If you continue to play them, at least once a year say, or even just fast forward/rewind tapes, they should last a bit longer. The problem with tapes is that if they sit idle for too long, there is less of a chance of them working well as time goes by. The fact remains though - over time, a VHS tape will lose its signal strength. I challenge you to do a frame by frame comparision of an old VHS and a DVD, as done here (which also highlights how important widescreen is, something else VHS didn't offer on the majority of titles):Disney Guru wrote:Well I have a lot of DVD"s and don't buy VHS's anymore but I have a lot of doubles where i have it on VHS/DVD but I won't sell my VHS's they all bring back memories. And what is up with this demagnification garbage? I have movies that are 20 years old and + and they still play like new!
http://dvd.ign.com/news/15687.html
You might find this more with stuff you've recorded yourself, and less so with pre-recorded ones. However, any analogue format is going to be susceptible to this degradation. Heat, light, magnets, non-magnetically shielded speakers are all enemies to your VHS tapes.
Yes, I have old tapes that still play well, but that is because I have watched them on a semi-regular basis. But there is no argument in the fact that VHS tapes degrade over time, and to the best of our knowledge DVD doesn't have that problem (although it is a new technology).
Plus, if you live in an NTSC zone, to make it affordable to the consumer the standards for NTSC standard broadcast quality video were greatly compromised.
For longevity, it is hard to argue any format is currently superior for the consumer market to a digital one available on a 5" shiny disc - i.e a DVD.
) so we're talking from $50 to $500 on DVD-Rs (Not counting the harware) depending on the the method/codecs and the amount of quality you're willing to put up with. 
still very expensive.)
