Beta lost because of marketing. VHS marketed itself as (1) having more storage, (2) cheaper, (3) more porn (ok, not in TV ads). And it won. None of those was truly correct, except the porn. No one factor won the war for JVC, et al. It was mainly the impression that JVC managed to get across to the public of VHS's superiority. And we well know that the public doesn't give a damn about quality, that was Beta's one point.

Today, Sony seems to have learned from that. They have managed to convince both Best Buy and Circuit City to dump HDDVD in the corner for BD. Even though Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic will not have players out for 3-4 more months. And their encoder is faulty. And they can't make a dual layer disc to save their lives. It's very impressive marketing so far that people still think BD is superior.