Some days I feel really old; when I have to hunt for the better part of an hour to find blank floppy disks or VHS tapes - it makes things even worse. I know, I know, I should get one of those DVR’s or sell my soul to the cable company to get IN Demand services but you know what - I like having things on video tape. It makes me feel a little better when I sit down with the remote, punch in the record time and length and see the little icon blink on the screen. I know, without a doubt, that I am going to get exactly what I want on the tape. If I had a DVR chances are I would go insane and record everything under the sun only to find that there aren’t enough hours in the day to watch it all. Right now there are only a handful of shows that I record - each show has a different tape - when it gets full I sit down and watch all the episodes back to back. Yeah, I do need to get a life.

Sony Premium Grade T-120VL VHS Tapes

I have used a lot of different video tapes over the years; some of them were great the first few times I recorded over them, others were a one shot deal. When I saw the huge ten pack of the Sony Premium Grade tapes at Circuit City I figured I might as well get them while they were on sale. I’d never used the Premium ones from Sony but I figured that if they were as good as their High Grade ones, I’d be happy with the picture quality. I am what you call a ‘recorder’ I use tapes over and over again until they are so haggard that they won’t record anything clearly. I started out with a few of the WWE shows; since I am into wrestling there are a lot of matches that I want to edit from one tape to another - sort of my own little ‘best of’ collection. This is where the Go Video decks come in handy but if you are going to be making a copy from an original - you need to work with a tape that is going to allow the duplicate to come out clear. Thankfully these tapes from Sony are just the trick. The copies from the first tape did lose a little quality but they were still watchable and only had a slight grain to them.

The brood used a few of these to tape shows on PBS and the Sci-Fi and didn’t really say much about them. They didn’t complain but they didn’t go bonkers and say that the picture or sound was stellar. I grabbed a few of these for Annabelle’s room so she could tape her shows. She thinks it’s the coolest thing ever to pop in a tape and record something then be able to rewind it and watch it over. These are great for general taping of television shows but when you get into making copies of copies, you do run in to some trouble with grain and distortion. The most I’ve ever used one of these was about fifteen times - the sound portion of the records was starting to get really warped and I knew that it was on its last leg. The one thing I did notice about these is that when you watch something over and over the picture and sound don’t get warped or muffled. That’s a good thing and something that is pretty rare with VHS tapes.

You can use these tapes to record in the two hour [SP - short play], four hour [LP - long play] or six hour [EP - extended play] mode but for the best picture possible, stick with the SP mode. Sony does make an eight hour tape [Premium Grade] but the sound and video quality doesn’t really compare to what you get with the six hour tape. These come with stickers for the spine and tops of the tapes and the ‘break tab’ to prevent accidental recording of some special event. So far I haven’t had any trouble with these when recording or playing things back and the quality of what you are seeing is crystal clear. It isn’t as nice as what you get from a DVD but unless you have a huge television or an HDTV set up, chances are you won’t be able to see a huge difference. These are great for people who tape things like soap operas or sporting events; since you can tape over them repeatedly without any distortion you will always have a tape on hand when the need arises.

Price

If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a thousand times, these things are getting harder and harder to find. Wal-Mart has the smaller packs of these for about $4.99 [for four tapes] but if you want the huge pack of ten, you can save a couple of dollars and get them at Circuit City. I got the ten pack for $9.99 so it came out to a dollar a tape. You can purchase these in the single packs or multi packs but if you are ordering them over the internet make sure you are getting the six hour tapes and not the eight hour ones. You do lose a little bit of sound and video quality with the eight hour ones. For me VHS tapes are a necessity and until I learn how to use a DVR or anything even close to it, I will keep buying these.

Warranty

Sony offers you a lifetime warranty against defects however you have to read the fine print about this. It doesn’t cover routine use - and if you use VHS tapes you know that after a while tapes get funky and will start to stick or lose their quality; even more so if you tape over them again and again. My general rule is that I use them not more than ten times before they get tossed out. Most of the time I transfer from one tape to another to edit out things and the final copy gets tucked away on the shelf. Sony will replace any tape that is defective but as I said, you have to read the fine print about what they consider a defect. In most cases it’s pointless to pay to ship the tape to them to get another one. With what you are spending on postage and waiting on line at the post office you can go and buy another four pack.

The Bottom Line

So far I am pretty impressed with the Premium Grade tapes and if I see them at the store for a good price, I’ll buy them. Since I toss out tapes when they start to get grainy I am always in need of new blanks to take their place. If you are a tape junkie that has to have every episode of a show or loves to record one football game while watching another one - these tapes are a great investment. With three recording speeds to choose from, stereo record sound and above average picture quality these are some of the best tapes available on the commercial level. Unless you are someone that needs completely crystal clear recordings of things, these tapes will more than do the job of recording your favorite shows or programs.


As always, thanks for the read!

~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~

© 2005 Freak369


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Recommended: Yes