I have at least one video on a betamax cassette that I'd very much like to see - and digitize. As most histories of videotape will tell us, betamax was clearly superior to VHS, and thus the obvious choice for people concerned with the quality of their videos. It didn't, however, become the standard, and long after the machines themselves wore out or were stored away somewhere, many of us still found ourselves with cassettes we'd like to view, but with no way of viewing them.

My brother recently informed met that after a lengthy search he finally found someone with a reel-to-reel tape recorder capable of playing the numerous reels in his possession that may contain important, or at least interesting, family information. And if these can be played, they can also be digitized, and viewed, and saved ... until a new format arises and makes the old one obsolete, and we'll have to start over again.