Why our first VCR was a Beta

The Guardian newspaper, doing some historical research, finds the cruicial reason why VHS proved better than Betamax. The answer is, in retrospect, very simple.

The first VCR that my mother bought, though, was a Beta. I remember my mother mentioning some of the reasons, noted in the Guardian story, why the Betamax should have been the winning tape format over twenty years ago. I also remember that in the video stores there were roughly equal amounts of Beta and VHS tapes then.