On November 25, 2023 I started research for this article about ArVid, a Russian-developed device for storing data on VHS tapes. I finally hit “publish” on Jan 21, 2024, almost 2 months later.
This post is a “behind the scenes” look at my research methods, and some general observations that didn’t make it into the article itself.
What prompted this research
I’ve seen the ArVid mentioned before in forum comments. It is a neat device and it comes up reliably when someone has the neat idea to store data on VHS tape. Turns out that many people had the same idea.
The last time I saw it mentioned, I went ahead and visited the English Wikipedia page for ArVid to learn more. There was remarkably little information on that page. I decided to go a little further and Google it – that was more fruitful because it brought up documents in Russian. Luckily, I can read Russian and saw an opportunity to collate information about this device into one spot.
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