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From WTOP news: http://wtop.com/money/2016/01/happy-birthday-video-betamax-is-still-a-thing/
After 40 years, Sony will end production of BetaMax tapes in March.
"Sony introduced the consumer-friendly Betamax recorder, a suitcase-sized machine that recorded up to two hours of video on a cassette tape off of broadcast or cable signals, in 1975. And that ushered in era of the VCR. (That stands for video cassette recorder, millennials.)"
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After 40 Years, Sony Will Stop Producing BetaMax Tapes in March
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conclusion.
-- William Baumol
(Score: 5, Funny) by NotSanguine on Tuesday January 19 2016, @03:28AM
This may seem off-topic, but bear with me, it isn't.
Many years ago, my girlfriend wanted me to help her get pregnant.
She had fertility issues and was taking drugs to help. We worked hard at getting her pregnant the "old-fashioned" way, but despite the (quite pleasant) extended effort, she did not conceive.
As such, we to the fertility clinic where she had intrauterine insemination [wikipedia.org] procedures.
In order to procure the sperm for the procedures, I was required to produce it. I was led into a room so I could make that happen. There were porno magazines and videos (this was before Sir Berners-Lee made his name) to assist me.
The odd thing was that all the videos (and the VCR) were BetaMax.
I asked about it and was told that they used to have VHS, but people kept stealing the videos. Once they replaced them with BetaMax, no one stole them any more.
And so now you know why BetaMax was useful.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2016, @03:58AM
A friend who worked at a fertility clinic in Omaha claimed they used BetaMax for a similar reason. Another thing I remember her saying was that if you saw a magazine with some fetish other than big boobs, then it was brought in by someone who left without it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2016, @06:03AM
I went to three separate facilities for similar purposes. One was luxuriant with a jack off chair, covered in a disposable paper sheet. It had videos (I didn't use them and don't recall the format), magazines of both the dirty and soft porn type, and a wide variety of clean-up material. The second consisted of a room with a door that closed and a stack of sticky Penthouses; and the third refused to take the sample in house, but requested I drive it to them within thirty minutes of production. My wife helped created this third sample, which then was used as roughly half the DNA for my daughter.