Personal Videos Get More Valuable With Time

Unfortunately.... Videotapes Don't Last!

Imagine this....You pop the videotape of your wedding or the tape of your child's first steps into the VCR. At best, the colors and images have faded and the picture is a little snowy. Or worse, the picture is unwatchable and the sound garbled. It's not a matter of if your tape will fail but when.

Your personal videotapes will not be playable within 20 years, most likely closer to 10-15 years. But if you wait that long to preserve your videos, they won't be worth saving anyhow, because of the significant loss of video quality. The videotape was never meant to be a long term storage media. Due solely to the weakening of the binder, which holds the magnetic particles containing the video data to the plastic tape material, videotapes continually release their magnetic information particles over time until eventually the tape is unplayable. Environmental conditions can speed the process, but nothing is going to stop it.

Equally as bad, simply playing a videotape causes some wear. The older the tape is the more deterioration will take place each time it's played, because the older binder material is weaker and therefore more particles are ripped away each time it's rubbed by the spinning player heads.

Magnetic media's sensitivity to static shock or common electric fields further confirms it's inadequacy as a storage media. All or some of the information stored on videotape can be wiped out by a simple static shock or an electric field from a household device as common as a VCR, stereo, speaker or TV.

DVDs, on the other hand, have ideal characteristics for the long haul. DVDs will last a minimum of 100 years, though some tests suggest in excess of 500 years. DVDs never wear out, so they can be played millions of times without losing any quality. The data surface on DVDs is optical, not magnetic. The data surface is protected by a layer of polycarbonate, the same material used in bullet proof glass. DVD data is digital, so copies are exactly the quality same as the original. DVD video data is the format of the future and is not in jeopardy of becoming a lost format. The Library of Congress and National Archives Service use DVD and CD for long term storage. So should you.

RJC Telecom has been providing families and businesses with the highest possible quality digital imaging and videotape conversion services since 1998. Our experience, combined with the very best professional equipment available, results in the best DVDs possible.  Plus, we’ve never lost or damaged a single videotape. Service you can trust, quality that can’t be matched ….. that’s RJC Telecom.

We convert all standard tape formats - miniDV, VHS, S-VHS, VHS compact, 8mm & Hi8. ....more