What Is On Beta worth saving top 10

[Billy]

Hi,
Can Any one post what are the most likely things to be found on Betamax.
The reason im asking is that anyone with beta tapes in there posession/ loft/ Garage may think them worthless.
I originally had a masive collection of beta tapes of which some may still exist.

Adiitional to this is the posting of the Philips Double sided format

And also Early VHS.

Also Strangly I Live in Scotland but in a round about way a skip in London had a Akai VT-120s portable VTR in it with a pile of tapes.
It was removed and from pillar to post eventually came to me to get working.
It has a built in TV but I cant get it working.
Im pretty sure this was like an early camcorder but if this was possible to use this to record tv progs i will try a bit more.
The tapes are about 5 inches wide with the tape about 8 mm wide.
I was told there is about 20 or so tapes.


Billy

[john g]

the problem with 1970s VCRS, is the heads are very delicate . One dodgy rewind can sometimes shatter them and they can also wear rapidly. Its usually the heads that are damaged in these machines.
The other problem with those Akai machines is, it used tape and reels that looked similar to quarter inch audio tape, but it was infact very different, but it did not stop people trying to use the cheaper audio quarter inch substitute and sometimes ruining their decks.

[William Martin]

check everything, theres not likely to be much in ther way of missing episodes(but theres always a chance of an old repeat of an earlier show), but it would be a shame to miss something, there may be live tv or things like TIZWAZ etc

[Gareth Randall]

Can Any one post what are the most likely things to be found on Betamax

Not very much that's missing. Beta decks were available from about 1975-76, but since the UK home video boom didn't really take off until the early 80s, any collections of tapes are most likely to date from about 1982-ish.

Beta's often a good source of amusing old ads or bits of continuity - stuff that's worth keeping, but isn't earth-shattering.

[Nigel Lamb]

I had some Saturday Picture Shows on Betamax that turned out to include a missing one which the BBC were happy to take off my hands, so yes there are programmes that are missing from this era of recording.
Of coarse there are also missing editions of things like The Adventure Game which it is possible may exist on domestic Betamax somewhere.
It's always worth checking if the TV companies actually do hold the programmes you may have or find as they may not have them.
Also the tapes may contain continuity, trailers etc which of coarse most of which not kept or even recorded in the first place.An example of this is that I heard that Philip Scofield is looking for copies of his "Broom Cupboard" appearances from children's BBC in the eighties.
Regards,
Nigel