[balabaster]

If I recall rightly, this is why VHS beat out the higher quality Betamax back in the day of video tapes - it was cheaper to produce using VHS so everything was on VHS. Because everything was on VHS, that was what people bought and the higher quality Betamax lost enough market to survive.

It's a shame that the higher quality product isn't always what wins and kind of says something about our Walmart approach to life.

[q-big]

A central limitation of Betamax that is rarely mentioned is that the tapes were too short to fit very long movies on them; see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Videotape_format_...

"While VHS machines' lower retail price was eventually a major factor, the principal battleground proved to be recording time. The original Sony Betamax video recorder for the NTSC television system could record for only 60 minutes, identical to the previous U-matic format, which had been sufficient for use in television studios. JVC's VHS could manage 120 minutes, followed by RCA's entrance into the market with a 240-minute recorder using VHS. These challenges sparked a mini-war to see who could achieve the longest recording time."

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Betamax&oldid=107...

[philistine]

We've all collectively fallen for Sony's marketing for Betamax. It was not clearly higher quality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oJs8-I9WtA

[kuschku]

Considering beta 2 matches VHS's LP, the quality advantages of Betamax may have simply been that beta 1 just used more tape per minute of recording time.

[cupofpython]

popularity is expensive. people want quality, and generally arent happy to sacrifice it. but the diminishing returns hits way harder and faster for the common person than a hobbyist typically wants to accept.

popularity is also skewed young. income is skewed old. VHS was a much better fit as a lowest common denominator. If a product is trying to be a popular medium, cheap is necessary.

That said, once the medium is established - people will still happily pay a lot for a high quality product within the medium. iPhone popularity is a good example of this. People bought expensive VHS players with bells and whistles too.