Re: Any thoughts on SONY dropping BETA cameras?

BetacamSP is one of those formats that will hold a fond place in almost every videographer's heart (that I know, anyway).

Something I've noticed about Sony over the years is that they want to develop a very well defined (sometimes even overly narrow) target market for their pro product lines. I think that Sony has developed what they consider an updated and advanced product line for almost all the roles that BetaSP served.

ENG -BetaSX/DVcam
Program Delay -BetaSX (or, I'm sure they'd prefer you buy a server)
Production -DigiBeta/HDcam
Industrial -DVcam/DV

(this is how I believe Sony pictures their product landscape, not necessarily my opinion on how they should be used...)

I don't think they see much future in analog, no matter how good it is/was. With resources for manufacturing and support never being infinite (even for Sony), I suspect it's simply a matter of prioritization of those resources. I have no doubt you'll be able to buy new BetaSP decks for years to come, but field acquisition has moved toward lighter and less power-hungry equipment. Even as a fellow lover of BetaSP, I have to say I don't miss carrying one around all day.

Sony has always refused to "compete" with it's own product lines. Anyone remember ED Beta? This was a format that would've been a contender for what was SVHS's market in 1989-1990. It had more resolution and (IMHO) a better color signal. If any of you remember those heady days...Sony was falling all over itself contending that Umat was still the answer for industrial/small market broadcast production and that SVHS was a pretender (remember when the robustness of 1/2" tape was a question?). Of course, even all the broadcast fundamentalist engineers who always stand with Sony couldn't stop many of us production types from noticing that SVHS had a much sharper picture than 3/4" Umatic and, when you utilized Y/C, it had no chroma crawl. And it was much cheaper than UmaticSP (which was another favorite of mine-though not for field production).

The real answer would've been ED Beta. It was at the very least, equivalent to SVHS, and with the Sony name on the box it could've really been successful because of the broadcaster brand loyalty out there.

One problem.

To make ED Beta useful to pros, it would have had to have things like RS-422 or serial remote, editing decks with separately insertable audio tracks, dockable field recorders that you could attach to a 325 or 327 (or other pro-3 chip) camera. In my opinion, Sony decided that developing this format in this way would be like admitting that Umat was indeed no longer viable.

So, what did they do?

They made a product line that had a 2-chip (ED-10 or something I think it was) camcorder that had a pro profile, took NP-1 style batts and they put a crappy Tamron pro-configured lense on it, developed an "edit" deck that had audio dub capabilities and an extremely consumerish attached "edit controller" and also made a basic recorder. Then they gave it to these Sony dealers who specialize in "consumers with more money than they know what to do with who only buy esoteric, over-engineered home AV gear so they can brag about it to ther friends."

When they realized that even these customers didn't want a home camcorder that was as big as a broadcast camera is today to take with them to Disneyland, they tried to re-target the gear to college sports programs. Sort of a "College Football=NFL farm teams therefore ED Beta should=BetacamSP (format standard in the NFL at the time) farm format" reasoning. Problem...still no conventional edit capabilities, no true professional configurations. Sheer hardware implementation rendered what could've been a very good format useless.

ED Beta died before it was born (and Sony became the Johnny-come-lately pro-SVHS gear manufacturer 6 years later?!?) because Sony refused to face up to the fact that it was time to replace an established product line. In some ways, this newest move seems to indicate to me that maybe they've learned something....

I've got a lot of fond BetacamSP memories, though.

Even though it appears it's over...when we close our eyes, we'll always have 1994.

I'll miss BetaSP too, Bobby :-)


-Tim Kolb