The myth of progression

For movies (and movie rental) DVDs are an obvious progression on VHS tapes: instant access, no winding back/forward, great picture quality. But recordable DVD’s as replacement for tape? Yes, same advantages, but they don’t last. Three years, stored in a dark, dry place, in its case, and they fail to play any longer. Yes, that is because of cheap DVD’s, but that’s the ones they sell in every supermarket or even decent video store. And I’m talking about memories of great holidays in far away places. Holiday movies, for which I spend countless hours editing (you know, bringing down 8 hours of film to a respectable 2 hours). Luckily, I do have a backup on tape (of some edited content and some raw material), which after all these years still works. Of course, I used some quality VHS tapes, not the cheapest ones. I also have the original DV tapes, and the 12Gb backups of those tapes on harddisk. So, look around for archieving disks. They’re more expensive, but you won’t regret it, as I do now.