Kodak High Standard color video VHS cassette good?
 

Hello! Anyone have any camcorder recording experience with these? Kodak is obviously a renowned name in the photography world but not too familiar with what their VHS tapes were like.

Kodak VHS Tape. Are they new stock (last few years) or old stock from before 2006 when VHS essentially was declared dead. I saw a not that Kodak would start to manufacture VHS tape in 2016 in an effort to provide limited support for the obsolete format, much like they do for Super8 film.

Interesting that Kodak invented Video8 and an early developer of Digital still cameras, but management was so wedded to wet process photography that Kodak failed to cash in on the emerging trend in the consumer market.

There's a thread on here grading different VHS tape stock, and I believe Kodak tapes were deep in the bottom of the barrel. Since the early 2000s there's really only been one OEM for blank VHS tapes. Unless I missed some hipster/niche hobbyist movement and Kodak is again making VHS tapes, the only good blanks made since around the turn of the century have been TDK E-HG/Vivid. Up until recently there was new old stock on Amazon.

Edit: Found Lordsmurf's post. http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/medi...html#post20480

As I recall, like DVD blank manufacturers there were a limited number of tape manufacturers with some using different lower quality formulations for other brands or even spooling tape that didn't pass QC for low budget pre-recorded tapes.

I don't know if because it was Beta, but I thought the exact opposite of lordsmurf regarding BASF and Fuji, rating Fuji as excellent and BASF as poor. I tried a couple of Kodak tapes and didn't like them either.

Wonder if there is a market for unused, unopened VHS and 8mm tape? I have an assortment of brand name VHS, S-VHS, and Hi8 tape tape, mostly 120s, Sony, Maxell, Fuji, TDK, and Memorex.

There are always a bunch of blank tapes on eBay. Whether or not they sell, and/or for enough money to cover your shipping costs I don't know. I haven't bought new blanks since 2008.

Yes, many, both for personal use back in the early/mid 90s, and from converting videos for others in past decades.

Kodak had
- slight color reproduction issues
- chronic magnetic dropout issues (poor tape grade)
- often (but not always) moderate grain

It was blah. Many were worse, many were better.

I don't believe Kodak actually made anything for video, and simply licensed out their brand name. It may have even been used to sell cast-off graded tapes from other manufacturers unwilling to sully their own name (or cast-off buyers reselling it, unbeknownst to the manufacturer). That happened a lot in the blank media world, both with tape and optical.

The only thing a Kodak VHS tape is good for is some sort of nostalgia, demonstrating of this "old" tech, or even just for the shell. I bought a large stack of TDK tapes 5-10 years ago, simply for the purpose of discarding the tape, and keep shells for restoration needs. We have this amusing photo of our (now passed) cat playing with an unspooled tape at home.