[Aloha]

Mono only VHS decks were not uncommon (and I wouldnt be surprised to hear that the last VHS decks made were only mono) because mono only pre-produced content - even with NTSC MTS TV Audio, mono only broadcast originated programming was not unusual.

I'd love to see him doing this with the VHS HiFi signals, which were.. IIRC, significantly better than MTS Stereo/FM Stereo (particularly in L/R channel separation) - so basically near CD Audio.

[SoftTalker]

Yeah VHS HiFi was pretty good. Standard VHS audio wasn't even as good as cassette tape as I recall.

People also built data backup devices using VHS tape machines. At the time anyway, the data density of VHS tape was pretty good.

[chiph]

VHS HiFi was very good, but you still had some tape hiss. So I used a dbx 224 compressor to record my 4 hour mix tapes. I couldn't share them since no one else had a dbx box, but it was good for long background music where I didn't have to get up and change CDs. So, like a reel-to-reel but much more compact.

[Aloha]

Cassette Tape (even Type I) has no issue with audio up to around 12-13 kHz