While it was a major win for Sony because it meant that their Betamax tapes and players could stay on the market, they were falling behind JVC’s VHS format. According to Sony, while Betamax tapes were smaller in size and provided higher-quality recordings, their big shortcoming was that their run-times were, well, short. Betamax tapes could only record up to one hour, not long enough to record a sporting event or movie, something that VHS’s longer run-times allowed. Eventually, Sony caved and even started producing VHS products in addition to their Betamax lineup.
With the legal hurdle out of the way, VHS tapes continued to reign until — as is the nature of the tech industry — new technology emerged to replace them (via Wired). In the 1990s, DVDs debuted to replace VHS tapes as the new favored form of physical media, but around the same time, digital video recorders (DVRs) also debuted, eliminating the need for physical media for consumers who wanted to record and watch their favorite programming on their own time.
