Went went through two Beta Hi-Fis. The first one was (I believe) a Sanyo -- which we returned within a couple of weeks since it kept mistracking (especially on rental tapes).AndyDursin wrote: ↑Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:08 pm LOL that's crazy!
I never had any experience with Beta, just heard from you and others that the quality was better. But your experience is matched with that clip where Hendren even mentions "people say VHS is more reliable". For the money associated with Beta as format and Sony's technical expertise it surprises me they had more technical issues with the format they didn't iron out...was it something with the tapes or more the machines themselves?
We replaced it with a much more expensive Sony deck (which we got at a discount from the same place that had sold us the Sanyo). It worked much better -- but could be temperamental. I had a lot of problems with the player displaying the black screen -- even on tapes recorded by that very same deck! In time I realized that the Sony tapes, ironically, often did not play back properly (i.e. giving me the "black screen of death"). I eventually found that Fuji tapes worked best, and were pretty-much trouble free.
Rental tapes continued to be a hit and miss though. Sometimes a rental tape would play fine from start to finish -- but if I wanted to re-watch the tape it would mistrack.
I dunno -- maybe we got stuck with a couple of lemons. But my gut feeling is Sony and others rushed the Beta HiFi units onto the market before the bugs were fully worked out (in order to be ahead of VHS).
Picture and sound quality was great -- when it worked. Audio especially -- I even used Beta tapes briefly to make back-up audio copies of some out-of-print LPs and CDs I owned.
But that player was a lot like my old VW Golf -- a blast to drive but maddeningly unreliable!
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