Prominance of Beta in Anime Tape Trading

The roughly mid-90's and earlier (generally pre-Toonami, pre-anime boom) era of anime & manga fandom: early cons, clubs, tape trading, Nth Generation VHS fansubs, old magazines & fanzines, fandubs, ancient merchandise, rec.arts.anime, and more!
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Drew_Sutton
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Prominance of Beta in Anime Tape Trading

Post by Drew_Sutton »

I was listening to a wrestling podcast recently and there was a discussion about tape trading on the episode. There were some comments made by the host that I thought was pretty interesting - but also led me to some questions.

The full segment is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zHxXNC4H6Q

They start talking about some of the earliest forays into taping wrestling programs and making connections and trading with other fans. But from this timestamp, responding to a question about how much of his tape collection was Beta versus VHS, he notes that 40% of his collection is still Beta which is the lion's share of his tapes up through the 80s. However, he made the following comment which got me thinking here:
When I would get tapes from Japan, because I have all of [Giant] Baba's and [Antonio] Inoki's television programs from like 1981 until the early 1990s, those were on Beta. Because people in Japan were recording them on Beta, because that was the dominant format.
My question is, how prevalent was Beta in the anime tape trading circles, especially for those folks who were trading with people in Japan? I imagine this is limited to trading mostly in the early and mid 1980s? A few ads from magazines I have seem to start neglecting Beta by the mid/late 80s in favor of VHS and LaserDisc. Outside of ads though, I think I've only seen anime on Beta in the stray eBay listing 15 years ago or so. We were a VHS house and I only ever remember seing Beta tapes on the shelves at one local rental shop when I was really little. All of my anime tape trading was all in the 1990s when Beta was nothing but a punchline in the home consumer market.

Or, maybe, is this a(nother?) case of wrestling fans being weird.?
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davemerrill
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Re: Prominance of Beta in Anime Tape Trading

Post by davemerrill »

in my anime nerd circles in the 80s and early 90s Beta was seen as the superior format - the tapes were 3 hours long at "SP" mode, and technically the image was better than VHS. But here in North America, more people had VHS. Tape trading was mostly a VHS situation. I wound up buying a pretty good Beta deck at a yard sale in 1990 or thereabouts, and for a while good quality Beta tapes were cheaper than their VHS counterpart. So if I was bringing a deck along to copy tapes from someone at a house party or a convention room party or a club meeting, I'd bring my Beta along and copy anime for myself on Beta. This had the benefit of being a format not a lot of others had, so when people asked to borrow my tapes, I'd say "it's on Beta," and those tapes would stay with me.

As the 90s progressed the Beta tapes got harder to find and eventually, of course, things went digital. I transferred most of my Beta tapes to DVD and the deck and most of the tapes themselves are long gone. I do have a Super Beta deck I bought in a thrift store for $10, but it needs some repairs which I may or may not ever get around to doing.

I think I can count the number of times I copied Beta tapes for another anime fan on the fingers of one hand, even when trading with people in Japan.
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Drew_Sutton
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Re: Prominance of Beta in Anime Tape Trading

Post by Drew_Sutton »

Thanks for answering - interesting to see that tape trading was almost always a VHS affair here, even in the 80s when I suspected there was a bit more parity between the two formats.
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Re: Prominance of Beta in Anime Tape Trading

Post by Fireminer »

Betamax is probably the rarest format for anime to me, even more than LaserDisc. And I've even seen anime on a reel-to-reel machine. It was an old episode of Speed Racer on 35mm film. I had no idea how the thing escaped a tv station.
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Re: Prominance of Beta in Anime Tape Trading

Post by davemerrill »

the only commercial release anime title I had on Beta was a tape of Urusei Yatsura openings, and like a dope I loaned it out to a friend who also had a Beta deck. It vanished into the mists of time. Never loan your tapes out, kids
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Re: Prominance of Beta in Anime Tape Trading

Post by George W »

Drew_Sutton wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 6:24 pm Thanks for answering - interesting to see that tape trading was almost always a VHS affair here, even in the 80s when I suspected there was a bit more parity between the two formats.
There was never really "parity" between the formats. Beta was pushed as a better reproduction option, but with TVs of the day, that wasn't much of a selling point. I knew one person (Dave G) who had a Beta unit. Everyone else was VHS.

The real nail in the coffin of Beta which in my view killed the format was when VHS came out with a 2 hour (120 minute) tape. Beta waned and faded quickly after that.
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Re: Prominance of Beta in Anime Tape Trading

Post by davemerrill »

I know anecdote doesn't equal data, but my experience was when video rentals became a thing, for whatever reason VHS outnumbered Beta like, 10 to 1. If a video rental shop happened to have Beta tapes, they would be all on one shelf tucked way over to the side, while the vast majority of rentals were VHS.

I seem to recall reading something about Sony being picky about letting third party manufacturers build & sell their own Beta machines, while anybody with a soldering iron and some magnets could try to whip up a VHS deck. But I could be misremembering.
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Re: Prominance of Beta in Anime Tape Trading

Post by Drew_Sutton »

davemerrill wrote: Thu Sep 01, 2022 3:04 pm I know anecdote doesn't equal data, but my experience was when video rentals became a thing, for whatever reason VHS outnumbered Beta like, 10 to 1. If a video rental shop happened to have Beta tapes, they would be all on one shelf tucked way over to the side, while the vast majority of rentals were VHS.
In the same vein, the first rental place I remember going to as a kid (local mom and pop place) had Beta interspersed by title (so, Film A on VHS and a Beta copy next to it) but it was only if they HAD a Beta version and by 1989/90/91, it wasn't a very popular choice. Though, my uncles also opened a video rental store in the very early 1980s which unfortunately went under, all the tapes they kept were VHS and they only had VHS players at home.
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Re: Prominance of Beta in Anime Tape Trading

Post by Moonsaber »

A friend of mine's brother came back from Japan with well over a hundred Beta tapes in the late 90's, and I got to watch some like Tokimeki Tonight. Not long after I went to SVHS to copy mine onto, most of those tapes are long gone but I still have two working SVHS decks. People I made tapes for often praised the quality.
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