Video has blue-purple haze on side, grayed on other?
 

See attached image. This is the only tape that does this and playing it on other VCR players yield the same result. The left side edge of the video has a purple-bluish haze and the right side edge is black and white/grayed out. Is this a sign of tape degradation or faulty recording with the video camera etc? The tape is a Memorex Pro Series T-120 that is from 1985.

It's mostly in the overscan anyway, so not worth correcting. Just mask and move on.

I've seen technical explanations of why this happens, both in this forum and at VH, but it's really nothing more than trivia. Certain decks may be able to stave off the noise from leaking as badly into the image, but not by much.

The is something that happens at record time. Not at play, not a degradation.

It's a chroma artifact.