I agree with the comment regarding record time being the major issue from the first day of video recorder marketing.

In 1979 RCA sold a $1200 VHS recorder that was the first high volume recorder. There was no Beta units in the US market for many months. 

The RCA unit could record football games and movies.

Beta was more expensive, late and offered a better picture but could not overcome the the limitations regarding sports and movie recording. 

The mass produced content for these machines such as porn and pre-recorded movies may have been a factor eventually, but these would have much later.

Well, I don't think (even if the urban legends about the last format battles are true) the pornography industry will have much effect on the success of either standard this time around. The advent of cheap On Demand and, er, 'free Internet services' means people no longer have to pay to get high-quality pornography.

In short, video games have replaced porn as the flagship product for this generation's success.

Mmm, video game porn.

Who needs HiDef DVD if there`s youpr0n?

I've seen it pointed out that the industry then was tiny compared to nowadays and that most cassette copies were bootlegs.


"IT WAS PORN that largely sent Betamax packing if urban myth holds any water at all."

It doesn't. Porn was about the _only_ thing that kept Betamax going, because Betamax could pause, which VHS couldn't. And porn movies were about 1 hour long, which was all you could fit into the early Betamax tapes. 

That was exactly what killed them: the tapes weren't big enough to hold a full feature-length movie (VHS tapes were). That meant you couldn't program your VCR to record a movie and go out, because someone would have to be there to swap the tape. It also meant video rental clubs had to have twice as many tapes for the same number of films. THAT is what killed Betamax. By the time 120 and 180 minute Betamax tapes became available, over 70% of consumers had picked VHS.