the quality difference was arbitrary. There was a back-and-forth on the quality, but to tell the truth most consumers really didn't care that much. What people cared about most was the cost, and one that VHS was cheaper. Cheaper to mass produce, cheaper to sell, and therefore cheaper to buy. |
Sony who produced Betamax were a bit precious about their format, whereas JVC who developed VHS were happy to licence it's reproduction pretty much to anyone interested. Plus Sony wouldn't licence their technology to the porn industry, whereas the technology of VHS was free loose and readily available to pornographers. And it came out at a time when porn was becoming a big market for home consumers.
Now there are those up-tight types that try to deny that the porn industry killed Betamax, and simply quote the fact that VHS as a format and technology was cheaper to mass produce, and with JVC's willingness to allow other manufacturers to exploit their technology, it was a simple case of commerce that killed Betamax. But that said, and knowing the massive market that pornography has among adult consumers (yes you're all a bunch of perverts), the fact that pedallers of porn preferred to release their skin flicks on VHS over Betamax has to have had a impact. Think about it. When I was a horny adolescent eyeing the top shelves of the local video store, there were racks of VHS "blue movies" up there, I hardly saw any in the tiny little Betamax section of the store that the losers hung-out in.
Weird Retro Fact: Since the earliest days of cinema, pornography has driven the film industry and its technology. Read The Naked Screen: Sex & Nudity In Cinema (Part 1) to see how from the very inception of cinema, porn was a salacious bedfellow of the movie industry.
Now there are those up-tight types that try to deny that the porn industry killed Betamax, and simply quote the fact that VHS as a format and technology was cheaper to mass produce, and with JVC's willingness to allow other manufacturers to exploit their technology, it was a simple case of commerce that killed Betamax. But that said, and knowing the massive market that pornography has among adult consumers (yes you're all a bunch of perverts), the fact that pedallers of porn preferred to release their skin flicks on VHS over Betamax has to have had a impact. Think about it. When I was a horny adolescent eyeing the top shelves of the local video store, there were racks of VHS "blue movies" up there, I hardly saw any in the tiny little Betamax section of the store that the losers hung-out in.
Weird Retro Fact: Since the earliest days of cinema, pornography has driven the film industry and its technology. Read The Naked Screen: Sex & Nudity In Cinema (Part 1) to see how from the very inception of cinema, porn was a salacious bedfellow of the movie industry.
