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 working 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 Beta's 15-year run, it kept improving to stay ahead of the competition. The video got better, and so did the sound (as did the quality of the tape available). Beta recording excelled and got better, and this discussion is going to cover those improvements. Playing the right speed might be all you need to know, but there were some pretty amazing things that happened over those 15 years. To aid in deciding which Beta is the right choice for you, 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 the 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. But this speed was soon abandoned in favor of a new, slower speed, called Bx2, which doubled the recording time. With the new speed came a new form of notation. The Greek letter for Beta was combined with Roman numerals to indicate the speeds. Bx2 became and Bx1 was now . (Note: all pre-recorded movies and programs were recorded in .) 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 the most recording time using slower speeds ended. There would 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*. Tape length numbering also changed during all this. 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 slower speeds messed this time notation up, so the designations were changed to L-250 and L-500, respectively. This roughly indicated the number of feet of tape inside the cassette. So was the slow boundary,and the recording maximums for the various tape lengths became one and a half hours for the L-250, and the L-500 at three hours. New lengths were added to these; there was an L-750, at four and a half hours and a five hour maximum L-830. Beta lost the maximum recording time war with VHS because it had a larger, 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 format's 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 were converted to FM carrier waves so they could be added into the video processing used for magnetic recording. In playback they are converted back into audio signals. The picture quality and performance were 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 stereo going in and coming out being were virtually identical. No loss, no wow, no flutter, and no distortion. Frequency range and audio quality were limited only by the sound 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 VHS audio heads had recording gaps angled differently from the video heads, so couldn't read the other. It worked okay, but it also required a more complicated video drum for all housing all those heads. If you added in extra head(s) for special affects 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 poor 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. Betahi-fi was unmatched (for more on stereo recording, click here), 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. During recording all VCRs convert the picture information into magnetic pulses so it can be physically recorded and played back. The signal is divided into separate elements that are handled by different circuits dedicated to doing certain tasks. For SuperBeta, Sony focused on the two main parts of the signal that are responsible for picture quality. One part controls the black and white picture, and the other one inserts the color (when a picture is in color). The first one, named luminance, is where all the detail and sharpness are stored. The second one carries all the information used to modify the luminance and produce the color (this one is called the chrominance). To create SuperBeta, Sony expanded and boosted the luminance signal up to a higher frequency. This resulted in more picture detail. This expansion was also aided by the availability of better videotape, 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 better imaging. 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 refinement. If you played these Superbeta or SuperBetahi-fi tapes back using 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 changed 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 counteract this, Sony recommended that if you planned to play your tapes back on a standard Beta machine (non-SuperBeta), you should turn 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 units owner's manuals. (To get the most out of any Beta you do need to read the owner's manual.) Recordiing 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 or machines (as shown in the graph 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 Beta variants. These are the Extended Definition Beta models 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 other consumer VCR ever compared to it. It was also completely backward compatible with all the other Beta systems, but its ED Beta recordings could only be played back on an ED Beta machines. To keep this advanced recording system separated, Sony moved the record protection hole in the bottom of the ED Beta cassette to the opposite side. The standard Beta record protection hole was left open. That way 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 if you want. The metal tapes record excellently, but you don't get the advantage of the better picture quality that ED Beta offers. Playing an Extended Definition recorded 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 powering the luminance circuit. (For more on Extended Definition Beta, click here.) Sony also developed the first camcorder. These were small portable hand-held Betamovie units. And they manufactured 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 , but only records .

*This video head wear issue was greatly improved later 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.
©Misterßetamax
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