It is the final chapter in the 'format wars' between Betamax and VHS

But the electronics giant is to cease

Japan is the last country where Sony Betamax tapes are

Sony has placed the final nail in the Betamax coffin four decades after it launched the format.

The electronics giant said it would no longer produce the cassettes in Japan, which is the last country where they are available.

The decision is the final chapter in the 'format wars' between Betamax and VHS which took place in the 1970s and 80s until DVDs arrived.

Sony has placed the final nail in the Betamax coffin four decades after it launched the format. The electronics giant said it would no longer produce the cassettes in Japan, which is the last country where they are available

Even though Betamax was regarded as superior, VHS won because it was cheaper and the tapes lasted three hours instead of one.

Sony launched Betamax in 1975, a year after the Video Home System - its rival by electronics company JVC.

The Beatamax LV-1901 cost $2,495 or about $8,300 in today's money (£5,500) and came inside a wooden console with a 19-inch colour TV.

The seven-minute long promotional video now seems hopelessly quaint in an era of Netflix and on-demand viewing.

The video said that the Betamax's 'only purpose is to serve you' and that it will 'expand your enjoyment of television viewing to something that was a short time ago nothing more than an ambitious dream'.

Sony first launched its Betamax products in 1975 as a household, magnetic video format for consumers to record analogue television show. The Beatamax LV-1901 cost $2,495 or about $8,300 in today's money (£5,500) and came inside a wooden console with a 19-inch colour TV

The Betamax also promised that you will be 'free from restrictions of time' and vowed that viewers would 'never be deprived of watching whatever programme you desire at your convenience'.

VHS WON BETAMAX 'FORMAT WARS' THANKS TO PORN NDUSTRY The success of VHS over Betamax has been largely attributed to the porn industry. Its cheap price and greater adoption saw the porn industry pick VHS as the format for its home videos. It has also long been rumoured that Sony’s did not allow pornography on its tapes, leading to the overall downfall of the format Eventually, Sony emitted defeat and in 1988 produced its first VHS video cassette recorder. Advertisement

The reality was somewhat different, however, and cassettes each cost $35 or $117 (£77) today, meaning that building a library would cost you a small fortune.

Faced with such a high price consumers chose JVC's Vidstar instead, one of its early machines that played VHS cassettes.

It was much cheaper than Betamax and cost $1,280, or about $4,600 in today's money (£3,000).

By comparison, cassettes cost $20, or $72 (£47) today.

In its first year of sales in the US, VHS took 40 per cent of sales away from Sony and by 1987 it had captured about 90 per cent of the market.

Sony has not produced a Betamax recorder since 2002 but the cassettes were still being manufactured.

An original advert for the Sony Betamax. The popularity of Betamax tapes peaked in 1984 when 50 million cassettes were shipped, according to Sony. Sony has not produced a Betamax recorder since 2002 but the cassettes were still being manufactured

The company said the last Betamax products it was discontinuing were cassettes with model number EL-500B, 2L-500MHGB, 2L-750MHGB.

The L-25CLP cleaning tape - which users had to play to keep the machine in good working order - is also being discontinued.

Sony is also taking it MicroMV cassettes off the market, which were used in camcorders.

The sequel to Betamax vs VHS format wars took place in the 2000s when Sony's Blu-Ray technology took on Toshiba's HD-DVD.

Blu-Ray effectively won but a few years later was supplanted by online streaming.