If you’re old enough, you may remember the old Betamax vs VHS war that took place back in the 80s. During this brief period of competition, consumers had the choice of either Sony’s Betamax, or their rival, the VHS tapes produced by JVC. Due to many economical and marketing factors, the Betamax format was swiftly overcome by the rising popularity and simplicity of the VHS tape. Many frustrated consumers lost entire video collections due to the fact that it was becoming harder and harder to find a working Betamax machine as time went on.
Here’s a couple of sample Betamax ads that were going around the at time of the format war, to give you a feel of the sort of marketing going on.
Nowadays, many people aren’t even aware that their Betamax tapes are still watchable! Most Betamax tapes that have survived this long, are in fact still playable as long as they were stored in relatively ideal conditions. As long as the tape plays in one of our Betamax decks, then we’re able to transfer the tape to DVD or other digital format. Even if it doesn’t play, we still have the ability to repair Betamax tapes, or try everything in our power to extract video from that tape!
Today, with the help of computers, we’re now able to create digtal copies of all of your old Betamax tapes. By using our Betamax to DVD or Betamax to Hard Drive transfer services, we’re one of the few companies who can provide high quality DVD movies of all your old Beta tapes. We can even convert Betamax to AVI files or any other type of video format. Just image seeing your 30 year old tapes appearing on Youtube! Come on in and relive the memories with our Betamax to DVD Irvine, and Betamax to DVD San Diego locations!
I have 130 hours of professional television we produced in what was called Super Betamax at the time. Do you have the ability to convert this to either AVI or mp3 or video I can use for a new production evenionment including online? What are the costs involved ?
David culver
Hello David,
We can handle most Betamax and Betacam formats. Simply give us a call or visit or fill out an order form and send your tapes to us for transfer.