Also, we have one of those TV games from the 70s.
Two joysticks, orange unit with buttons for different games, battery driven, makes a beeping noise and you play tennis, basket-ball or target shooting on it. It needs a TV, so I don't think we'll be playing it again!
Yes, you're right. Betamax was Sony. We bought it from a rental company in Helensburgh in the early 80s. Renault dealers were giving them out for twelve months free rental if you bought a new Renault. Some folk kept them on and some handed them back, so we bought one of the returned ones. We had to take out finance to buy it - £600 new, but thinking about it, we paid £399.99 and took a couple of years to pay it off. It was a fantastic bit of kit.
Top loading, programable for up to two weeks in advance, took up to 3hrs of tape with the facility to set it to extended play for 6hrs. The movie rental shops back then had two isles - VHS and Betamax, slowly over the years the Beta isle became less and less. By the time we moved here to Cornwall, the rental shops had all but gone over to VHS. We managed for some years into the late 80s or even early 90s.
The cassettes were smaller and lighter than the VHS. Beta was neater!
Mick F. Cornwall