The last VHS machines

[Murphyv310]

The basic picture quality of VHS (and Betamax for that matter) was poor but it was the best that could be done at the time for a reasonable cost. The public didn't seem to mind. SVHS was an improvement but never took off in a big way. VHS sound  was greatly improved later.

DVD started with a much better picture quality, provided the programme makers didn't push the data compression too hard. DVD does have downsides. The lifetime of recordable discs is poor, much worse than typical VHS tapes where even old tapes are still usually playable. The whole business of regional coding and forcing you to sit through copyright notices did nothing to endear the format to users.

Dubbing VHS to DVD is fine for viewing but not for archiving. Ordinary "spinning rust" hard drives are cheap and reliable. A 1TB HDD will hold the equivalent of over 200 DVDs for under £50. What's more you can clone it with ease to give extra backup.

Hi.
Jeffrey you're reply is a peach.
I have often wondered at the life of various media.

The shellac recording has to be the longest surviving, the production must be in the billions and the survival rate has to be high. I have many from the first decade of the 20th century and half a dozen from the 19th century, all play fine and one 19th century disc was never played before I acquired it! So long as they are not broken they "usually" play.

Tape can deteriorate, you get print through it gets sticky, stretches, can be ruined by magnetic fields and has yet to see if it can last as long as shellac, this also applies to VCR formats.

Vinyl records can be long lived too, they don't shatter like shellac but are far less robust in other areas. They can warp, melt and the groove is easily ruined by misuse. Their survival rate should be good so long as they are stored and used sensibly.

CD's are known to deteriorate, some of the discs from the early 80's no longer play, corrosion of the alloy substrate is the biggest problem, later discs are supposed to be better but only time will tell. Recordable media (CD-R/RW DVD R etc) are well known to have a limited life and even if the manufacturers try to tell you they can last 100 years how would they know? Lab tests and real life are two different things!

Minidisc............. Possibly the peach, Sony made a very clever disc, with a shutter that protects the disc from corrosive finger chemicals, a system that brings the alloy surface to a temperature that allows the over-write head to leave a lasting mechanical change to the "groove" in the disc, I use the word groove not in its real sense, the disc itself has a track like a CD but is far more robust and protected from light, UV, moisture finger chemicals etc and is robust. I'd like to see if this media will last 100 years +, I have a sneaky feeling it will!

HDD, electro mechanical, we all know how often they fail............. I'm sure we all have stories from ourselves and friends. How many will survive 100 years and retain their data?

Solid state memory devices............... Who knows, my feeling is they will be poor, I'm no expert but in 100 years can anyone think they will retain their data?

To me shellac will be number 1, Minidisc and Vinyl will be a close second.