The first Betamaxes where basically all mechanical in function with piano-key type levers for most of the operations. For these early Betas you had to actually get up and push or pull a lever to pause out a commercial. But that quickly changed when solenoids began to be incorporated into the later designs. Now you could control many of the functions remotely without ever leaving your easy chair, and the couch potato was born. Every VCR had a remote and the remote control almost everything. Near the end of the Beta era, Sony commissioned some low end Betas that didn't feature a remote or even have a pause function. This was done to lower the price and compete with the cheap VHS machines flooding the market. These stripped down Betas are quite rare today because most were discarded after a couple of years use. |