THE ARCHIVAL STABILITY OF METAL EVAPORATED TAPE FOR CONSUMER DIGITAL VCRS

A new metal evaporated (ME) tape was released for consumer digital VCR s. It has greatly improved its recording characteristics and durabilit y compared with conventional Hi-8ME tape. Demagnetization of the new M E tape has been studied using accelerated and ambient conditions. Dema gnetization of saturation magnetization follows the cubic law, and it was found that the estimated archival lifetime is about 60 years. More over, we have investigated characteristics such as dropout, carrier-to -noise ratio, and error rate, and we confirmed that the new ME tape ha s enough stability for practical applications. (C) 1996 American Insti tute of Physics.