What should I do with my old VHS collection?

:l am I the only one who still uses my VHS player?

@rangerr No, I use my VCR as well
What movies do you have? maybe I can take some off your hands

Keep them of course. 10–20 years from now VHS tapes will be collectibles

I give ‘em to my kids to destroy. Though I do think that libraries will take them.

We don’t take tapes. We’re trying to phase them out in favor of DVD’s. But it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

When I got rid of mine, I took a bunch to work and let coworkers pick thru them. A friend who worked at a day care center took the kids tapes. What was left went to Goodwill.

I still use mine and still make recordings occasionally. I don’t want a TIVO telling me or someone else what I watch.

VHS tapes? Oh yeah! Those things I use to watch movies on as a kid. I would try to sell them on eBay or at a garage sale. Some people may be collecting them.

A lot of children films and romantic comedies…

If you or a friend has a VHS player, might as well keep them or give them away. If there’s none to be found, might as well put them in your recycling bin. They’re plastic aren’t they? Wouldn’t it be great if everything was set up to work with just digital information strait on a player’s hard drive instead of all this packaging nonsense? At this point, even DVD’s should be outdated.

You can always make an effort to copy them into DVDs.

You could get crafty.

Copy to DVD. LITE-ON makes a DVD recorder that you can disables the copy protect.

Then use the VHS tape as string. For wrapping and tying stuff.

Keep them. Old technology shouldn’t be forgotten.

@syzygy2600 – I am with you! :-)

Can’t have too many door stops.

Get them copied to DVD, there are studios that will do this for you if you don’t want to invest in the equipment to do it yourself.

We recently had 300 hrs of 8mm home movies transfered to DVD and it wasn’t that expensive.

@ChazMaz some VHS versions of movies are different cuts or contain bonus features that aren’t on dvd versions. I have a VHS copy of Star Wars: A New Hope that contains a behind the scenes making of feature that’s not on any DVD release of Star Wars. The VHS copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula contains a scene that has been censored on subsequent DVD releases, ect. It’s good to hold on to things.

You could just store them away, might be worth something eventually. I’ve got tons of tapes plus two VCR’s which I never use anymore, ecxept when I want to watch the only uncut version of Maximum Overdrive which was ever made, on VHS; the DVD version sucks ass and has no bonus content whatsoever but I just can’t discard it all.

You have to be careful if you store them. They will deteriorate eventually. You may not be able to view them again, even if you have a working VCR.

@WestRiverrat Hmm…I have lotsa tapes that I wanna conserve, what do you reckon is the best way to maintain them? Specific temperatures and all?

@Symbeline Keep them out of direct sunlight and in the protective sleeve/case when not in use. Tapes will degrade a little bit every single time they are played. The average VHS tape will remain playable for 25 years and begin to show some deterioration after about 5–10 years. Under optimal care they can remain playable for over 30 years.

@syzygy2600 Right, mine are all in their original cases, or cardboard sleeves for the blank ones I taped things on…not to mention those few I never did return to the video store and still have those bulky Rambo plastic cases…>_>
I keep mine in boxes in my closet, that should be good right?

As long as the temp is below 70F you should be fine, low humidity helps too.

I just dumped a few of my daughter’s a couple of days ago (after first copying them onto DVD). I guess if you keep them long enough they might be considered antiques, but the whole idea behind antiques is that they must be unique, masterwork or at least relatively rare. I know some gramophone records or old black&white pictures can be priceless, but most old novels or cassettes that were mass-produced in the mid-20th c are useless, and I doubt if they’ll ever be worth much.

I think the same goes for VHS, mainly because you need equipment to view them (unlike old books or photographs) and also because they’re generally low-quality, have to be rewinded, and can easily go bad (vinyl albums are a lot more durable for example, and could even be heard with an impromptu needle if need be, by a future collector or even archaeologist).

I say dump them in the landfill. Not all technologies are meant to survive the test of time.

We do not know what posterity will consider important; we cannot send it a questionnaire. Offer your VHS, LP collections to the nearest library with substantial AV holdings (or to your local library). We in the Caribbean are discovering too late, that we should not have thrown away those 45s and LPs when the compact disc came in.

Send them to me; I prefer watching videos to DVDs.

Save them for your grandkids to sell for a million dollars.

Don’t get rid of them! =)

Copy them if and when you can. Eventually they will go bad. That magnetic tape (field) degrading over time.