PC vs amiga pricing in the 80s and 90's. Were PC owners getting screwed?

[B00tDisk]

I hand-built my first PC (and all since, excepting laptops and most of those I've tinkered with).  I got the money for it by selling off my A1200 030/28 with 4mb RAM and a 60mb HD and a 1084s monitor along with boxes of software.  I think I got around $450 for that.  The deal was a wash: I got a 486/100 with 8mb RAM, a 170mb hard drive, CD-ROM, VGA monitor, 1mb Trident ISA video card, mouse + keyboard.

I jumped because C= USA had died, and there was a slew of great PC games already on the horizon that the Amiga would never have: I have never had interest one in platformers, side-scrollers, etc.

While I can't speak for bang/buck at the time, I also wasn't waiting around for someone to "maybe someday" come up with a Doom-like game or hoping for some miracle whereby C= (Canada, UK, Australia, depending on who you talk to) would save the day.  Or Escom, or VisCorp.

Also?  When I was shopping for parts for the last upgrades I ever did to my Amiga my PC-using g/f at the time stopped me from shopping in AmigaWorld - in 1993 or so the 60mb HD and 4mb SIMM I put in the 1200 were way, way, way more expensive through Amiga retailers.  I got 'em through PC vendors in Computer Shopper and saved probably close to $100 on the deal.  It seems to me there was always an "Amiga Tax" involved in buying from Amiga vendors.

[B00tDisk]

Well, not according to wikipedia tho;

Many theories regarding why Sony's Betamax failed have arisen over the years. One of the more amusing (and false) is that Sony refused to allow pornographic material on their system. A quick perusal of the Betamax library reveals that adult entertainment was readily available. For example, Playboy Industries released their videos in a dual format, both Betamax and VHS, for most of the 1970s and 80s (and can be confirmed with a quick search through eBay's adult section, or other used video markets). Second, the adult industry is too small to have any lasting impact on standards selection. According to Forbes.com, adult video income is approximately $1 billion. "The industry is tiny next to broadcast television ($32.3 billion in 1999), cable television ($45.5 billion), the newspaper business ($27.5 billion), Hollywood ($31 billion), even to professional and educational publishing ($14.8 billion). When one really examines the numbers, the porn industry — while a subject of fascination — is every bit as marginal as it seems at first glance." [4]

A few points: One, you can't play cable TV on a VHS or Betamax (to wit, they don't require you run the cable through them and even so there was no standard difference).  Two, newspaper isn't videotape, educational publishing isn't videotape, Hollywood was freaking the fuck out because of videotape and certainly wouldn't wanna be lumped in with figures versus what you can buy on videotape.

Three, they're comparing oranges to wool socks.  The only thing you can compare porno video rentals to are other types of video rentals which at the birth of home video was very little.