What freaks me out about that episode of Cowboy Bebop, is that I actually used to own a Sony Beta exactly like the one they eventually scrounge up.
Found mine in a thrift store as opposed to a abandoned ruin. All the buttons and indicators were in Japanese. How it ran on U.S. current without an adapter I'll never know! I wish I had kept it sometimes, but who knew I'd be tinkering with dead formats twenty years later? ;)