Betamovie | |
---|---|
Introduced | May 1983[1] |
Encoding | NTSC, PAL |
Recording media | Betamax cassette |
Recording time on L-830 cassette: | |
PAL | Up to 216 min. |
NTSC | BI: Up to 100 min. BII: Up to 200 min. BIII: Up to 300 min. |
Write mechanism | Single head Helical scan |
Playback | Not available |
Intended usage | Home movies |
Market | Consumer/Amateur |
Developed by | Sony |
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.
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