Betamax Is Finally Properly Dead As Sony Kills Its Tapes

Sony has announced that it will no longer be selling Beta cassettes.

No, this is not a news report from the 80s: despite losing the format war with the VHS decades ago, Sony has been quietly churning out Betamax tapes this whole time.

It’s not the sort of thing you’d know unless you are one of the eight people in the world who has a Betamax player - the players themselves were discontinued in 2002.

But if you are one of those eight people, you’ve got until March 2016 to snap up all the tapes you can; that’s when Sony will stop selling the EL-500B, 2L-500MHGB, 2L-750MHGB and L-25CLP cleaning tape.

The reasons behind Betamax losing out to the VHS in the ‘80s have been the subject of much debate. Most agree that Sony’s format was the better product, but it didn’t offer enough flexibility - Betamax tapes clocked in at only one hour long - and was too expensive compared to the cheap and cheerful VHS.

So congratulations to the VHS, which is also dead, for finally killing its foe.

The VHS has since been usurped by the DVD, which was in turn knocked out of favour by Blu-ray, which is in the process of being vanquished by the growing film streaming market.

Image: Paul Brown/REX Shutterstock