Digital Betacam-a new approach to broadcast digital recording

In 1993, the Sony Corporation introduced a new DVTR format known as Digital Betacam. Digital Betacam was designed to offer the high quality performance of the D-1 format but at a price acceptable to a wide range of users. The format offers 10 bit recording, and allowed the development of certain models which could also replay existing Betacam and Betacam SP material. Digital Betacam is also the first commercially available half-inch DVTR to use bit rate reduction (BRR) to reduce the amount of data to be recorded. The use of BRR in such a format is clearly a new approach. The paper examines the factors which influenced the decision to use BRR, describes the Digital Betacam format, and outlines some developments relevant to the format.<>