Sony E 240 CD Blank Tapes

With the ever decreasing decline of Video Tapes it is harder and harder to purchase this now old technology.
With this competition quality of video cassettes has gone down, dramatically, and it is hard these days to find a video that holds up in recording capability and stability. This is due to manufacturers having to reduce costs to compete with the new DVD market.
At present other companies are not holding up I find my screens rolling under the strain of running a densely packed tape.
Other tapes you get are similar, you only record for 20 mins and there are bars across the screen, sound cutting out, it is terrible what is happening now with video tapes, they just don't put the quality in any more, I remember the old Scotch tapes of the 80's, they still work now.
So now, really only Sony hold up. They were the biggest Cassette Tape company back in the 80's, and that hold out is the last call now that you can hope for if you want your recordings to hold out.
I have tried using other video recorders, etc., but only these Sony's give a clear recording.
I have been recording non stop since 1979, on tapes and videos, and these sony's, although after 20 or 30 plays start to roll at the begining, compared to the rest, they hold out the longest. The japs win in the end.

It is difficult now to decide which blank videos to buy. In a declining market, everything is dodgy, but they are still afloat. After purchasing 300 or more of these sony blank videos I find that they must be the best. I do recording every day, and when you need high quality and reliability you tend to learn after a time which always gives performance you can trust. As in the past, right back to when I was a kid, I always did my test recordings on other lesser tapes but for the master copy I used a more expensive sony tape. Well the price is the same as the others. So do they stand up in the benchmarks:

They have good density, a warm sound. Great depth, like the classic
sounds, and chromic colors. Luminance is good too. Playback reliablity is a factor you have to be guaranteed on, spending ages recording a master film, then people turn up and you play the video and it fails at different points. Well sony, these failures are minimal. They are there but not noticeable or aggravating. You compete with the price, more money and sometimes you find the higher strain as we used to find in a chrome tape or using cobalt is too much for a cheap video recorder. Sony gives a smooth run on the less expensive models, particularly if your video recorder is an old second hand machine, with a sony you know it runs good, a nice rewind, no clicking or rastering.

In the optimum video recording, this relies on the ability to rewind
the tape at speed, then just frames later the movie you are making must appear exactly at that point. For a good record and play just for the odd second or two. Sony tapes always are jitter free, almost digital in behaviour in editing small parts of a recording. Which makes it an art.

Other tapes, you have jaggedness, too sharp, due to over applying of
metal oxide, and too high a density can mean an uncomfortable playback.

How does this compare with DVD's. Well the dvd technology itself isn't as good as it is made out to be. In fact most films on a dvd are compressed around 30 times, so what you get on playback is an expanded freezed dried look. A hollow but perfect image, however this image is the result of compression algorithms which expand areas up into colour when really the real image had natural variation.

If you were to measure a video by equivalent memory, you would find the capacity is above 100 gigabytes, compared to the 5 gigs on a dvd. That is because it is raw. The picture on a blank video is not compressed, that is why you need so much tape. At a throughput of 3 million pixels a second a video needs good magnetic balance, and sony achieve this. The last call that we've got.

The signal to noise ratio is good, no buzzing, no high frequency sounds in the background, good balance of sound, never fails on left and right channel stereo. Then the frequency response is good, low sounds and high pitched, sony delivers a sharp sound, and also a good bass.

As far as playback quality, you can only expect what you pay for. For
the old quality in the 80's a video of that calibre would now cost 20
pounds. So for around 8 pounds the sony video competes well,
maintaining the quality but at low cost. The japs have the edge.

Failures do occur as with all blank videos, after 5 runs you get
jittering signals at the start, but still compared to others it holds
out well. After 20 runs, the first half hour starts to fail, but at the price and compared to other tapes, still good. I guarantee these videos give about 50 good playbacks (full tape) , damage starts to occur, rolling etc, but it is minimal. You will have a 2 or 3 year lifetime, if played back often.

It's the old case of the charlie chaplin celluloid film of 1910, if you pay for mechanics, and are prepared to go through a lot of work, you get good results. Films lasting 80 years. If you go for a cheap dvd, it scratches easy, and you get fake, mpeg images that really don't exist in reality but it is missed by the human eye. A dvd is only 25k per frame, a good density video tape, is equivalently around 300k or more because the image is not expanded it is a real image, what was there.

Quite ruggedly built, you can drop them down the
stairs, and even if they crack, they still run, I have hundreds of
these sony videos. Some 3 years old, and still playing back good
pictures. That's why I kept ordering them.

You don't get any magnetic distortion, other videos I tried, and some
were fuzzy all the way through, rolling, or a line half way, and no
sound. What is happening now is terrible on the market. People are
selling cheap runs of videos just to get rid. I have packs of other
videos just sitting unrecorded because they don't record at all.

The sony's provide good audio and video dubbing, and take digital
signals well, and blur out the nasty sharpness of compressed image
blocks. On short play you get master quality recording. 2 times that of a DVD. But you just have to operate it manually, but you want it manual that is what it is all about, you want real natural images.

Why do they say that digital is permanent, you can scratch a dvd like
you can a video or record, they go in time also. Also it is cheaper to use old tape, and recorders are cheap. With the video, there is no
bitmap noise it big chunks and blocks, you get a fluid run, in real
time and can record at any point manually. But for this you need good
stabilty of the tape mechanics, sony's are well balanced, good wheels. Other tapes are rickety or stiff in the rewind or too much strain especially at the beginning.

Even in the worst case in only 20% of the signal, the sony still runs, so theoretically they should last 20 years.

Perfect colour, good reproduction of the original image. Lines appear
occasional after time as with all, and you get the odd roll after about 15 playbacks. Sometimes you get the whole first half hour failing, but this is 1 case out of about 10 tapes. Sometimes you get sound cutting out annoyingly, but it's the max you can get for the price. You know that others, the sound is gone for good, and no screen at all, just fuzziness, or jamming your whole system.

They also play well on varied recorders.

Why spend your life in menus editing on a dvd recorder. The fact that
we have to now purchase blank videos on the net, is because shops don't sell them anymore, but they don't explain that on a dvd recorder you can't just record at a point and rewind a little bit and play just for say 3 seconds of a film. You have all these menus.

You get flicks, breaks, odd fuzziness, odd lines, odd jittering of
sound, sometimes 10 minutes failing in picture, but in general,
compared to the others you always get a guaranteed last 3 hours good,
out of the whole 4 hours, and that is after 50 or more runs.

I would recommend Sony if you want blank videos, they are all you can

hope for now in this dying market.

Sony manage to get it right without over doing the density.

I am pleased to be able to get hold of these on e-bay as it is quite impossible now to purchase them in a shop.

Having searched in stores we were unable to find blank video tapes and we were grateful to find them on Amazon, and at a good price. The videos work great and we don't have to miss our favorite programs. The quality is good both sound and vision.