Betamax was a flop only in marketing.
Well it lost the "format war" to VHS, so people stopped making Beta tapes or players. I suppose you could argue that it was not really a flop, but was simply displaced by a similar product. I still remember 8-tracks, which were moderately successful for a while ;-)
Soon to be added: Zune.
That's very true. Betamax had much better quality than VHS and it worked easier. VHS had the awkward going into the VCR, a door had to open, the mechanism had to grasp the tape to make it work. Remeber the "clunk clunk" noises when you inserted a VHS tape?
I think what probably boosted VHS over Beta was the fact that VHS could fit 6 (and even 8) hours on a single tape while Beta was restricted to 2 hours. The quality of the picture was certainly much better on a Beta tape.