Quote:
Originally Posted by HamishBoxer
£5.99 for a 3 hour tape? I remember them at £10 for 3 hours.
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When my parents bought their first (and only!) video, a Hitachi VT-11E, in 1983, an E-180 was indeed the best part of a tenner, even for own-brand ones. Buying a new tape was a rare event, often only contemplated when there was something really good on which we wanted to keep permanently and involving a special trip to the shops. I still remember their smell!
But everything about them suggested "quality". They were heavy, the sleeve was often plastic or at least very thick cardboard which lasted forever, the finish on the plastic cassette was superb, and you got a generous quantity of labels for the top and spine of the cassette, as well as for the box, and even a selection of letters and numbers so you could organise your collection. In contrast, the £1-£2 offerings from the early 2000s seemed very flimsy.
Quality varied. The Woolworths own-brand ones (Alpha?) seemed fine if a bit prone to dropouts after a lot of use, the Dixons ones (Saisho?) always resulted in terrible (linear) sound, with not much treble but plenty of hiss. I remember one BASF one giving especially poor results.