JVC was first to introduce VHS in 1976. The Video Home System is the most popular analogue video format and was used extensively until the 90’s. Inferior to the Betamax standard, VHS won the format war due to its relatively low cost. VHS was eventually relegated to the pages of history as DVD became the new domestic standard.
VHS uses half inch tape and could record for up to 3 hours in SP (standard play) mode and up to 6 hours in LP (long play) mode.
Tapes were generally available in lengths from 5 to 240 minutes. Certain VCR’s supported SLP modes which would extend record times even further.
Tape duration can be identified by a number printed on the left corner of the tape spine / back. E180 denotes a 180 minute tape.
Due to slight variations between domestic VHS machines and the fact that in most cases the home VCR was seldom serviced or cleaned, there are occasions where tapes do not play back correctly. We have a number of VCR’s both industrial and domestic and we will make slight adjustments to our VCR’s to ensure best results. We use sacrificial VCR’s and perform mechanical adjustments to ensure our machines are aligned to your tapes for best results, even if that means having to recalibrate our machines after the work. We have the skills and test equipment required to perform these adjustments.
VHS Compact (VHS C) is a smaller cassette that was designed for use in camcorders. A cassette adaptor is required to play VHS C in a standard VHS VCR.
The VHS C Cassette adaptor is only compatible with VHS C tapes. There is a misconception that Sony Video 8 / Hi8 will work with these adaptors – It won’t! The two systems are totally incompatible with one another.
SVHS – Super VHS is a high bandwidth version of VHS and provided better recording quality than standard VHS.
We can transfer VHS, VHS C and SVHS to digital files for use in archiving or editing applications. We can supply the files as compressed MP4 or uncompressed MOV.
Contact us for more information on this service.
Pricing from $50 (NZD) per hour of tape.
Prices include GST.
External USB storage is excluded.