Scored an OLD Betamax

[Greg B.]

I bought one of these when they first came out. Background: I had just started my first job and even though I wasn't making much, I was still living at home so my expenses were low and I had some cash burning a hole in my pocket. I thought the relatively new idea of being able to record TV shows was the coolest thing ever. I had researched the whole Beta vs. VHS question and concluded that Beta was the way to go. A locally owned Sony store had just opened and I became friends with the 2 young guys who ran it. They sold me on the 5800 even though they hadn't actually received any yet, so they let me have a 5600 until their 5800s arrived. I had the first one in town.

I wanted it because of the truly clear slo-mo it offered, which at the time was quite unique. In practice, it was something I seldom used, but who knew? I mostly used it for recording off-air stuff, and I had a large library of things like Friday Night Videos, SCTV Network 90, SNL, etc., from the early 80s. Keep in mind that buying even a blank tape back then was an investment -- the majority of the blanks I purchased were over $20 each.

While I never had problems with it eating tapes, its performance declined over the years and it developed noise when running. I took it to a shop in the late 80s and they did the repair kit thing that was described. But that only helped it for a short time as a bearing or two somewhere in the motor was shot, and eventually it would not replay anything smoothly. By this time, '93 or so, nobody locally would work on it and I ended up just getting rid of it along with all my Beta tapes. A mistake, especially with the tapes. Wish I had kept all that history.

I remember seeing a demo of the tape changer add-on device at the store too. It seemed really Rube Goldberg-ish, but I think they came up with it to counter the criticism of Beta having a shorter recording capacity than VHS.

Edited to add: With taxes, I think I paid close to $1800 for it. It was more expensive than the car I drove.