🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <330332...@pass.wayne.edu>, Michael Edelman
<m...@pass.wayne.edu> writes
>Paul Patry wrote:
>  
>> 
>> See if you can find a Television Station that is standardized on VHS.
>> Like the Mac, Beta is the tool of the professionals.
> 
>Well, that's just out-and-out false. Professional work went from 2" quad
>to 1" to  Sony U-Matic to (sometimes) VHS and (very occasionally) 8mm.
>No Beta is being used anywhere in major TV production. It's dead for
>precisely the reason noted: Sony's unwillingness to license it.
>
>While it may have had a technical edge at one point, today's VHS is far
>superior to the last of the Beta systems marketed.
>
>--mike

Seems Mike knows nothing about TV production, except perhaps the "edu"
version. Paul Patry is perfectly correct. Virtually every TV station
uses Betacam SP for news gathering, look at any cutaway of a news
cameraman in a news story, the camera will be 3 CCD Beta SP. Sony U-
Matic was used in the early days of ENG (Electronic News Gathering) and
lasted only a couple of years before Beta SP took over in the mid 80's.
There are more Beta SP machines in the professional TV world than all
other formats put together, by an order of magnitude at least. VHS is
only ever used in the "Amateur Video" context where someone has unique
and important news footage. Hi-8 is sometimes used for clandestine
shooting due to its small size.

Beta SP is also used for the vast majority of video production work, but
its successor, Digital Betacam, is now the de-facto standard for quality
electronic production, as well as film and tape post production. I've
worked in TV broadcast tape since the early years of 2" Ampex VR1000
machines (they used valves, "toobs!") and I've a working VR1200 at home,
rescued from the scrapheap, but Digi-beta is probably the end of the
line. Computers will take over, eg Quantel Edit Box (a British product).
Still, digi-beta will be an excellent archive format.

Sorry to bang on, but the idea that TV Professionals would even
contemplate for a second using VHS is so outrageous that I had to put
the record straight.
-- 
Peter