The fact that you could buy or rent them in 1977 and 1990 does not make them a viable solution for home video recording. It just means they were available, which I did not argue. Betamax in 1990 was far from a viable solution. We are talking about home video recording - it is not "viable" to use Betamax when you can't take it to any friends house and playback what you recorded, unless you plan on dragging your recording/playback equipment with you. If every one of my friends has a VHS VCR, the only viable solution is VHS.
Anyway, this has nothing to do with VOOM, so let's end this convo.
OK, but one last point...I always made recordings for MY use. Why on earth would my friend's choice of inferior equipment influence my buying decision? If my recordings are so great that everyone wants to borrow them, then they can buy what
I have.
That said, my life would certainly be easier if everyone used the same formats for everything. In my office, I have a DVD player, a VHS player, a SuperVHS recorder, two MiniDV decks, 1 HDV deck, 1 Digital8/Hi8 deck, 1 Video-8 deck, 1 Betacam SP recorder, an audio cassette recorder, a 4-track Mini-Disc recorder, 5 DVD burners, a CD burner, and a Pro-HD player. (plays HD-WMV and HD-MPEG-2 files). Oh, and a slide scanner.
And I'm sure I'll be offering Blu-Ray before 2009.