Of all Sony's failed proprietary formats, Betamax has to be the most iconic — the videotape format's eventual vanquishment by VHS set the stage for countless media wars down the subsequent decades. It is probably news to you, then, that Beta cassettes are still a thing you can buy. This will not be very useful news for long, however, because Sony just announced it'll stop selling them from March of next year.
The company is also taking its tiny MicroMV camcorder cassettes off the market at the same time. To be clear, Sony hasn't been trying to make a go of Betamax and MicroMV all these years; it stopped producing the last recorders back in 2002. The company's Japanese store already lists Beta tapes as being out of production, too, although you can still find new cassettes on Amazon Japan easily.
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The last Betamax products in production were the EL-500B, 2L-500MHGB, 2L-750MHGB cassettes and L-25CLP cleaning tape, and MicroMV is going out with the MGR60 tape and MGRCLD cleaning tape. For those still using any of these products in 2015, we here at The Verge salute you and offer our sincerest commiserations.
