Can you still buy DECENT quality blank VHS tapes?

[Ed in Tx]

Beta pix quality did beat out VHS a little in the beginning, but the mechanical complexity of Beta was a whole other issue. Hard if not impossible to produce a Beta transport mechanism that could compete with the cost of a VHS.

Pix quality wise, originally Beta could reproduce about 270 lines of horizontal resolution vs VHS 250 lines because it was not possible at the time with that technology to record much over 3 mHz onto the tape, and both formats had to downconvert the 3.58 mHz chroma to a lower frequency (with a drastic reduction in color resolution as a result) to get it on the tape. But when S-VHS came along that pretty much blew away any picture quality issues, as S-VHS's 400 lines of resolution exceeded broadcast video's 330 lines.

As far as recording video onto digital media, specifically DVD-R discs, how many times now have I heard or read of DVD-Rs people have archived their old tapes onto, not playing after only a few years? Likewise with the permanence of a flash memory drive. However I have Beta and VHS tapes that are 30 years old or older that still play fine.