Professional broadcasting was always a natural for Sony. Their first reel-to-reel video units were made to be portable and were use primarily by institutions, studios and television stations. This general acceptance gave Sony an inroad into the news media and with the introduction of the U-matic, the first cartridge recorder, recording was made easier, simpler and quicker. So naturally when the friendlier, lighter and smaller Beta format was introduced the professional recording industry embraced it. There was never any real contest. The very things that many consumers loved about Beta proved to be the deciding factor for the broadcast media. If you are going to edit your programming you had to have the simplicity of Beta. You couldn't stand to have the tape threading in and out all the time like VHS was forced to do. You had to be able to find the recorded segments needed quickly and easily, VHS never had a chance. Beta was destined to dominated the professional recording industry. What you see in the brochure cover illustrated in the photo above is the first professional Beta, the SLO-260. You think the first consumer Beta was expensive, the pro Betas were out of site. It was nothing to see $2000 to 3000 for the babies. Why? Because the market was smaller and the technical standards needed to be so exacting. For example the consumer Beta units capacitors might have been rated at a tolerance of 20%, which is typical. Capacitors of this tolerance are cheaper to make, relatively speaking than ones rated 10% or less, which are typically found in the pro units. The price difference, when multiplied times the number of caps in a Beta make a sizable difference in cost. Since they were being sold to work in a professional environment where the tolerances were tighter meant that these pro Beta also had more electronics and offered controls necessary for the technical environment. You paid dearly for them but you got them for broadcast editing. Pro Betas also benefited because there usually were no consumer extras like a tuner, timer or RF unit. The absence of these circuits allowed for more dedication to the ones remaining. Extra line stability was engineered in. Accurate color filtering was enhanced. External test points and synchronization was provided. These are the things that justified the added cost of these pro Beta units. Click on the photo and here we see the first generation of pro Betas. You see a SLO-340 portable with a high end camera for news gathering and two studio units. All used BI since recording quality, rather than recording time, was their prime directive. Click on the photo and you will see that Sony went on to make a wide assortment of models to fill the needs of schools, studios, car dealerships, business institutions, broadcasters and government. Click again and here are two units made specifically for the demanding job of commercial tape duplication. Many of these were set up in racks or arrays of fifty or more. Click again and we see two units, the GCS-50 and GCS-1, that were aimed primarily at archiving and editing. Special consoles (not shown) were manufactured that allowed scenes to be programmed and assembled from multiple tape sources. Click again and here we see that last of the pro units, the ED Beta sports package. One thing you've noticed is that there weren't as many models of the pro units as there were for the consumer betas. This was because their designs covered a narrower range of specialties and they were aimed at a more demanding buyer. Also professional the Beta format wasn't without a competitor. Sony had other formats that were competing for those professional dollars. There was still U-matic. And there was also a variable of Beta called Betacam and BetacamSP. They were even more exacting and their tape ran at a much high speed, and they used a different recording scheme. They did use the exact same sized Beta cassette. BetacamSP would eventually overtake the pro market and eventually become the studio standard and almost all Sony units (other manufacturers had no choice but to license Betacam and make units of their own). Betacam is still used today you can still see it wherever news is being made. But they too are on the decline now that digital is making inroads into the professional market. The one thing you can't stop is change. To see more promotional pieces and technical articles click here. |