Tapes Quickly Degrading
I have a huge problem with one of my tapes, and it’s not affecting the others nearly as much. The tape shown in the picture by itself is degrading insanely fast, and I got it completely still sealed in its plastic from 2002. The others are either rental or used, and the ones that are used but not rentals have no noticeable artifacts at all when I play them. The rentals are what you’d expect.
My problem is that despite the fact that I’ve stored these all the same, only the one that I’ve just unwrapped is degrading insanely fast. Every time I come back to it, there’s several more parts where I see a slit through a certain part of the screen for a split second. I don’t know if I’m doing anything wrong in terms of how I have them stored, but it keeps getting worse without even using it.
What am I doing wrong for that tape to be degrading so fast while these other tapes that have been open and used for 30 years are still perfectly fine?