Who Is Still Buying VHS Tapes?

I've digitized my family video VHS tapes using an old computer and a tv-card, but apparently there are some 8mm tapes from before my time that could use digitizing as well but I don't know how I would go about doing it.

The rewind machines ranged from less than a minute to a couple, depending on where the tape was. Many rental places had multiple machines too.

That adds up real quick. Rental place moves a few hundred movies an evening. Not rewinding made life hell for the staff.

Most VCRs will do it at the end of tape. So the "was not kind, did not rewind" case was largely people stopping the movie part way through, or right at end credits, and just not pressing rewind.

I made sure my fam rewinded. And my little one has already made her stand on this clear. "Always rewind papa." I had explained the bright green sticker we have on one tape.

She short cut her own self!

Wants to watch a full movie, bot have to manage the tape at the start of the experience, lol!

On that note, stickers work! Little ones notice them big. They seem to get that they matter some how and want to know why.

Anyway, from our point of view, being the renter, it is someone else's problem.

As soon as people get a collection, the tables turn. It is who ever enjoyed the tape denying the next person their sweet experience.

Months later the video screen had been replaced with an interactive touch screen.

Edit: And tactile has mental connotations. "A little bit" on a physical dial is a target one can feel and compare in ways that are immediate, thought is action ways.

I unfortunately fell for one of those 'exclusive' docu streaming services and within minutes wanted to get a refund.

Nothing to do with the choice as your are right Poland has amazing choices. From high end brands to low-cost, high quality brands too.

Unfortunately I think AACS 2.0 has moved to always online. That's a shame because it basically means you're getting sold a disc of bytes noone can use ever again, once the servers go down...

I gave up on it, and went back to DVD.

I wasn't aware of that trailer though, because I don't actually have a BluRay player. I popped the BluRay into my computer and ripped the episodes with MakeMKV. :)

For me the big things are speed and the color gamut glowing phosphors in tubes can deliver. Plasma and CRT displays have great color and are fast.

Scan lines are cool too.

Other things, blooming on super bright, or high contrast are less desirable, but yeah. I would enjoy seeing things in that way myself.

If you need to back up 4 TB of data, I recommend you go with LTO-7 tapes whose native capacity is 6 TB (uncompressed). LTO-6 only has 2.5 TB native capacity, so that might not be enough for you, also it's a bit old (LTO-6 was released in 2012). Note that you'll always find the compressed capacity in the marketing material but that's not very useful to calculate with unless you know the data that's to be backed up very well.

Tape capacity usually doubles every four years (more or less) when a new generation is released (to an extent it's a scheme, but technical progress does play into it as well). Backwards compatibility is limited as I said, usually drives can read two generations back and write one generation). Due to some shenanigans this does not currently hold true for LTO-8 drives (the latest gen that's widely available), which can only read back LTO-7 and LTO-8 tapes but not the older LTO-6 tapes. So you have to remember that if you have very long archival cycles to consider (thinking in decades).

LTO-8 is still somewhat more expensive, as it is the latest available gen. While LTO-9 was technically released late last year, I haven't seen it anywhere in the wild yet. They're pretty slow on the uptake, last generation it was the same and there weren't enough LTO-8 tapes for almost two years after "release" which is why they "invented" a stop-gap standard called LTO M-8, iirc, which used LTO-7 tapes but you could write 9 TB on them when using LTO-8 drives).

Long story short, LTO-7 (drive and tape) is probably your best bet in terms of economics and availability (although, if you're sure you'll be fine with LTO-6 for the foreseeable future, you might be able to save maybe $1-2k that way).

The NEOs series devices (incl. the NEOs StorageLoader) come with SAS or Fibre Channel interfaces, I recommend you use SAS, as it's cheaper and easier to get HBAs (adapter cards for your storage server) for SAS. If you use ESXi/vSphere, get an HBA that's on the compatibility list and you can pass it through to a VM to host the backup software on there and control the storage loader (not officially supported by all companies but works very well in my experience).

You do need a server to "control" and "feed" the StorageLoader and this can be pretty much anything you can put a SAS card in (as I said, incl. a VM). I recommend you combine it with Veeam Backup & Replication which is the best backup software currently out there imo, works beautifully with VMs and a diverse range of endpoints and natively supports backing up on a tape loader as the ultimate target (you can get creative there, do hourly backups to disk and send one batch to tape every evening for example).

One caveat: Tapes must be fed at constant speed while writing or they do something called "shoe-shining" which isn't good for the longevity of the tape. You'd have to look up the exact numbers but feeding the tape directly over 1 Gbit Ethernet via iSCSI from a backup appliance with the server as a proxy... that's probably going to be too slow (if you use Veeam, it will show you what the bottleneck is during the backup process). 10 Gbit would be better but you can also fill the storage server with a few TBs of HDDs, let the agents backup there directly and then go from there to tape which would solve any speed problems and will be sufficient for small to medium-sized setups. I recommend you combine that with ReFS if you run Windows Server 2019 (which is trippy but can save a lot of space).

You can fill LTO-7 tapes with a max. speed of 300 MB/s uncompressed, which means backing up your 2 TB would take less than 2 hours. If your files compress well and your backup source can handle it, write speeds may increase up to 750 MB/s, so you will be that much faster.

The price you're looking at for the NEOs is around $4k. For the SAS HBA you can calculate about $200, add the cables and a Veeam license and a few tapes to get you started (LTO-7 tapes can be had for around $50 currently, doesn't matter which brand you buy) and you're at less than $5k all-in, if a storage server or VM host already exists. That's not too bad for total peace of mind and the level of flexibility and safety that tape backup gives you. You should get yourself a cleaning cartridge, too, as this is a highly mechanical technology and the drive needs cleaning cycle every once in a while (if you keep it in the storage loader it will use it on its own when necessary).

If you keep a few tapes in rotation (which I recommend), you'll find that some SSDs or HDDs in your org will die on you before you need to replace a tape for the first time. So the value for money is very good. You can reuse a tape many times (up to 250 full rewrites) and if you fully encrypt all your backups (which of course you do), you can sell on your used tapes later, there are companies who buy them up, so you don't have to throw them out (you can degauss them but then they're usually trash).

However, I strongly recommend that you regularly physically remove the tapes from the loader (even if you have one with 48 or more slots), as not doing so negates one of the major advantages of tape which is offline backup and off-site storage (= fully disaster- and ransomware-proof without much additional thought). Also, keep your storage server secure as the baddies are wising up to this and I know at least one recent case where they got into the storage server and issued commands from there to the tape loader to load all tapes from its magazine and overwrite them one by one (the failure here is obviously more than a technical one). Again, you can use WORM tapes (write once, read many) to prevent that also but imo that's a waste of tape.

As for the loader and drive themselves, they are mechanical, as I said, but typically very stable and come with long warranties. I've seen tape loaders run for well over a decade without major issues (most are replaced or upgraded before they break). You have to treat them well though, so data-center climate is very much their natural habitat (no vibrations or movement, not too much or too little humidity, not too much heat, no dust or corrosive climate etc.).

If space is at a premium and you don't have a rack available (e.g. at a tiny branch office), there are external LTO drives as well (without a tape loader). These are usually in the 5.25 form factor (like those old CD drives) and function not unlike old floppy drives, you pop in a single tape, write on it, pop it out again. You can technically connect these to your workstation directly. You still need an SAS interface though, because as I said, alas I am not aware of one with a more modern interface like Thunderbolt. So connecting one to a laptop is pretty much impossible (there are adapters out there but very expensive and I've no idea if they work). Bottom line, I would not recommend you get one of these. They have none of the convenience of the a tape loader where you can just drop in a handful of tapes and forget about them for a while, as they can only handle the one tape at a time (it's really just a simple drive). And they are severely overpriced for that. You can have a look at the HP StoreEver 15000 (exists as an internal or external device) which isn't bad but clocks in at $3.5k - for just $500 more you can get the full NEOs incl. drive, so it really doesn't make much sense unless you can get one cheap/used (you can find the LTO-6 version for around $1500).

Right. I hope that "little" overview helps you in some way :-)

Sometimes the trick is to tell Safari to always use reader mode for this domain, and then it kicks in before the JavaScript messes with the content

:P

Disney owns some of the most successful producers of new content and franchises in recent years - Pixar and Marvel Studios.

And, say what you will about the terrible Star Wars sequels they just cranked out, I've heard rave reviews of The Mandalorian from everyone I know who's watched it. Also Rogue One, which actually did feel like a tragedy set in the classic Star Wars universe.

Suffice to say I think you're wrong here.