Betamax is Sony’s home video cassette system. It’s touted as the true beginning of home video—an easy-touse video cassette recorder/player that employs inexpensive video cassettes. Betamax went on sale this September in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, at least two years ahead of any competition from RCA, MCA/Phillips, and Zenith’s video records, and Sony appears committed to a gradual development in sales that could see Betamax expand as a consumer product the way audio cassettes did after their introduction in the mid-sixties.

Betamax is an electric toy predicated on the assumption that people will pay $2,295 (plus tax) to use their TV like they use their record player, Until now, TVs'were like radios—you might turn the box on or off and change channels, but you couldn’t alter ^ particular programs broadcast at that moment. Betamax lets you show what you want when you want on your TV screen in the same way the record player let us hear what we want when we want to hear it.