Beta Compatibility

SONY BETAMAX COMPATIBILITY

Many people email me and ask which machine they should purchase. They want help deciding which model is best for playing their collection of Beta tapes. It's a good question because over the years the format improved a good amount. But basically, there are only three main things you need to know. Speed, sound and picture, the cassette never changed. You can put any consumer Beta cassette into any Beta format machine and it will play. The picture results will vary depending on the model used or the tape speed, but the cassette will go in. That also means that the exterior of those cassettes will not give you any clues about how it was recorded. Their labels usually have titles printed on them but seldom do you see the tape speed or the recording method identified. The cassette might not have changed but the way they could be recorded did. During Betas 15 year run it kept improving to stay ahead of the competition. The video got better and so did the sound (as did the tape available). Beta recording excelled and this discussion is going to cover those upgrades. Knowing the right speed might be all you need to know but there were some pretty amazing things that happened over those years. To aid in deciding which Beta is the right choice I have composed the commentary that follows. I'll cover the speed question first. Now on to a small refresher course in Betamax.

The very first Beta recorders had only one tape speed. (Check out the chart shown above.) That speed would later be named Bx1 and picture they recorded would become known as the "standard" beta picture. Those terms would separate them from later speed changes and picture improvements. The audio was recorded in monaural. If your tapes were recorded using one of these early Bx1 machines almost any Sony Betamax will play them. The Bx1 speed was soon abandoned in favor of a new slower speed, called Bx2, which doubled the recording time. For the new speed came a new form of notation. The greek letter for Beta was combined with roman numerals for the speeds. Bx2 became

and Bx1 was now

. (Note: all pre-recorded movies and programs were recorded using

.) An even slower speed,

came along about a year later. The new

speed was half that of

. So

was half the speed of

and

was half that of

. But this was where the war for slower speeds and longer recording times ended. There was no Beta four. Why? Because the tape would be running so slow that picture stability would be almost unobtainable and the audio would be so unresponsive it would be just plain dull. Also the spinning video heads would be have to be so tiny that they would wear away at a frighteningly fast rate*. The tape length numbering also was changed during this time. The first tapes were called K-30 and K-60 which indicated thirty minutes and sixty minutes recording time when using the original

speed. The new slower speeds messed this up so the designations were changed to L-250 and L-500 respectively, which stood roughly for the number of feet of tape inside the cassette. So

was the slow plateau and the recording maximums for the various tape lengths were: L-250 one and a half hours and L-500 at three hours. New lengths were added to these, a L-750 at four and a half hours and five hours maximum for the L-830. Beta lost the maximum recording time war with VHS because of its large ugly cassette but Sony still had a number of clever tricks left up their sleeve. One was Betahi-fi stereo. A revolution in audio that was made possible because of the Beta formats bigger video drum. It houses the spinning video heads that travel across the tape at an angle so many times per second. These are used to record and play the magnetic tracks of video on the tape. It is within this magnetic footprint that Sony design engineers were able to perform a clever trick. They partitioned off a small area within the video signal to insert four FM audio tracks. Two for left and two for right. The pairs are converted to FM carrier waves so they can added into the video process for magnetic recording. In playback they are converted back into audio signals. The picture quality and performance was not affected in any way. Recording audio using the video heads provided a very long area for the audio. This meant less opportunity for the tape to have any impact on the recording quality and more signal to be recorded. Betahi-fi resulted in the stereo going in and the playback coming out being were virtually identical. No loss, no wow, no flutter and no distortion. Frequency range and sound quality was limited only by the equipment being used. The tape type and even the running speed didn't really matter. All the quality was coming from the high speed of the video heads. This was a giant move up in stereo sound and rivaled almost any device available, even CDs. The original, stationary monaural track was still recorded so everything remained backward compatible. Now the sound was as incredible as the picture, which was also going to get an upgrade very soon. VHS countered Betahi-fi with an improvised system called imbedded recording. The results never matched Betahi-fi. It was accomplished by recording an audio track first using two additional spinning audio heads then the video signal was recorded over it. These audio heads had recording gaps angled differently from the video heads. This way one set of heads couldn't read the other. It worked okay but it also required a more complicated video drum for all those heads. If you added in extra heads for special effects a high end VHS hi-fi unit could have as many as eight or nine heads spinning around in their drum. Also repeated playbacks caused the imbedded hi-fi audio tracks on the tape to disappear from the strikes of all those heads. This is why all VHS hi-fi machines also record stereo on the stationary head (called the linear head). This was done so it could take over when the hi-fi audio tracks on the tape became unreadable. The only way to really tell if you were still getting true VHS hi-fi was to listen to the quality of the playback. When you started to hear low fidelity sound the linear tracks were playing and not the hi-fi tracks buried under the video. VHS couldn't put the audio into video because their smaller drum made too tiny a footprint. (For more on Betahi-fi click here.) Betahi-fi was unmatched but there was still more to come, next came a better picture. It was pretty obvious by this time that Beta had lost the recording time war to VHS. So Sony decided to sell Beta quality to the remaining fans that wanted the best. Now came an even better picture to go along with the fantastic audio. Called SuperBeta it improved how the video signal was processed. All VCRs convert picture information into magnetic pulses that can be recorded and played back. The incoming picture is divided so separate element can be handled by different circuits dedicated to certain tasks. For SuperBeta Sony focused on the two main parts of the signal that are responsible for video quality. One controls the black and white picture and one inserts the color. The first one, named luminance, is where all the detail and sharpness is stored. The second one carries all the information to modify the luminance and turn on the color (this is called chrominance). To create SuperBeta Sony expanded and moved the luminance signal up to a higher frequency. The higher, longer and stronger recording of the luminance resulted in more picture detail, resulting in higher picture fidelity. This upping of the picture quality was also aided by better video tape, which had improved over the years. The color was also enhanced by using new and more efficient comb filters. Their job is to separate the chrominance and luminance so they can be processed individually inside the VCR. Better separation meant less color bleed, less picture noise and sharper images. Even better yet this improved picture could be had with Betahi-fi stereo. SuperBetahi-fi was now the best there was. (For more on SuperBeta click here.) There was one tiny problem created by all this showmanship. If you played these Superbeta or SuperBetahi-fi tapes back in a standard Beta machine (that wasn't designed to play the better picture) it was a little too strong and sometimes it would be over modulated. This meant you would see white and black bursts (or sparkles) in the areas where the edges of the picture changes from dark to light. This anomaly could be slightly annoying to downright irritating. The amount of this picture noise varied from one standard Beta model to the next. Some handled it better than others. To counter this Sony recommended that if you planned to play your tapes back on a standard Beta machine (non-SuperBeta) you should switch off the SuperBeta circuit to avoid this problem. And they even provided a switch on all SuperBeta units just for that purpose. This was all explained in the owner's manuals. To get the most out of any Beta you do need to read the owner's manual.

and

now came in four varieties: standard Beta, Betahi-fi, SuperBeta and SuperBetahi-fi. Standard

and

monaural tapes can be played on any machine except the dedicated

machines (as shown above). This also applies to tapes recorded on standard Betahi-fi units, although you don't get the advantage of stereo. Which is a real loss because Betahi-fi stereo is awesome. Check out the other speeds and configurations in the chart above. Use it as a reference for each improvement in picture and sound so you can play back your tapes on a machine that will reproduce them in the best possible manner. It all depends on which system of improvements you recorded them in. Just step through the chart above and based on your recordings, find your candidate. If you don't know how the tapes were recorded then it would be prudent to use a unit that covers all or most of the options and speeds.

Before closing I want to mention two other design platforms, Extended Definition Beta and the Betamovie camcorder units. ED Beta was the final picture improvement. It boosted the luminance even further, up to the point where a new metal formula tape was required. ED Beta was able to duplicate the broadcast standard of the day with no picture loss or distortion. It was incredible and no consumer VCR ever compared to it. It was also completely backward compatible to all the other Beta systems but its ED Beta recordings could only be played on an ED Beta machines. To keep this advanced recording system separate Sony moved the record protection hole in the bottom of the ED Beta cassette to opposite side. The normal record protection hole was left open. If you tried to record an ED Beta tape using a standard Beta machine it will see it as a protected cassette and will either automatically eject it, or do nothing (and wait patiently for you to figure out what you did wrong). You can cover the hole on an ED Beta cassette and fool the other machines into recording them. The metal tapes record excellently, but you don't get the advantage of the better picture quality that ED Beta offers. Playing an ED Beta tape in a regular Beta machine results in what looks like a line drawing. This is because the video signal is boosted so high it is over driving the video circuits. (For more on Extended Definition Beta here.) Sony also made small portable hand held Betamovie camcorder units, all of them. Even the ones sold by other brand names. These recorded only in the

speed in standard or SuperBeta, depending on the model. There was one exception, the Betamovie model BMC-1000 recorded only the

speed but gave you a choice between standard

and

Super Hi-Band (6.0 mHz). For more on Betamovie click here.

Note: The chart covers playback of NTSC (USA and Canadian) models only. Some machines offered more than one speed or several picture enhancements but did not record them all. An example of this is the SL-3000 which plays both

and

speeds but only records

.

*This head wear issue was later greatly improved with the introduction of new materials and head designs.

If you would like a list of the individual Beta VCRs along with their year, picture system and record/playback specifications click here.