Someone just gave me a load of VHS tapes

[Ed in Tx]

Originally Posted by site123a

So pretty much 400 hours of recording off of a 8hr tape, correct?

With an 8 hr tape maybe, depending how gentle the particular tape transport is with the tape. Your 8 hr T-160 (also T-180 and even some T-200 10 hour(!) tapes were made) are thinner base and oxide coating, and the stresses of going through the angle guides etc are harder on the thinner tape which is less durable than standard T-120 tape.


Regarding the thinner oxide coating, I measured quite a few brands and thicknesses of tapes, and the 8 hr tapes consistently had up to 3 to 4 dB lower RF at the output of the video head amplifier than a T-120. This is an FM signal that gets recorded and played back, and demodulated to video, and the weaker the playback RF signal is, the noisier the playback video will be. So there's a trade off of picture quality for hours. Also the thinner tapes are more prone to visible dropouts that also sometimes can be heard in the hi-fi audio. BTW some of the highest playback RF T-120 tapes with the quietest lowest dropout PB video were Fuji HG, TDK, and JVC tapes. The highest PB-RF I measured was a Fuji H471 ST-120 S-VHS tape recorded and played in a standard VHS machine. Had about 4 dB higher PB RF than any standard tape I had tested which made that machine look damned good!