Haven't anybody made hardware that can make a 2d flux image capture of any tape yet? I'd imagine it could be done using a staggered array of high density tape heads for modern tape drives like LTO-9. I'm thinking that might help with recovering the degraded tapes mentioned.
I wonder if that would be enough for things like VHS where it was recorded on the diagonal. I suppose with enough resolution you could capture it all linearly and account for the angle in software.
