https://youtu.be/Li699Qflv3g?t=7m16s

Watch for about 3 minutes. Very interesting!

Perhaps you weren't aware that there were many different (and completely incompatible) cassette systems?, before Compact Cassette eventually became the standard.

I suspect most failed because of their physical size, whereas Compact Cassette was nice and small.

There's even been a few since as well, with the Sony Elcaset been a prime example - which despite offering much higher quality flopped incredibly badly!

Sony have a bit of form in introducing formats which offer better quality but then flop - usually because they withhold licensing the technology and therefore prevent the hardware becoming widespread - Beta being an example, Minidisc another.

Various manufacturers did both Beta and Minidisc, so presumably Sony were happy to licence them?.

Beta 'failed' mainly because of film rental, as in the UK VHS had a massive numerical advantage because all the large TV/VCR rental companies only rented out VHS machines.

We did both, and generally people rented VHS, but purchased Beta - because Beta was cheaper to buy.

Minidisc was 'a bit weird' - nice idea, but was killed off by MP3 and computer technology.

On Beta - Sony's licensing was never as extensive as JVC's with VHS - the fact JVC did the deal with Thorn and Thorn owned a huge chunk of the rental market at the time didn't help, but I didn't think Beta was ever licensed to OEMs which of course of VHS meant the arrival of much cheaper machines which made it more accessible - whereas on Beta the licencees were Sony, Sanyo and Toshiba and a few others, but not OEMs.

Hooray, another Betamax thread!

I remeber as a child in my Dads dumper truck and he has an 8 track stereo blasting most of the day, it was maybe Neil sedka i think, but the sound to me then was amazing, 8 track was about the size of a VHS cassette, wonder if there are any surviving examples!
Ok, not a video example but a blast from the past!

8 track ran at a faster speed than Compact Cassette (twice as fast), so (in theory) had a better high frequency response. However, the entire system was pretty poor mechanically, alignment wasn't very consistent (losing the high frequencies) and the tapes were very prone to failure.

Eight track tapes were coated with a lubricant to enable the layers of the endless loop to slip over each other. The lubricant eventually ended up on the heads which needed regular cleaning, once the lubricant wore off the tape ceased up. There was a quadraphonic version which sounded impressive but only had half the running time as it used four tracks at once.

I have a music system which recognises the end of the tape and immediately starts playback or recording on the other side. It does this by rotating the read/write heads by 180 degrees and reversing the motion of the tape.

I still have it but I think the drive belts have perished through lack of use.

Meant to say that the tape would either crease or seize up.

A great many cassette decks did that, and often on a twin-cassette music system one would be an auto-reverse deck, and the other a normal one.

But even simpler was auto-reverse cassettes that simply used a four track head, and merely reversed the tape travel direction.


That's the way of most tape systems

Basically they aren't worth repairing, as it's rarely just the belts, you really need to replace all the wearing parts, including the heads.

Blimey, you should know the name of your dad!