Video Asylum

Posted by user510 (M) on January 02, 2009 at 22:50:38

In Reply to: RE: I have a few VHS movies and archived culture things, but as few as possible. posted by Harmonia on January 02, 2009 at 18:54:48

I've seen some tape failures too. iirc, part of the problem with tape stems from the lubrication used between the years 1973 - 1986 or thereabouts. The lube, which prevents the magnetic coating from sticking against the overlapping layers, would break down after several years and then the tape pack would stick, rot and shed. (Way to go Ampex;-) Still, tape produced after that period should be longer lived. According to the R2R folks, magnetic tape produced before that period had no such problem and is still found, often enough, to be in excellent condition to this day.

I've had some mechanical failures within the vhs cassette housing. Sometimes repairs within are possible. Parts are plentiful. Just cannibalize another cassette.

I'm using a 32" lcd (Samsung) so I might be able to tolerate the lower rez of vhs better than those of you with larger screens. Even so, I do crave for higher picture quality and will likely get a Blu-Ray player sooner rather than later. I just hate to abandon some of those great movies that I have on vhs.

While I don't have use for all of the editing capabilities of a pro recorder, it would be nice to maintain a higher quality consumer deck just for playback. Btw, I had a JVC vhs that I had purchased sometime around 2000. I think it was $250 or so on a discount. The Mitsubishi I'm referring to in the original post definitely provides a better picture quality than the JVC did...and it was at least 10 yrs older. On the other hand it really doesn't show impressive recording quality except with S-vhs media.

-Steve