Every decade has it's own dominate form of media. In the decades prior to the 70's 8mm film and slides where the predominate way to enjoy media in the home. The advent of the VHS and accompanying VCR caused older formats to fade away into obscurity. VHS ruled supreme for nearly two decades and it wasn't until the mid 90's and the introduction of the DVD player that a clock was put on the life the VHS. During this decade DVD stood strong above all other formats and is still the most popular format for viewing movies and home made materials.
The later part of this decade was marked by a format war between Toshiba's HDDVD and Sony's Blu Ray, both touted as successors to the DVD format. Blu Ray eventually won the support of movie & television studios and the public as well and HDDVD faded from store shelves. This recent format war isn't the first as many might think however. Beginning in the 70's and lasting through the early part of the 80's Sony's Betamax went head to head with JVC's VHS. Both formats had their pros and cons but in the end it was the VHS that came out on top which lead to VHS becoming the predominate video format for years to come. VHS camcorders became accessible in both price and availability to the public and recording home videos became wildly popular during those times.
Betamax too had it's own line of hand held personal video recorders and though limited and somewhat bulky in size owners of those cameras also created home videos, videos that are now difficult to watch. While today's Blu Ray players are backwards compatible with virtually any region matching DVD, DVD and Blu Ray players are not capable of playing either Betamax or VHS cassettes as one technology deals with analog tape and the other with digital encoding.
So what must an owner of Betamax cassettes do if they want to watch their old home movies. As Betamax was hard to find shortly after the format war ended, they're so rare these days finding one that's functional can be nothing short of impossible. Owners of Betamax cassettes lucky enough to find a functional player must then contend with a multitude of hindrances that can make watching old movies more of a chore than a pleasure. Once a player is procured the owner must then find ways to add it to their modern entertainment centers, albeit temporarily, and then find out whether it's even possible to connect it to their modern television set. Many modern TV's lack the input jacks needed to play such archaic equipment, while other sets are already overloaded with cable, satellite, video game, DVD, and Blu Ray inputs. Disconnecting any of these can often be a hassle and is a common "stop" point for those wishing to view old Betamax movies. Even if a player can be found and it can be properly connected to a modern television set, owners will be quick to point out that both the video and audio quality are poorer than they remember. Not only do Betamax cassettes wear with each play but modern video and audio equipment often expose flaws in older formats as there simply isn't enough data to process resulting in low quality image and sound.
Betamax owners might then ask themselves, "is there a way to keep my old videos from degrading further", or "how can I enjoy these movies without hassle or great expense?" The answers to questions like those lie with Best DVD Solutions, the premiere video conversion company. Best DVD Solutions is most famous for their VHS to DVD transfers but very few people know that they also offers services for transferring Betamax to DVD as well. In fact the two services are nearly identical in procedure and finished product as Betamax to DVD transfers receive the same care as VHS to DVD transfers do.
