Comment Re:AIBO is dead? (Score 1) 245
Beta vs VHS -> Sony collected royalties for over two decades on Beta in the form of Betacam recording and the professional TV industry (where image quality did in fact matter more).
The only thing Betacam and Betamax have in common is the physical tape cassette. Betacam ran at ~6x the speed of Betamax and used a different recording format to achieve much higher quality.
DAT vs standard audiotape vs CD Audio -> DAT was actually very popular in Europe and Asia for a good while. Licensing restrictions and "piracy worries" kept it mostly out of the US thanks to the MafiAA.
DAT was popular in the professional audio industry as it was the first relatively affordable digital recording medium. Still, the technology used meant it was much more expensive initially than the analogue cassettes it replaced. The digital copy protection imposed by the *AA was an issue in Europe as much as the USA. Lack of sales volume kept the price high.