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Ironically, the longest lived and least repair prone Beta decks seem to be the ones that didn't keep the tape threaded for all operations.... Sanyo. Even the later VHS decks that kept the tape threaded don't seem to suffer from the drum wear problems Sony Betas had. The M-load system allowed the tape to be pulled away just enough from the drum during rew/ff operations but kept it against the ACE assembly for the real time time counter.
Sony eventually switched to M-loading in Video 8 decks for cost and reliability reasons too.
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