The heads were so physically different you couldn’t build a machine that would accept them both in one slot. Also, the reels were spaced differently. The signal processing is also very different. They both scan the tape in different patterns. If you mean a dual deck VCR with Beta in one side and VHS in another, I’ve never seen one in the store. Once VHS won no one cared about Beta except a few video enthusiasts.

I did once take tape from a beta cassette and spool into a VHS shell. I didn’t expect it to work, I just wanted to see what the mess would look like. They’re the same width. What I saw was diagonal grey and black lines. The VHS speed kept going up and down trying to run the Beta tape at VHS speed, but Beta was different. The monaural audio sped up and slowed down as well.

It has the stronger BD+ protection and the aweful region coding*. HD DVD had neither of those and had better features, such picture in picture and better content, despite the smaller capacity.

As usual, shit floats.

*The fact that region free players and workarounds exist isn’t the point. Something like this should be illegal.

I dont like the idea of a retail outlet picking one or the other. What if Walmart or others stores as big as them decided to sell on Plasma tvs? LCD and others would go out. Now the big problem is what about the movies that are only released on the HDDVD format. Does that mean Walmart wont sell those?