Videotape format war

[NJRoadfan]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

IMHO VHS EP recording quality depends a lot on the deck. Some newer HiFi decks can record fairly decently on good tapes, and EP SVHS-ET tapes can preform almost as well as SP SVHS on a good blank...OTOH some early decks look TERRIBLE on EP even playing back a good tape.

It didn't help that most modern VCRs defaulted to EP recording speed. I have a GE here that had to be set to SP after plugging it in.

Panasonic actually created an even slower tape speed called "VP" on some of their DVD Recorder-VHS combo decks. It runs the tape 4X slower so you can squeeze 8 hours onto a T120 tape. With modern head design and no requirements for backwards compatibility, the recording quality is apparently decent. Some Amazon reviews even claim these "VP" speed tapes will playback on older VHS decks. I do wonder why anyone would be recording VHS tapes on a deck that has a superior quality DVD recorder attached to it though.