Betamovie
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 | |
|---|---|
Sony Betamovie BMC-100P | |
| Introduced | May 1983 |
| 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 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. 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. 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.