Can you still buy DECENT quality blank VHS tapes?

[radiotvnut]

With all this talk about VCR's lately and my latest VCR find got me thinking "does anyone still make decent quality blank VHS tapes anymore". The last ones I bought were RCA branded and the recording quality was crap. I like to record old TV shows and I often do this on the SLP setting so I can fit 6-7 episodes on a tape. I am aware that the SLP setting is not the greatest quality; but, it seems like what I've recorded over the last few years has been inferior to what I recorded back in the '80's and early '90's when VCR's were still a hot item. The only thing I can come up with is that the tapes that are currently available are of inferior quality to the tapes that were made 20 years ago. In fact, I wonder how much longer we'll be able to buy new VHS tapes of any quality. I know VCR's are considered "dead" by the electronics industry and, AFAIK, the only ones available today are those cheap made DVD/VCR combinations and most don't even have a tuner built in anymore. This might be a good time for us VCR owners to stock up on blank tapes.

[Sam Cogley]

Another option - you can get a decent DVD burner for around $100, with a digital tuner built in. Better quality than VHS, too.

[vinyldavid]

SVHS tape? IIRC you can still get that....it might work.

[radotvguy]

i see new vhs tapes at flea markets all the time

[andy]

000

[AndyMack]

Was walking through my local Wal-Mart a couple of weeks ago when I spotted two stacks of new VHS blanks - one some generic brand, the other were Sony's! I might grab 'em next time I go back even though I haven't fired up my VCR in years. I have to get something going to record the local analog shutoffs next month.

[edison64]

Here is a tip from back in the day, the more the cassette weighs the better the quality, still have many specials recorded on el cheapo off brand tapes that out weigh 2-1 on big brands my favorites were Avanti Aldi brand $1.59 and Gemini k-mart.
most stores still sell a limmited quantity of tapes.

[tasha]

We've got Sony VHS at our Wal-Mart, every day.

[Jeffhs]

I can get RCA VHS cassettes for 98 cents at Big Lots. The recording quality, although probably not as good as other brands, is plenty good enough for my purposes, which these days is mostly time shifting.

[Snade]

I think they still sell VHS tape at Walgreen's or CVS drug stores.

Many times it is on sale.

[mech986]

Does this assume that all your VCR's have been checked, heads and tape path cleaned, the heads are still good, all pinch rollers working correctly and a good alignment has been done on them?

Also, the electrolytic caps in the power supply and circuit boards have also been replaced - remember many of these VCR's are now at least 10 years old (the good Japanese heavier ones before all that Funai and Korean gear came in) so they're in need of maintenance.

Just so you'll get the best out of any tape.

Bart

[Arkay]

Timely thread for me. Just a few days ago, someone in my neighborhood threw out a nice, clean-looking "Hi Fi" VCR with Titanium heads, etc... Curious, I picked it up from where it lay beside the trash can, and ... it works PERFECTLY! Not quite in the same class as my JVC/Victor X-1 Limited (Rare Japan-market-only pro/studio model wrapped in an elegant hi-fi housing), but a great second "daily driver", for free! This got me looking again at my tapes, and thinking about things I can still do with VHS, like making hi-fi sound recordings. Which led to the same question of, "Where can I find GOOD tapes?"

The best VHS tapes made were "Professional" tapes. I used to buy them and use them exclusively to tape off copies of LDs I rented from the shop. Perhaps questionable ethically, but LDs, when new, were very expensive!

I've looked and looked for NOS "Pro" quality VHS tape since then, and have failed to find ANY. The VHS tapes being sold new these days seem to always be relatively ordinary tape. Boo-hoo!

An audio consignment shop here recently had perhaps 100 such hi-end tapes with classical music recordings and concerts, etc... taped off on them, all matching with neat labels, etc... but I thought their cost was a bit higher than I wanted to pay. You might look for something like that; someone trying to get rid of their "collection". Alternatively, get a Beta recorder and find a TV studio that has gone digital (most have) and will cull their old, archived recordings.

I've "recycled" some of the old pro tapes I recorded way-back-when, because some of the things I taped off back then I've since bought on (now-cheap) LDs or on DVDs. The tapes seem to still be in excellent shape; it's a pretty durable medium!

But some of the tapes I made back then off the television include historic news broadcasts about things like the fall of the Berlin Wall, that I want to keep, so even after the "recycle sort", I don't have enough GOOD blank tapes.

Of course, I don't have and so far cannot find enough DATs, either...
Nor enough DCCs...
At least I can still buy great-quality MDs, even if only in one or two places!

To make it worse, the old guy with the stall selling cassette tapes near my home, who carried the best-still-available "That's" line from Japan, is gone, as happens to people after they grow old. Now I have to go all the way across town to a place that only has occasional and limited stock, to get them. And I've systematically scoured most of Hong Kong shops clean of any remaining NOS Metal cassette tapes, over the past 3 years or so. So you can include cassettes in the list of getting-hard-to-find media.

Playing with "dead" formats is sometimes challenging. The hardware is out there, often still in good shape and very cheap... but when the software disappears,... sigh!

[Bill R]

The Durabrand tapes we sell at Wal-mart come from Maxell.

Bill R

[Ed in Tx]

Best tape you might still be able to buy for VHS or S-VHS is the Fuji ST-120



or the "Pro" version H471S



S-VHS tapes work great with regular VHS recorders. Will produce a higher RF playback level for a higher PB S/N ratio and near zero dropouts.

[newhallone]

Of course, I don't have and so far cannot find enough DATs, either...

Yeah those are pretty much gone now.

I have a couple from college I need to get stuff off. I have been trying to find a dat machine locally for awhile with no luck. I have some archived recordings of my grandfather copied off reel to reel and some projects from school. They didn't quite have cd burners out when I graduated. So it was either dump it on dat or on an expensive jaz drive.