[DVtyro]

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

No SuperBeta and BetaED all retained the same BII/III speeds for record, only the luma deviation was pushed up and the color remained the same. I have a SuperBeta and there's no BI recording speed, there may have been an oddball deck with a BI that I'm not aware of

Mr. Betamax's review of the SL-HF3000 reads, "To the right of this is the ON/OFF switch for the s SHB (Super Hi-Band 6.0 MHz) switch. This selection is only functional during recording in BIs."

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

SuperBeta and BetaED used thinner head profiles with narrower gaps on metal formula tapes to achieve the higher bandwidth in the consumer market, the tape was already available from the BetacamSP arena

I wonder why instead of pushing luma to 500 lines Sony did not stop at the reasonable 400 lines but rather expanded chroma bandwidth - this would have produced a more well rounded format. Was Sony afraid of making a competitor to Betacam?

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

You definitely get two thumbs up for the historical production on the Pro format wars of the 1980's. I do remember some of the propaganda on the MII format from around 1985/86 and while some of the technical aspects of the format were superior to the BetacamSP format it wasn't enough to win and despite the NBC commitment to the MII format they eventually went BetacamSP.

Thanks! I bought a NOS MII tape just for the video, and boy is it ugly. Almost VHS-C ugly. The hubs are different size and are not symmetrical, because Panasonic wanted to keep it compatible with a large VHS-sized cassette, and the small one is inserted sort of to the side, not in the middle. So, there is a ton of unused space on the left side of the cassette. I think they missed it again, making a cassette not much smaller than Beta, and Panasonic switched to U-type loading mechanism, which was larger than M-type. So the whole thing would be almost as large as the previous M-format recorder. Ugh.

Pictures courtesy of Museum of Obsolete Media.