Betamovie

Betamovie
Sony Betamovie BMC-100P
IntroducedMay 1983[1]
EncodingNTSC, PAL
Recording mediaBetamax cassette
Recording time on L-830 cassette:
PALUp to 216 min.
NTSCBI: Up to 100 min.
BII: Up to 200 min.
BIII: Up to 300 min.
Write mechanismSingle head Helical scan
PlaybackNot available
Intended usageHome movies
MarketConsumer/Amateur
Developed bySony

Betamovie is the brand name for a range of consumer grade camcorders developed by Sony for the Betamax format. By "camcorder" is understood a single unit comprising a video camera and a video recorder.

Betamovie records analog video on a standard Betamax cassette.

A range of models was manufactured for the PAL and NTSC formats. The first model, BMC-100P (PAL) and BMC-110 (NTSC) was released in 1983 making it the first commercial consumer grade camcorder.[2] While only standard beta units were available in PAL, several SuperBeta models were produced for the NTSC format.

Due to constructional limitations, the Betamovie has no playback function.[3] It is only capable of recording. This limitation, along with the decline of the Betamax format in the late 1980s, caused Sony to abandon the Betamovie line just a few years after its initial release in favor of its newly developed Video8 format.

  1. ^ Wielage & Woodcock 2003
  2. ^ "Total Rewind". www.totalrewind.org. Retrieved 2018-04-04.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference tech_conn was invoked but never defined (see the help page).