A BRIEF HISTORY OF VIDEO TAPE
AND IT'S RELATION TO THE VCR

Back in the dark ages of 1975 when Sony introduced the first successful consumer VCRs (first the LV-1901 console and shortly after the SL-7200) video tape was very different from what is available today. So much so that one can reason that it was the characteristics of the tape at the time that sealed the fate of the Beta format. When Sony engineers were given the task by Akio Morita* to produce a video machine that could record an hours worth of recording (in ) on a tape small enough to fit into your pocket, they looked at all of the various formats currently floating around. Engineers played around with a few different ideas (even VHS) and decided that a miniature version of a format they already had in production could be made to fill the bill. The three quarter inch U-matic format developed for the broadcast industry was downsized, physically and electronically altered and a new cassette was designed for it. (More on this in a moment.) It ended up being slightly bigger than a paperback book and really didn't fit that well in your pocket, but they basically felt they had their vision. In 1975 Sony sold over 100,000 of the new "Beta" VCRs. A very respectable quantity considering it was new, weighed a ton and cost more than many televisions of that time. Yes, they were on a roll, they were showing the world once again that they were the electronic leaders and the future looked good.

"The Great Time Machine" came out the next year and Beta's hope to be the dominate format in home video recording was soon to be vanquished. It really couldn't have ended up any other of way when you consider that ultimately all the public really cared about was the most recording time for the least money and what format their neighbors had. The things Sony was pushing, tape handling characteristics, picture quality and great special features didn't matter a flip to most consumers. Sony was mystified, everything they stood for didn't cut it this time. They were the symbol of excellence and now they had something superior and no matter what they did to try and save it, it was failing. They were very innovative, true to form for Sony, but VHS sales continued to rise and the Beta's market share dwindled to nothing. In retrospect Sony made lots of errors, from not being able to meet the demand for their video tapes early on, licensing problems, the fiasco (the only machine), insisting on using mini phone jacks for audio when the rest of the world used phono plugs, the confusing tape length numbering; the list goes on. It really stands as a testimonial to Sony's strength that they maintained their dignity and market image through all of it. A lesser company could have come out of it all as a broken down joke, but Sony didn't. I only wished they had continued on, recognizing that VHS was for the masses, and not treated Beta in the later years like the crazy aunt locked up in the basement.

I made the decision early on that Beta was better. Picture quality was paramount to me. I was mystified when I saw people looking at videos played back on VHS machines that looked like they were recorded through a screen door or in a fish tank. (Remember this was early in the game and things improved greatly since those days.) Oh yes, I had (have) a VHS machine so I could make dubs for my friends and many times I fought the urge to throw it in the trash. It was especially irritating trying to find a location on a tape and having to wait for the tape to wind in and wind out. Betas low friction tape path allowed for its tape to stay in the machine during rewind and fast forward, making it a snap to find a particular section. (Don't rewind your tapes in your machine, save wear and tear, buy a winder).

So how does all this misery lead back to the structure of video tape. Well read on, you've went this far. When Sony engineers looked at the various formats back in 1975 (Sanyo V-Cord, Quazar, Cartrivison, VHS and others) they felt they could do better. Those designs were too complicated, distorted the tape while playing, not suitable to the vision of the Sony brass and, more importantly, not invented by Sony. At this time they were manufacturing their own video tape and they knew that forcing it to deform around the video drum would cause wear and tear on both the tape and the machine. Their "U" type loading system used in the U-matic guided the tape around, down, back around and up so it could wrap around the video drum to maintain alignment rather than distorting it as VHS did. So they modified it to become Beta and now the tape would be handled oh so well from that small little shell. What they didn't foresee was that tape would get better, a lot better. Their Crystal ball and their position as a tape manufacturer made them focus on tape handling, longevity and quality. They didn't consider the masses and the pricing that much. As other media manufacturers got into the game of making video tape it continued to improve. It became more durable and the back coated it with graphite so it would be more slippery. Now it could almost slide through a VHS machine like Beta. (The downside to this is it also became a lot more messy.) The distortion and damage from wear issue became less and less of an issue. Sure the Beta format was technically superior, sure it handled the tape better and allowed for all kinds of neat little benefits like BetaSkipscan, indexing or not having to wind the tape out of the tape path for rewinding. But the buying public didn't care, Sony couldn't make them interested and they failed to cater to the faithful out there that did care. So down the spiral went all because of the initial focus on how to best handle the tape inside the machine. A lot is left out of the story. But it couldn't have turned out much differently. The Video recording phenomena was just too big and too fast for even Sony to control. I'm just glad they were in it, they produced some of the best examples of consumer video products to ever hit the world market because of it.

How did the L-1000 video cassette come about? I always wanted my Beta to be able to match the 2,4,6 hour recording of VHS because it seemed to be such a big deal way back when the battle lines were first being drawn. I didn't personally see why I couldn't be done. The L-830 tape stock was thin enough and if you redesigned the cassette a little it seemed possible to accommodate a little more tape volume. Sony, ever stuck to the criteria that their specs had to be just so for their cassette shell, wasn't going to do it. How I eventually ended up with it was I came across a manufacturer of tape that made a superior thin based tape and worked up a design for a shell dimension that would hold enough tape to allow for six hours of recording in . The tape is so good and the alterations made to the cassette so small that I doubt Sony is going to mind at this late date. All it took to do this was a ten thousand run of cassettes, a loader, the tape and initiative. The same shell design was used to make the L-830 Metal cassette and tape is available to produce a L-1000 Metal tape, should there be enough interest. Shown below is a diagram of the L-1000 thin base tape construction. One side note: the thinner the tape, the better it contacts the video heads and the better picture it can produce. Video tape has gotten a lot better.

*Actually this graphite back coating ended up being a big nemesis. It was dirty. In their effort to make VHS more like Beta (and save its skin) tape manufactures were asked to come up with a fix. Some way had to be rigged so that VHS could pull its tape around the tight angled path that plagued its design. Printing graphite on the back side of the tape was used to make tape slicker, and therefore able to slide easier through the convoluted VHS tape path. Prior to this coating VHS would destroy a tape during winding and the special functions like scanning, stepping and search were forbidden. Leaving it inside their path for these specialties was not an option. So for a while it looked like VHS was going to have to take a back seat to Betas unique features. It would only be good for simple recording. Tape manufacturers came to their rescue with the complicated graphite back coating method. With this new tape process, which all the tape manufacturers adopted, VHS could almost match Beta. It could leave the tape mostly in the path for scan and search. They were still too scared to leave it in during winding but the action was good enough to convince the public that VHS could be almost as good as Beta. But this coating created a new problem. Turns out sticking a lubricant such as graphite to the back of the tape was not that easy and not that secure. Oil and grease would stick to it because of what is called the "van der Waals" effect (or force). This is the weak electromagnetic attraction that most things have which makes them stick together. Its good for lubricants because it helps protect parts that slide over one another. But it doesn't help in keeping them in place when under pressure. For this chemists add modifiers like soaps, polymers, fluorocarbons and molybdenum. That does fine for most surfaces, where the oil or grease is isolated or captive. But to make a surface that is stable, slippery and stays put during constant shearing, such as when video tape is moving, is a big problem. Teflon is a good example of this stability problem. Under a microscopic its surface shows to be made up of a binder with tiny ball bearings trapped in it. Things don't stick to it because the bearings slide them off. This property also makes adhering Telfon to anything rather difficult. To make it useful for anything chemists had to come up with a way to restructure the binding barrier layer so it would stick to metal and stay put. Graphite (a special round form of carbon) has a problem similar to Teflon. It is tiny ball bearings in a powdered form that doesn't want to stick to anything. To adhere it to polyester film (tape) would require special surface preparation and a hard binder that would trap the ball bearings and hold them in place. This composite mixture is what is printed on the back side of commercial video tape. As with anything the end result is not perfect. The mixture comes off over time, as does the oxide recording surface itself. It picks up dust and dirt from static electricity. Remember van deer Walls? This gooey stuff then becomes another barrier between your tape providing perfect video. And it piles up everywhere, especially on the rubber pinch roller. Over time it starts to cause the tape to track poorly and to wander. The recordings begin to degrade and eventually the tape gets damaged. The tape manufactures had an answer to this? Regular service or replace the VCR. It was already well known that any device that uses motors and tape requires periodic service, so this became the new mantra. To get the most out of your VHS (and Beta) machine you had to have it serviced regularly. Before the addition of graphite it wasn't so critical but now it has become mandatory. So the responsibility was passed on to the consumer. The VCR makers were off the hook and VHS kept humming along. This isn't something they bragged about. So as you might suspect regular service almost never got done and the machines continued to mess up. Replacing them after a few years now was the norm as VHS became a commodity. Something that didn't upset the tape and recorder manufacturers even a little.

To learn more about the Beta cassette click here.
To learn more about the early cassette designs other than Beta click here.



*reference: "Made in Japan, the story of Sony"