1993-2016

Digital Betacam (also known as DigiBeta) is a professional digital video cassette format developed by Sony in 1993. It was the most popular digital video format used by the television industry. It was the successor to the Betacam SP format.

It replaced both Betacam and Betacam SP, while being significantly cheaper than the first, 100% uncompressed D1 format. S tapes were available with playback times of up to 40 minutes, and L tapes with up to 124 minutes.

The Digital Betacam format records a 2.34:1 DCT-compressed digital component video signal with 10-bit YUV 4:2:2 sampling in NTSC (720×486) or PAL (720×576) resolution at a data rate of 90 Mbit/s.

Audio is recorded on four channels using uncompressed 48 kHz/20 bit PCM digital encoding. A fifth analog audio track is available for cue marking, and a linear timecode track is also included on the tape.

Another key element that helped the format spread was the SDI coaxial digital data connection between Sony Digital Betacam equipment.

It was the most popular digital videocassette format in television broadcasting in the early 2000s.

In 2016, Sony discontinued the format with the rise of digital tapeless formats.