Translation help?

[Ichigos]

I have one other question first. Are VHS tapes region coded like DVDs are? Will a tape from Japan work on a North American VHS player?

My second question has to do with this auction: http://smjsearch.com/cgi-bin/b.cgi?u40337857

Is this a rental video tape that the person is selling for people to keep forever?

[Fireye]

VHS Tapes do not have region coding. There _ARE_ regional differences, but the differences between Japan and the US are very minimal, if any at all. I know that DVDs have a black level difference (JP uses 0-255, US uses 16-255), but I do not believe that these differences existed in VHS tapes.

The regional differences are largely between Europe and US/JP. Most of Europe used the PAL signal format, though France used SECAM. The United States, Japan, and several other countries used NTSC. You can read more about the various standards with the VHS wikipedia article.

Regarding the Tokyo Mew Mew rental vhs, I'm not sure. I would be very surprised if someone were to "rent" a VHS tape on Y!J Auctions. I would guess that he is indicating that the origin of the tape is via a Rental store, and thus you can expect more wear and tear to have happened with what he is selling.

[Rekka Alexiel]

Well, it looks like the auction has ended, but still here's my $0.02 worth on this topic. <3

Usually when you find VHS tapes on auction, these are merely the left overs when a rental store like Tsutaya sells their inventory to make room for new items. Since VHS are pretty much obsolete nowadays, you can find these on auction for pretty cheap--just like this one! $0.30 for the tape! But the quality of used rental tapes could be near to unviewable due to degradation over time. That's something that usually isn't listed in auctions. I think they're often sold as is and no refunds.

Japanese VHS tapes will play just fine on US VCRs. I had quite a collection of tapes the first time I came home from Japan.

[jcaliff]

I used to go to Tsutaya pretty much weekly when I lived in Japan, and I used to love when they would put the videos up for sale. I also brought back quite a few from Japan with me. There are actually a few shows, mostly one-shots, that have never been rereleased on DVD or BD, so I'm glad I kept some of them. I've also bought a few of those used VHS rental tapes from YJ in the past, and never had much problem with them despite being rental copies.