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I have some old videotapes in a format I don recognise and have no working machine to play them back on. Can you help?

April 26, 2017format help Machine play recognise videotapes working

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I have some old videotapes in a format I don recognise and have no working machine to play them back on. Can you help?

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Probably not, sadly. We do not have the equipment needed to copy most obsolete videotape formats, and even for material which is deposited with us we normally have to send it to a specialist company for duplication. Videotape formats are superseded and become obsolete a lot more quickly than film, and also need more complex equipment to play back. For these reasons videotape obsolescence is a big problem for archivists. Your first step should be to try and identify precisely what format your tape(s) are. A number of websites contain information about videotape formats – this one is a useful starting point, and contains pictures of the different cassette types to help you identify the format.