Im torn. On one hand yes everything is available digitally. On the other I like having hard copies and not thinking about backing up 3 hard drives and random hard drive failure and managing an even larger library on a computer…its nice just to have the media exist. And what happens when our ability to own media disappears (which looks to be a very real possibility).
They do take up space. I may keep the ones I really like and get rid of others.
I easily have over 300. Along with dvds, but im keeping those.
VHS is low resolution and degrades over time, no reason to keep it unless you have tapes of things that don’t exist on better formats.
Yeah, a backup that gradually destroys itself on such a short timescale isn’t much of a backup.
Plus if you’re worried about ownership, just remember there arr always other acquisition methods.
Pete Davidson bought a whole collection of VHS tapes on ebay, maybe you can find a buyer.
Before you do that, I would like to point out I donated the entire TNG collection, and later found out it could have been sold for over a thousand.
My response is likely to be unpopular but it’s how I feel. I had ungodly gobs of physical media years ago - VHS, DVDs, BlueRay, CDs, etc. It got to where it was more of a hassle to dig through and find the item then slub it over to the equipment just to enjoy my media.
I digitized everything and stuck it on a home media server. Now it’s as simple as grabbing the remote and pick what I want and it’s done. I’m much happier now.
Same. Physical media will degrade and fail. If you want reliable access to the VHS collection then you need to digitize and create backups. About 10% of my collection wasn’t able to be digitized due to degradation
Maybe the internet archive would be interested (but shippibg may be expensive)
The USPS media rate is inexpensive. It’s less than $1 each.
Oh thats cool:)
If I had to send these from greece I think it’d be very expensive (I think they accept stuff from two points in the world, somewhere in the usa and somewhere in uk, both outside eu which makes it very expensive).
Do you even have a working VHS player? The rubber pinch rollers degrade after a few years.
I have 7.
Am hoarder.
Also theyre very easy to fix.
You say that because you can still buy the parts. But those parts are getting rarer and rarer.
I think in a while they will turn into collector’s items
We donated ours to a local nonprofit org that rents them out. Such a cool group of film nerds running this operation. https://www.weluvvideo.org/
When I got rid of mine, I made a list of all the media I still wanted a copy of and then, over time, found second-hand or new old stock DVD versions online. That was ten years ago and I’ve still not broken the cling wrap on some of the replacements I bought. Just goes to show how much I really needed them!
That said, my collection was far less than 100, so your collection might be an expensive endeavour to replace.
Tapes with crud recorded from TV and computers went to landfill. All the commercial ones went in a consignment I had a charity organisation collect along with a lot of other things I was clearing out at the same time. In 2025, I’m not sure charities will accept them any more.
I did manage to digitise some of the stuff from the TV / computer ones with an old VCR and a TV card in the computer, but that must be coming up on 20 years ago now. That’s all on a DVD around here somewhere. In one of those multi-disc wallets. Remember those?
They can still be had online if you feel like paring down the space your DVDs take up. People used to use them for burned DVDs, of course, but there’s nothing stopping you from putting legit DVDs in one. Make a separate binder for the DVD covers if you really want to, and send the cases to landfill or recycling.
If you want to go really nuts, do the same with Blu-rays.
I do regret getting rid of a few things during that clear-out, but maybe only one tape had some sentimental value. And yet, if I’d kept it, I’m think I’d be equally disturbed that I didn’t get rid of it with the rest of them.
Yup, get better copies first, and then see what’s left over. Most will have much better versions available, and for the few that don’t pick up a conversion kit, and bring them into the digital age.
Don’t. Physical media is 1000 times better than streaming.
I get all the sides of this dilemma and I think it comes down to personal choice. I got rid of most of mine and kept a handful. Then we had kids and I herited an old TV/vid combo so they were able to watch my wife’s old Disney movies she’d kept. For a few years there they enjoyed a brief renaissance, but as they got older and less keen the tapes just take up space.
We can access every thing we want online, and, while the VHS does have that nostalgia, my children aren’t that into the novelty of it anymore and would prefer to stream stuff instead.
In terms of ownership, I struggle with which physical formats to retain. Musically I’ve kept my vinyl, but we’ve got 100s of CDs that I can’t bring myself to toss out. I’ve got a load of Blu-ray which is cool, but never gets played.
Even all the media files in my NAS are rarely used. It seems like IPTV is king or us at the moment, and physical media is somewhat redundant. But hey, we’ve got a basement, so there’s always the option to store them out of site, which is a workable compromise for now.
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No.
Donate if possible.
We had those, too, until the last tape recorder in the family died. We tried to get rid of them, but not even the thrift store took them anymore. And that was many years ago.
No. If they are meaningful to you, keep them. If you’re worried about the data failure of them, just watch them once every 10 years and it should renew the magnetic stuff on them.
I work in a place with a lot of old technology and the general consensus is that magnetic media needs to go through the motions every 10 years to stay healthy.
but we have had success accessing 25+ year old media. so there’s no scientific line about how long that stuff should survive.
I do subscribe to the 10 year access rule because not all media was created equal.
just watch them once every 10 years and it should renew the magnetic stuff on them.
VHS doesn’t work like that. It’s not digital. It doesn’t rewrite on a read. Magnetic hard drives and tapes don’t rewrite on a read either.
You need to copy them to renew and VHS is analog so every copy is worse.
the head of the vhs is using magnetic resonates to read the tape, that magnetic interaction is the same thing that tape has always used. it is the same
edit: the real problem with VHS is the moving tape and how fragile the process is. the tape head can stick to the tape or the tape sticks to the wheels or the vhs cassette rollers sticking
Reading does not refresh the data! The head passes over the magnetic domains and that induces a current in the wires in the head.
That process does not in any way refresh the magnetic domains.
Yes it is the same for digital tape but at least with digital tape you can read the data and re write it perfectly onto a new tape because of ECC. Simply reading a digital tape doesn’t refresh the data either.
VHS is analog. The signal read will be slightly weaker than original. That signal will be written onto a new tape as weaker because it is analog. Nothing in the VHS recorder knows what the original was supposed to be.
yeah, I was mistaken about VHS reading tape data.
thanks for the kind rebuke.
