BLANK VHS TAPES

The availability of blank VHS tapes has been decreasing for many years. With the introduction of the DVD movie format in 1997, the decline in production and sales of commercially recorded VHS tapes began. The DVD movie format caught on quickly after its introduction and movie DVDs eventually squeezed movie VHS tapes out of rental stores. For the most part, VHS movies do not exist in rental stores anymore. Some stores might still sell VHS movies, but the quality of titles available is less than impressive and quite narrow.

Blank VHS tapes have been a little more resilient than the commercially recorded ones. Because many households posses several VCRs and VCR recording is well known and easy, the blank VHS video tapes for recording television have been hanging around. However, recordable DVD formats have become popular now that DVD recorders are very reasonably priced and more and more people have become familiar with the advantages provided by optical disc media. The use of PVRs or personal video recorders which mostly makes use of hard drives for storing television programming has also contributed to less use of VHS blank tapes for recording.

Not many brand options are available in stores that still sell these blank VHS videotapes. Also, considering that these blank tapes are not in high production and no longer produced in top notch manufacturing facilities, the quality of any new VHS tapes sold nowadays is likely to be suspect.

In summary, although blank tapes are still available in the VHS format, the writing is on the wall. Eventually, production and availability of this tape format will be even less than it is today. It is not a format that should be used to store valuable video memories nowadays.