This is wild:
One problem: sticky shed syndrome. Instead of spooling smoothly off the reel, some poorly preserved tape adheres to the layer below it. “If you just play the tape, you start ripping oxide off it, which erases the tape in the most heinous way possible,” Ackerman explained. The solution is remarkably low-tech: baking. Using special laboratory ovens that are capable of holding a constant steady temperature, Ackerman bakes VHS tapes at 125 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit for up to five days. “If you can bake the tape at a particular temperature for a particular amount of time, you can temporarily re-cure the material for long enough to get a good preservation transfer,” she said. It’s a high-stakes gamble: There might only be one chance to read the tape before it’s too degraded to try again.
Time hasn’t been kind to VHS, because VHS sucked as a format. It had so many flaws, I’m not even gonna bother to list them because anyone who was ever reliant on that format is already having PTSD flashbacks while they’re reading this sentence. We only used it because it was the best thing available at the time (other than BetaMax, of course, but the licensing fees that Sony demanded for it killed that format before it really got anywhere, and LaserDisk was absurdly expensive, and very cumbersome to handle). The instant a better format came along, we moved along with it.
