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Prepare yourself for a shock

Before you read on, I would like you to sit down and get comfortable. Have a small shot of your favourite hard-liquor at hand, perhaps a handkerchief and a good friend to provide some emotional support.

The reason for all this preparation is because I have some bad news, some very bad news.

Are you ready?

Okay, here we go. I hate to be the one to deliver this message but... as of next year, Sony will no longer be selling Betamax video cassettes.

I'll now give you a few minutes to express your grief and regain your composure.

What the hell? Sony is still selling Betamax cassettes in 2015?

Yes, yes they are!

Despite the rapid rise of other tape formats (such as VHS, DV, MiniDV etc) and the availability of ultra-high capacity solid-state memory cards, it appears that some folk have been still using the old Betamax format for recording video.

"If it works, don't fix it" would appear to be the mantra some people are chanting.

In an era when technologies are often superseded within months or a few short years of their release, the fact that Betamax has survived an incredibly 40 years beggars belief and is great testament to the quality of this original design.

I still recall being asked by a retailer (back in the very early '80s) which format of video cassette recorders they should stock and sell I advised them to go with VHS. I'd compared Betamax and VHS on the bench and it was obvious that although Betamax had some technical advantages, VHS was a more practical format for use by "the great unwashed". I guess I was right!

Of course Sony's format lived on for 40 years mainly because of its success at a professional level. It was the technical superiority of the format that saw it widely used within the broadcast industry and I suspect it's the sales into this sector which have kept the format alive for so very long.

I suspect that 99.9% of the public won't give a damn that Sony will be dropping these cassettes from its product line next year -- after all, it's not like they're still popular, like Zip Disks or Amstrad C128 disks is it?

Speaking of which... isn't it great that we're shifting increasingly to solid-state storage?

Every time I drop down to Noel Leeming to pick up a new microSD card I marvel at just how cheap data storage is these days.

Here's a trip down memory lane for those who are perhaps a little too young to recall the progression. Just some of the data-storage devices, media and prices I've owned over the years:

• 128K 8-inch floppy disks $90 per box of 10 (1.28MB in total) - 1980
• 90K 5-inch floppy disks $60 per box of 10 (900MB in total)
• 8MB 8-inch hard drive $9,000
• 20MB 5-inch hard drive $3,000
• 100MB 5-inch hard drive $650
• 1GB USB hard drive $130
• 32GB USB memory stick $29
• 32GB MicroSD card $15 - 2015

So, based on this little list of the price-per-byte for data storage has dropped by more than three orders of magnitude in 35 years and the physical density (bytes per cubic metre) has improved by an even greater amount.

Meanwhile, throughout that entire period... the good old Betamax format just kept chugging along.

Wonderful!

What is the oldest type of data or video storage medium you're still using today?

I am aware that a number of data-centres still use tape for backup but how many Aardvark readers are so "retro"?

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