That would be wonderful, unfortunately the storage density of tape is dependent also on the magnetic particle in the tape; smaller particles which can be magnet

That would be wonderful, unfortunately the storage density of tape is dependent also on the magnetic particle in the tape; smaller particles which can be magnetised enable smaller heads, which in turn enable higher storage density. I know your comment was a throwaway idea but I got a little bit too involved looking up information around this answer - so I've committed further and looked a little deeper to avoid looking too stupid: Currently with BaFe (Barium Ferrite) as their magnetic particle, LTO-7+ tapes have particle sizes less than 100nm in size (https://indico.cern.ch/event/637013/contributions/2669089/ https://indico.cern.ch/event/637013/contributions/2669089/ - check out slides 14 and 15 in the powerpoint.). VHS on the other hand is a little more tricky to find information on I suspect due to the age of the technologies involved it's going to be significantly bigger - but the closest I've found to a technical document is a student paper at NYU which refers to this IEEE Paper (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/50474 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/50474) saying that the average particle size for VHS is ~300nm and for S-VHS at ~150nm. But that first presentation also mentions smoothness increases over time with LTO, which suggests improvements in the coating process. I suspect improvements in the coating, combined with both the size of magnetic particle shrinking, enabled an increase in density of particles on the tape. This in conjunction with improved thinness of the tapes enabled large increases in tape length for the same cartridge size (nearly double the length from LTO-1 -> LTO-8), has in turn led to the enormous jumps in capacity we've seen in LTO. Meaning unfortunately I don't think it'll be possible to do super interesting things with VHS.