Did you know you could still buy these????

[CatWoman]

Wonder why they never caught on in the first place? :shrug:

[northzax]

1. sure, much better format

before the advent of digital betamax was the format most used by professionals.

as to why it didn't catch on? one word: porn. yes, there was marketing, and licensing deals that helped VHS, but the big problem is that you could not get porn on Beta (Sony refused to license the technology for Porn) technology purchases like this are driven by men, and men like porn. The big advantage of VHS is that you could watch porn at home, instead of having to go to a movie theater downtown and risk being mugged or exposed to your neighbors.

[CatWoman]

2. porn??????

who woulda thunk????? :wow:

[DarkTirade]

3. There's also a big debate as to how porn will affect the blue-ray vs. high-def DVDs.

But I think it won't matter as much now, since you can just download it to your computer and skip the portable media entirely... :)

[northzax]

6. Sony has decided to license Blu-Ray

for adult entertainment.

[DarkTirade]

14. Yes, but Blu-Ray costs more to produce

and porn tends to go for the cheaper end of things.

[northzax]

8. sex sells

how many websites make money? and how many of those are porn? a pretty bug chunk.

[quip]

4. Somebody wrote a book about that-

that porn has been the impetus for many techonological advances we enjoy today. I should go do some digging around (for the book, not for porn!) :hi:

[northzax]

5. what, you think guys get high speed internet

so their kids can do homework? please. :)

what fueled the growth of AOL? sex chats (and pedophiles)
what fueled the development of live chat?
what fueled the development of streaming video?
what fueled the development of hi res photos online?
what fueled the development of interactive video?
what fueled the development of secure online billing? (what, you thought it was Amazon? :) )
what fueled the development of webcams?
what fueled the development of Pay-Per-View?
waht do all those technologies have in common? you can make money selling sex with them.
hell, what paved the way for strong first amendment protection for publications in the last century? (Larry Flynt doesn't publish Highlights for Children, after all)

what will people pay money for, under almost all circumstances? gambling and sex. the two oldest industries. guys will pay money to see naked women (and men) in various states of debasement.

[Kucinich4America]

7. I'm surprised the right wingers don't blame Al Gore for all of this.

Seeing as how he "invented" the internet. (Yeah, they're still repeating that lie)

Maybe I shouldn't give them any ideas?

[northzax]

9. well, they would

but they are the ones spending money on it. they don't want to cut off their supply...

[CatWoman]

15. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!

I'm surprised the right wingers don't blame Al Gore for all of this.

:rofl:

[billyskank]

10. You have the right reason, although in a more general sense

In any fight between a format which is proprietary and another format which is open (freely licenced), the open standard tends to win. Even if the proprietary standard is technically better. Open standards are better economically - consider how generic PCs crushed all other computer platforms, no matter what the technical merits were. Sony have NEVER understood this. They ALWAYS push proprietary standards and expect everybody to buy licences from them. When an alternative comes around, the world tells Sony to shove its technology up its arse.

[northzax]

12. perhaps

although you could argue that Apple seems to be doing just fine with the proprietary iTunes and the iPods.

[billyskank]

13. Apple doing just fine with a 5% share of the market

If you call that doing 'just fine' then sure. As for iPods and iTunes, they are just about open enough to be acceptable. If iPods could only interface with iTunes and only play Apple's music format then they would never have been accepted. But you can plug them into your PC and they will play MP3s, so they are just open enough to be acceptable.

[Deja Q]

11. Time constraints. VHS allowed much more time per tape than Beta.

And that's all people cared about.

Laserdisc, at the time, took over as the quality visual medium...