What ever happened to the old myth that stuff on VHS would deteriorate over time? I got old TNG episodes I taped in the late 80s that plays just fine.
Some tapes may hold up better than others. I've got tapes from the mid-80s that are almost blank again. The resolution of the video is roughly the same as that on YouTube...
They de-magnitize if you don't store them well. Or, if you play them a couple hundred times. Or if they're taped on shitty cheap blanks, they go after a couple years. That's the only one I've had happen. I have old used rental copies of movies that had to have been played a lot, and those still go.
I store 'em either in a box on the closet or on my main storage area...a set of plastic Wal Mart snap-together shelving I got for cheap. They've been through a couple of moves. I think they're nuts.
Mary and I just watched a Tracy Ullman episode on VHS so old it had a theatrical trailer for Total Recall on it.
My 1986 VHS copy of 'Debbie Does Dishes' with Nina Hartley has practically reverted to a blank tape. Of course, I watched it about a million times in high school.
Yeah, I've got some old VHS recordings that no longer play. The worst casualties are the commercial-free copy of From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga that the local PBS station ran in 1985 or '86 and Soldiers: A History of Men in Battle (a BBC production IIRC), also from PBS in 1988 based on John Keegan's work (namely The Face of Battle, an excellent read). Storage tips: Always store the tape in the sleeve. If you don't have a sleeve, store the tape with the door on top. If the cassette is stored sitting on the door, it leaves the tape exposed to dust. Storing it the other way keeps the dust off it. If it's any consolation, even professional-grade tape deteriorates over time (though not as noticeably).
I got about 20 or so VHS I taped stuff on, but just numbered figuring I could remember what was on 'em. Ha. Going through them...beats renting.
When the mother in law was last in hospital, we took her in some videos to watch - pre-recorded, not home-taped - and a view of them turned out to be so badly deteriorated they were unwatchable. I can see a load of my tapes going to landfill in the not-too-distant future, nobody seems to be interested in them any more.
Still have a VCR and a couple of my tapes are at my flat with me. However, most of teh rest are stored at my parents' house gathering dust. I doubt I'll ever look at them again, except maybe those containing things you can't buy in the shops.
Thing that killed me was the very expensive very hi-quality Memorex tapes I bought 20 years ago to make a western movie. My friends and I had filmed a couple of hours of it before the project died. I recently got the tapes off the shelf to transfer them to my PC (and thence to DVD) only to find the tape covered with white powdery residue and almost unwatchable. Decay? Mildew? crap!
I've still got a ton of video tapes, mostly stuff that I've taped off of tv. But even the James Bond movies that I taped of off TBS in 1991 still play. The sound gets a bit off in spots, but they play. I love to watch old tapes and see the commercials from back then.
Somewhere I have a 1981 TV recording of Superman and there are definately some interesting commercials there!
I'm still figgering it out. I got some stuff on the PC, but I'm still procrastinating learning how to burn them to DVD.
The worst part is you now can't get just a standard run-of-the-mill VCR anymore, even at Wal*Mart. They all include a DVD player attached somewhere, which ups the price. I recently saw a DVD player at Wal*Mart for $29.99.
That's why I don't buy one. $60 is wayyyyyyyyyyyy too much money for such an obsolete piece of equipment.
Not only that, they're not good VCRs. We still have a 13 year old Fisher VCR. 4-Head, Hi-Fi, great quality, tons of options. Still plays great. A cheapie at Walmart lasts about a year or two, and you're lucky to get basic controls like "Play" or "Stop". Oh, and they're completely remote dependent, unlike older VCRs which could work without one if necessary. As for me, I have about 500 VHS tapes in great condition, 200 in good condition, 120 in fair condition, and I had to get rid of about 40 that had deteriorated. -J.
I got software called "Studio 9" by Pinnacle. It comes with a special connector box. You plug the audio & video outs from the VCR into the box, and USB the box to your PC. Click "capture" on ther program and hit "play" on the VCR. Piece of cheeze. You can also edit, add transitions and effects, build DVD menus, convert the video to several different formats, etc. Version 9 was REAL cheap when V 10 came out. VERY easy to work with, I just haven't had the time and energy to start figuring out the DVD mastering part.
