I agree with you on the bit about only watching a fraction. I've been taping stuff since 1980 and my tastes have completely changed, especially over the last 10 years

I have the tapes stacked 33 in a plastic tub, 3 tubs to a shelf, 8 shelves floor to ceiling. That is 792 tapes approx per shelf unit. So most of the 1800 tape collection fits on a couple of 3-foot wide shelf units.

I'm not convinced on the space saving. Suppose I put an hour of material on each DVD. There are a lot of 4 hours tapes and quite a few in long play. So I probably have at least 9000 hours of material. That is 90 x 100 disc tubs of DVDs. I reckon I could get 12 x 100 disc tubs on each shelf, there are 8 shelves so that gives me 96 tubs on one shelf unit. 9600 DVDs. Basically I reduce the storage space by a bit more than half

To achieve that I have to spend 9000 hours copying. That is 750 days, assuming 12 hours a day and at 20p a disc it costs me £1800

I suppose I could compromise the quality by putting two hours onto each disc and I could buy a number of players and recorders. Say I bought five players and recorders (might need extra screens too). I could get it down to 'just' 150 days (five months) of full time disc-inserting, monitoring and labelling work. Somehow I don't see this happening The reality is that only a tiny fraction is really precious.

Will there be equipment to play DVDs 20 years from now and will the actual DVD discs still be playable in 2036? VHS tape is probably good for at least 60 years if the equipment is available and it is well stored. My 28-year-old VHS tapes are still perfect. What storage methods may be around ten years from now? Imagine if you dispose of your tapes and some much better, higher quality option becomes available. I'm thinking maybe so much storage space that everything could be stored uncompressed (25Gbs per hour? That would be 225Tbs for my entire collection). Seems unlikely but look what's happened in the last ten years.

It's hard to know what to do for the best.

Originally Posted by orsetto
It sort of depends on your circumstances. If you have a large house with storage space for all those tapes, and you're of a "certain age", and don't expect to ever move to another house, it does make sense just to convert your favorites to DVD and leave the rest as tapes. The reality is those of us with huge collections don't actually watch 90% of what we have: we just like the idea of having the library handy if we DO decide we want to see something we recorded long ago. As long as the tapes are stored carefully and you have a supply of good VCRs to play them, this could be a workable plan.

In my case, and I'm sure this is true for many others, the greatest allure of DVD recorders is that the discs take up a fraction of the storage space needed for VHS tapes.