>There was a great article on here a while back about VHS and Betamax. While Betamax was better by nearly every metric, it lost.
Not every measure. It could hold like half the recording as a VHS.
The “killer app” for video tapes was being able to record live TV when you weren’t home with timers on the players. VHS could record more without any intervention.
It also meant most movies could be watched all the way through without interruption.
People didn’t care about the ever so slightly better quality of Betamax. They cared about getting their moneys worth and not being interrupted.
That’s why VHS won.
What mattered was every other company got together and agreed on a format. The size of their market caused hollywood to release more movies in that format which made more people buy. The super long mode became more important later.