[kjs3]

Well, sure. My point is, as a consumer product, betamax did not deliver on its promise to the consumer that bought it. It's really not important at which stage of content production and distribution the promises got lost (and I think you might be underappreciating 'most people's TV set was pretty meh', especially after the components had some life on them). It was sold to my amateur audiophile dad (yes, we had a reel-to-reel) as 'world changing video', and it wasn't, certainly not at the price point. I think the obvious superiority at the content production phase is testified to by the crazy longevity of BM in that niche, but since we couldn't really see that in our house, we (and almost everyone) bought the VHS.