Comment: Not really.

Beta actually predated VHS by about a year. What made VHS more appealling to the American market (the one that mattered) was its longer recording time. You could record an hour on Beta, and two hours on VHS. This led to video stores renting movies on VHS tapes, and leading the charge in this area were the adult movie studios. Beta didn't have this ability until a while later. Much like the Flash video players that dominate the browser-based video of our modern internet (as opposed to javascript, Silverlight, Windows Media, etc), the videotape wars of 30 years ago were resolved by the people who make pornography. Innovation quite often comes from the fringes of society.