[bobbydr2000 (Unverified) Posted Jan 21st 2007 9:05AM]

I've read all over the news that porn decided the format wars. Um, not exactly. I was in the �video� industry when this was all going on and we offered a substantial selection of betamax porn. The problem was that too few of our customers (by a 3 to 1 margin) actually had a betamax. What actually happened was this: Matsushita (AKA JVC) was late to enter the home video system market by six months. Just like today, acceptance of the new technology was slow because of lack of content, with the bulk of the sales taking place on the west coast (port of entry) and spreading thinly east. Beta had a huge jump on VHS but Sony REFUSED to license the beta to other component manufactures (�To ensure quality control� (read: for overconfidence of their superior system and, well, greedy reasons). Matsushita on the other hand, let anybody put the VHS logo on their own machine as long as they paid a license fee. Once VHS labeled machines hit the market, they descended all at once, from every direction. In NYC at the time, you could go into a store like �Crazy Eddie�s�, have a choice of two Betamax machines, or choose from 10 different VHS models all with different features. The news at the time was all about the superior beta, but the consumer found that he could get a machine with more features at a lower price if he sacrificed some quality � quality that hardly noticeable on the TV monitors to a layman in the first place. The content problem was still there, and that�s where porn saw its opportunity. Within 3 years time, porn houses popped up everywhere with banks of hundred of VHS machines churning out content. The lists they sent us overwhelmingly outnumbered the selections available from Hollywood. So yes, porn helped the sale of video tape tremendously, but if Sony had not made what is possibly the biggest marketing error in history, we probably would have Betamax video recorders moldering in our garages today.