First Impressions of the Betamax Life

It's curious, as you'll see from the clips provided

A day or so after the arrival of my amazing Sanyo VTC-5000, I decided to stick up an advert on Freecycle to see if anyone had any Betamax tapes sitting around that they didn’t need anymore. I didn’t expect much response, I’ve posted similar requests for VHS tapes and had little success. However, within a few hours, I had a message saying that someone had 50 tapes they were happy to give away. Fantastic!

So, yesterday, I headed over to Cambridge, which is only a 45-minute drive for me, and picked up a box of tapes. I hadn’t, prior to arriving, seen any photos of the tapes, so part of me was a little apprehensive. Were they going to be in good condition? Were they going to be from the later years of Betamax and, therefore, not tap into my obsession with early to mid-80s British television? Luckily, I had nothing worry about.