new to blu-ray, work with my tv?

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JimKiler

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2002
3,559
205
106
Off topic, but here we go again... The problem with beta was the 60 minute maximum recording time (initially). They refused to budge, and killed their own market in North America. Personally, I felt the overall superior format won in VHS vs beta war, even if over 60 mins beta had the edge for video quality. (Can you tell? Our household got VHS, not beta.)

I was too young to answer this and had lots of VHS tapes where i used them to record 6 hours instead of the standard 2 hours. Did people care about the quality of video back then?
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
1,396
126
We did, but given the tapes weren't exactly uber-cheap, for some things, 4 hours or even 6 (later) was fine.

Think of it this way. For Blu-ray discs we'd expect $30 purchased discs would be near frame perfect, but for own recordings of TV shows for the week, we'd be fine with a lot less. Compare HD PVR vs. Blu-ray. This was true in the DVD recorder age too. People often recorded say 4 hours of TV video to watch and then eventually erase, but the same people would complain about minor imperfections in their $25 movie DVDs.

I think Sony's failure here was due to the fact they were coming from broadcast. Quality was very important, but consumers don't have the same requirements as broadcast engineers.