When looking on ebay I noticed a lot of Doctor Who videos were for sale that came out quite a few years ago. For instance there was one called 'Terror of the Autons' which came out in the early 90's. The description for a lot of these videos says 'new and sealed' but also says 'the video is deleted.' Is there actually companies that sell these videos new to these ebay sellers? Or have these ebay sellers really not opened these videos for over 10 years?!?!?!?

might have just snatched up a few copys from a clearance sale and shifting them on ebay for a profit.

These videos are still out in Australia, so if it's new and sealed it is likely to be an Australian copy. There are no compatibility issues between UK/Oz VHS players though- it will hopefully play fine on you're machine. Ask the seller for details.

I looked on the Australian version of amazon www.cdnow.com but mostly everything on there was just like amazon marketplace (i.e. not new !) Do you know of any other australian sites ?

No I've only ever used ebay uk- but I'd think it impossible a UK copy of TOTA could have remained 'new and sealed' for the 15 years since it was out, so I think you are looking at a non UK copy, with Australia the most likely country it's from. As I said, ask the seller

Edit: the only copy of TOTA claiming to be sealed on ebay at the mo does appear to be from the UK and the seller is sound, but it does seem unlikely it's been sealed since bought in 1993. Oh well.

Although the picture quality on the uk release of terror is never going to be great anyway. There is a warning on the front of the box saying this- "due to the archive nature of the footage..." etc. If you're used to digitally remastered dvds the Auton release may come as a bit of a shock....

There is a bit of a ploy with videos on ebay where the seller says the video is still sealed. There are plastic bags commerically available that someone can re-wrap a VHS tape in, to give the impression that they are new.

A real brand new tape would be shrink wrapped, but many of these tapes are in fitted celephane envelopes.

Although TOTA came out in 1993,it could have been bought anytime in the last few years.
It was also one of the stories that the BBC only had in black and white and they used a US NTSC VHS/Beta recording from the 70's to colourise the 16mm film telerecordings they had.
Back in 1993 remastering and restoring technology was very primitive compared to what you can get now,but many BBC Videos started using macrovision back then and I replaced mine with the 1995 UK Gold broadcast,the last run of proper episodic versions they did,and it was on high grade tape and was better than the BBC tape I had,but its probably the best version of the story you'll get unless UK Gold see sense and get rid of the omnibus versions and allow us dvd recorders to get the show they way we want it.
BBC DVD don't have a hope in hell of releasing even a good chunk of the series before dvd is extinct

I don't think that is strictly true, after all they did complete the series on VHS while releasing the first few DVDs.

Yes, it will take a very long time to release the DVDs at the current rate, but I wouldn't write off DVDs just yet.

It took the BBC 20 years to complete WHO on VHS.
Do you really belive that DVD's will still be released in 7 or 8 years,let alone 20?