Memories Of Video

The JVC and Sky branded VHS blank tapes were sold in Poundland.

In my local CashConverters, they are still selling sealed blank 4 hour VHS tapes for £2.50 each.

I remember buying Philips branded E-195 tapes from a market once. I cant understand why a 3 and a quarter hour tape was made.

My first thought was they were unique to Philips but:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scotch-E195-EG-Blank-Tapes/dp/B0002DE2D6

Google suggests all the brands (Memorex, TDK, BASF etc) were making them too. It just seems an odd length.

Mind you the table on Wiki suggests in addition to the better known E-180 and E-240, there were E-60, E-90, E-120, E-150, E-210, E-270 and E-300 tapes, but presumably these weren't particularly popular, since I imagine once you go over an E-240 tape it's thinner (to fit in the cartridge) so it'll break easier. E-180 seems to have been the sweet spot, or E2-40 if you got them cheap enough.

I had a few E-300's

The longer a tape, the harder the machine has to work. I knew someone who once had a hifi with audio cassettes. They once bought some c-120 tapes, and ended up damaging the mechanism. I think that's why you rarely saw e-300 VHS cassettes.

They weren't commonplace. It was mainly 3 and 4 hour tapes.

E300 - Ridiculously expensive I believe too.

I only ever saw them in Dixons, they were BBC branded too. I think they were about £15 for a 3 pack, this was back in the late 1990’s.

Can’t remember tbh

That's because they had ridiculously thin tape, and consequently would easily 'chew up' inside the VCR.
Similar to the equally fragile C-120 audio cassettes

We never ever had C-120 audio cassettes, nor the E-300 VHS cassettes. But, I knew that a E-240 was a tight fit inside the cassette casing. Didn't realise that the tape was thinner.

Our Sony VCR instructions had a caution, saying "Use only well known brands of tape". Our experience of the cheap JVC tapes from Woolworths, in the Questar VCR, would suggest it made not one iota of a difference!