Internet Crash.

I had thought that the whole thing boiled down to the availability of adult film titles on VHS versus Betamax, but that turned out not to be the case.

This guy really needs to go back in time and look at licensing. He's COMPLETELY off base on the reasons being tech related. He's comparing a betamax made in 1977/78 to a VHS made in 79. A year in tech does reduce weight. But big deal, you didn't carry the machine around.

The betamax died out in the mid 80's do to the same reasons MiniDisc, and 7" audio disks died. Sony kept the tech proprietary. The tapes, discs, whatever material had to be bought along with the machines, from Sony ALONE. At Sony's prices. Which are, even today, still at the top of the bar for consumer electronics. The VHS was licensed freely and had very strong competition driving down costs on both the machines and consumables along with raising competition for features on the machines. But Sony tech stagnated and did not continue to keep up with feature upgrades since they were not making the sales.

This simply a case of keeping too tight a hold and not having a strong enough brand to carry the price tag. Apple runs this risk as well. And, as competition increases giving other devices and OSes equal footing, Apple continues to loose market share. JUST LIKE Sony. It's simply a case of market econ.

This is a classic example of increasing returns, also called lock-in. There are many examples of inferior products out competing superior products because of lock-in.