Sony SL-C7 : The Legendary Betamax Player

Nowadays, whenever most people consider home video, there is only one format - VHS. In fact, those three letters have become almost synonymous with home video recorders and pre-recorded movies. But it wasn't always so.

In the late 1970s / early 1980s, a myriad of confusing and incompatible video formats were on the marketplace. Philips offered VCR and VCR Long Play, Grundig offered SV (Super Video) and both companies later got together to make Video2000. Toshiba developed LVR (Longitudinal video recording) that worked in a similar way to 8-track audio tapes. Most of these obscure formats disappeared very quickly. The only early systems that had a lasting impact were VHS (invented by JVC) and Betamax, invented by Sony.

Betamax is technically superior to VHS yet surprisingly it lost the battle in an intensely competitive market. The reasons for this are many and varied; you can read about them in some of the links but it basically boils down to marketing mistakes and bad luck on Sony's part.

Most people assume that Betamax is dead, but it isn't. New Beta-format VCRs are still on sale in Japan. In the U.K. no new machines or pre-recorded tapes have been available for the last few years but Beta is far from useless. Blank tapes and essential spares like belt kits and video heads can still be bought. With an ever-growing choice of TV channels to record from, who needs pre-recorded tapes anyway?

I got all my Beta machines secondhand when the format was losing popularity. At first they were being sold off cheaply in 2nd hand shops and junk sales. Later on, I salvaged large numbers of (usually faulty) machines and used cassettes from dealers and people who no longer wanted them. I learned to repair broken Betas by cannibalizing others for spares and hence ended up with superior-quality home video equipment for a fraction of the price.

Some people thought I was crazy for collecting this 'old junk', but I could say the same about those who threw out top-quality Betamax equipment only to replace it with inferior VHS gear. Although the public no longer favours Beta, TV broadcasting stations still use an enhanced form of Beta in preference to anything VHS has to offer. That should tell you something about the quality and performance of the format.

Introduced in Spring 1980, the C7 was hailed as being "so advanced, it has features you've never even heard of". Some of these features are taken for granted nowadays, but were innovative in 1980. Like Picture Search, for instance. At that time, it was unique to Betamax. In the early stages of the video format war, Beta was one step ahead, forcing VHS to catch up. I wonder what features VCRs might have today, if all the resources were put into developing Beta.

Some of the C7's other features included still / slow motion, Index Search (APS) and an alarm (audible beep) that sounded when the tape ran out.

Perhaps one of the most unusual Beta VCR accessories is the "BetaStack" tape autochanger. I have the German version, the Wega CW-M1, pictured above, attached to the C7 VCR. This unit can automatically remove a tape and insert another - and even press the function button on the VCR (play or record - you can decide which) enabling it to carry on where it left off. Over 13 hours of continuous unattended recording is possible, with no loss of quality (unlike slow-speed VHS). The only drawback is a 15-second interruption when the unit changes tapes.

The BetaStack never caught on, although autochangers are still used today in videotape duplicating factories. Another thing was that the 'feature-packed' C7 and its mechanical autochanger were astronomically complex, expensive to make and very unreliable, due to the large number of components. Mine still works (just about) but is no longer reliable enough for everyday use, so it stays in the cupboard.