Despite the technical advantage, Betamax was later to market than VHS, and by the time it arrived, the video rental industry had been born, and all the movies available for rent were on VHS tapes. Although the rental houses started adding Betamax copies to their shelves, by then it was already too late. The only thing that kept Betamax alive in the UK domestic market was the Sanyo Betamax VTC-5000 VCR, which was cheaper than any VHS machines, and a bargain for those of us who valued the time-shifting of broadcast TV as being more important than watching rented movies.
One area where Betamax reigned supreme was in Audio Mastering in recording studios - Sony made a stereo PCM encoder that connected to a Betamax deck, which was widely used for around 20 years to make the digital masters for transferring to CDs.
Although Betamax was generally a failure in the domestic market, Sony miniaturised the technology, called it Video-8, and conquered the camcorder market with it a few years later.