I find this stuff really interesting. It reminds me of another project where someone developed an optical scanner to capture the shapes of vinyl record tracks (without making physical contact, of course). The idea was then to "play-back" the record by simulating a needle responding to the tracks in an ideal way and then simulate the needle's transducer and finally the turntable pre-amplifier.<p>I see this project still uses an actual VHS head. I wonder if, in the future, folks will try to capture magnetic tape signal by using something like a hard drive head scanning over the top of the tape but not touching it? This could potentially retrieve signal badly damaged, unplayable tapes-- lay out a segment of tape on flat surface, scan it, repeat, until entire tape has been scanned.