Goodbye Beta: Sony will make VHS players

Sony will make VHS players

Sony has not made many major blunders, but the way it marketed Betamax was a beaut. The famed Japanese electronics firm started a home-entertainment revolution when it introduced Betamax, the original home-videocassette recorder, in 1975. Before long, however, competitors arrived in force with another type of VCR, dubbed VHS, which offered buyers more recording capacity. Sony gradually lost all but a tiny fraction of one of the richest markets in the consumer electronics business. Last week Sony said it will begin selling VHS players, in addition to Beta models, later this year. Inevitable as the move may have been, it was...

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