Videocassette recorder
In countries that use the NTSC technical standard for television broadcasting, the Beta I version of Betamax was able to record one hour of video at a tape speed of 1.5 inches per second (ips), which was similar to a VHS standard-play mode (SP). Originally, VHS recorded two hours of video at 1.31 ips. Betamax's smaller-sized cassettes were not able to contain as much magnetic tape as VHS cassettes. They could not compete fit longer lengths of tape into the cassettes to match VHS's two-hour recording time. Instead, Sony had to slow the tape speed down to 0.787 ips (Beta II) in order to reach two hours of video recording in the same cassette size. This meant that the television picture produced by a Betamax tape was worse than VHS when comparing two-hour recordings. Sony eventually released a longer Betamax cassette called Beta III which allowed NTSC Betamax to record more than two hours, but by then VHS had already won the format war.