Image: Gilgongo/Flickr
Pour one out for Betamax, if you haven't already.Sony said Tuesday that it will stop producing Betamax video cassette tapes in March 2016, nearly 40 years after the format's introduction and 28 years after it lost a co-called "format war" to rival video cassette tape format VHS.Sony cites the end of analog television broadcasts and "market demand" as reasons for the stoppage, according to a translation of the original Japanese language press release.Betamax was first introduced in 1975, but was overtaken in popularity shortly after the introduction of VHS, a competing video cassette format that was introduced in 1976 by fellow Japanese electronics firm JVC. While Betamax is generally regarded as having offered better picture quality than VHS, VHS' ability to hold three hours of video to Betamax's one, as well as its cheaper price, led to the JVC-backed format winning out.Sony stopped producing Betamax video recorders in 2002, with the company claiming it sold 18 million recorders over the format's lifespan. While Cassette tape shipments peaked in 1984 at 50 million units, the company continued to produce them for professional broadcast settings.The adult entertainment industry also backed VHS over Betamax, which may also have helped that format over Sony's. This, kids, is back before you could merely load up any random tube site to take care of business.Of course, VHS was eventually overtaken by DVD among consumers (with Blu-ray then finding a niche audience among AV enthusiasts), and now streaming as the preferred method of watching pre-recorded video in the comfort of your own home.