Should I trash my VHS masters once I'm Done?

[Cole]

I am a keen collector of British televison, mainly drama and comedy and I have been recording off-air (on and off) and buying pre-recoded VHS for about twenty years.

But I simply don't have the room to keep all the tapes I have ever owned. As a result, I have to be very picky about which ones I keep.

For example: if there is a tape of a televison drama that I took off-air in the eighties, then I would keep this as in many cases, they haven't been released on either VHS or DVD and at one time or another, I would want to re-do these in the best quality that I can.

For something that has been commercially released, to keep the tape isn't as important as if disaster struck and I lost my DVD conversion, then I could always re-place it with the commerical copy.

The only time I wold not part with a tape that has been commercially released is when it is know that the commercial release has been cut from its original transmission; I would prefer to have the original broadcast version.

More recently I have been capturing off-air to a DVD Recorder or PC, so I suppose I am putting all my eggs in one basket now...

[Wile_E]

This topic of VHS/DVD lifetime will outlive us all! LOL! But I don't think the media itself will last that long. When I bought my first CD Recordable drive(Yamaha 16x), I used cheap media. I've had some Memorex CD-R's that went bad on me. They were put in a CD binder, and put on a shelf in my closet. They were readable at that time, and I verified the discs for C1/C2 errors. About one year later...one-third of about 50 discs had unreadable areas. Files couldn't be read. I checked for C1/C2 errors again, and the amount of bad sectors amazed me. Good thing these discs were just copies of some my audio CD's and PC games. I still have the original pressed CD's.

Since then, I spend more on media, and get discs that supposedly use better dye. Maxell and Fuji - Made in Japan. The same thing goes for my DVD-R's. I suggest you people get a program to scan for C1/C2 errors and a drive that can report these errors to you. Check your discs at least every year. Use hard drives to store copies of your media. I just bought a couple of 300GB drives to store my DV files. After they get full, I will put them in my closet and never touch them again, unless my DVD-R copies go bad. You may also want to look at tape backup too.
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[nwo]

The best to do would be put it on Mini Dv tape as DVD just sucks, and anyone who says otherwise
is talking BULL.

[lordsmurf]

DV tapes are magnetic media, they will fall apart twice as fast as optical media. MiniDV is not an archival format.

[gll99]

Not to rain on anyone's parade but....

If you want to follow the letter of the law (fair use.... I know there's no all encompassing law ) ... then at least with original vhs commercial tapes I would hold on to those as proof of conversion.

The ones you do not own but have recorded from tv etc.., I guess, as most people understand it, you are technically entitled to one viewing under the fair use provisions.

Although I doubt anyone will search your home it's a good idea to stay legal in a public forum

[slacker]

I think the truth of the matter is that no one really knows for sure how long magnetic tape or optical media will last. There is still no scientific evidence one way or the other. All of the private and government funded organizations working in this area are still trying to define how to even test for longevity, reliability and stability for God's sake. They can't even get past 1st base. I'll be long dead before we ever know.

Due to the organic nature of optical media and the magnetic nature of tape, both forms have a rather short shelf life influenced significantly by a host of environmental factors. The wisest statement I've read to date said that in light of all of the conflicting information and the inability of the average consumer to identify reliable, quality media of both sorts, everyone should refresh their "signal" by transferring their data, video or otherwise, from media to media at least every 5 years, and keep both the parent and child copies.

Makes sense to me!

[Timoleon]

bionickaren ---

I also have a betamax recording from 1979 of a late-night tv college comedy revue hosted by a horrible old crone of yesteryear --- Jaye P. Morgan http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0604736/. I transfered it over to VHS in 1984, and then transfered that tape to DVD in 2003. The only thing I've noticed is that because the tape had been played many times (not by me, but by my brother --- he was in the revue), the center of the tape itself is a little bit "soft" --- showing some electromagnetic scrambling of information from all the years of use.

It's odd, but the top and bottom borders of the tape show no distortion at all --- I wonder if that has something to do with the way the read/write head of the VCR sits on the tape?

Anyway, 27 years isn't too bad...

[MOVIEGEEK]

"Optical media will outlast analog tape by at least 2-3 times."

Do you have facts to back that up Lordsmurf?Nobody can say for sure how long optical media will last(all the tests are simulated) but magnetic tape has been proven to last 50 years.
I have 23 year old VHS tapes that still look good but the key to longevity is record once and don't play it too much.
http://www.tvhandbook.com/History/History_tape.htm
http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2006-04-14-voa45.cfm

To the OP:I would hold on to the masters.

[RabidDog]

Donate your old Vhs tapes to a third world charity?

[ashtones]

For the longest archival time possible you must carve it in stone.

[JAB285]

For the longest archival time possible you must carve it in stone.

[lordsmurf]

Nobody can say for sure how long optical media will last(all the tests are simulated) but magnetic tape has been proven to last 50 years.

This is all fallacy.

Optical media has indeed been around for 20-25 years now. There is plenty of data to examine. DVD is only the latest revision of optical media (actually Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will be), but their are far more similarities in optical media than differences. The tests ARE NOT simulated.

Magnetic storage, on the other hand, especially consumer grade stuff, has been proven to have a rather dismal lifespan. Many of the tapes sold in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s were of poor quality, and will last a decade or two at best. Older consumer VHS tapes, the 1970s and early 1980s tapes people love to claim "last forever" are actually made a bit better. It always comes back to Japanese media (and a few other select locations), before cheap crap was dumped into the market en masse. Video tapes from the 1960s and 1970s, pre-VHS formats, used for broadcasting mostly, have not faired well.

The first video tapes of practical use, reel to reel, where invented 50 years ago (1956). Exactly 50 years the format has existed. I don't know where you're getting this "at least" stuff. Most early tapes are unrecoverable or severely damaged. Huge numbers of tapes "only" 20-30 years old are having major issues, moisture and playback being the top two killers.

While optical media may have "only" been around for ~25 years, the results are leaps and bounds better compared to analog tape media across the same timeline. It does not even compare. One of the only flukes in optical media to date was some poorly made Laserdiscs (poor glues led to metal oxidation on the pressed discs).

If anything, honestly, those simulated tests tend to be too pessimistic or too optimistic. Why? Because some _______ (insert insult here) is always trying to prove something, they're not willing to take the realist approach. They juggle variables in their favor and have few constants.

[MOVIEGEEK]

I should of said "recordable" optical media,pressed media will definately last longer.

[lordsmurf]

I should of said "recordable" optical media,pressed media will definately last longer.

There is no proof of that.

Dye may actually be more stable than the pressed metals. There have been longevity studies that go both ways on this topic. They all reached into the multi-decade marks.

The leading factors of "my disc died" type non-sense are
-- #1 - Reflectivity or laser problems, the disc data is intact, there is secondary issues causing an inability to read or play data. Try other players or readers, and it may take a while to find one that works.
-- #2 - The disc was never good to begin with. There was either no testing performed, or it was tested with poor methods (especially people that ONLY do "scans" of discs, such as PI/PO/PIE scans on DVD media). People need to quit buying cheap garbage to burn on.

These are optical platters, technology made to last. Not pancakes that mold in 2-3 days.

[InXess]

I think you're forgetting that tape analogue storage (like VHS) would allow to view the material even if the tape has some major flaws or bad areas. Not so with digitally stored stuff. I've never had a need to attempt recovery of any mpeg2 files or AVI's but a corrupt file caused by a bad sector(s) on a DVD media normally renders the whole file/disk useless.
DVD players / readers simply freeze if bad fragment is detected... In case of CD/DVD you loose one whole piece being a song or VOB file if lucky enough to read the rest of it. If the error occurs on the lead-in the whole disk is garbage (file system/disk structure info is gone...). Most readers/players, that I know of, do not have the ability to skip over (auto-correct and ignore) bad areas and retrieve the undamaged portion.
That is the major drawback of optical media. Amateur equipment doesn't allow to selectively lift whatever good is left on the disk but may reject the disk in its entirety. In this case ALL the material is lost UNLIKE with magnetic media.

No coaster was ever created with VHS tape but tons of plastic were thrown away due to bad media or bad writes (with irretrievable information). This is the reason why optical media IMHO will never enjoy as much user confidence as magnetic.
I'd hate to find out 10-15 years from now that due to some bad sectors even in marginal quantity 50% of my stuff is unrecoverable and permanently lost. Unfortunately this scenario is quite probable. Even the thought of this gives me shivers...

[slacker]

InXess, I read that as well. Good point!

You will find studies on both sides of the table. I've seen studies that claim 2-5 years for both magnetic tape and dvd MEDIA, and studies that claim multiple decades for both magnetic tape and dvd media. You can argue until the cows come home! Arguing these points is a total waste of time.

The goal for most people I believe is to record video as efficiently as possible and have it "available" and "playable" for as long as possible. So all issues pertaining to that goal are significant, i.e. recording device, media, player, storage method, blah, blah. And should be considered in the equation when evaluating storage methods.

Now I know from personal experience that all 100+ hours of my personal VHS and Hi8 home video collection (from 1980-2004) are in flawless condition. That is a FACT. I also know that 7% of my home video conversions to Verbatim MCC-003 and TY 8x +R dvd media, supposedly the best out there, done within the last year are NOT playable on ANY player. That is also a FACT. So...

I archive to miniDV tape, as well as make two dvd copies just in case. Other than recording to hdd, that's all I have to work with realistically. Personally, I think this technology is far from being perfected. It ISN'T perfected. It stinks! They have a long way to go!

Have fun! But don't expect miracles anytime soon!