Converting vhs tapes onto dvd
jack d ii -- Tue, 01/05/2010 - 11:12
I'm so ignorant on the new mod cons that I dont even know if I'm in the right forum topic, but what is the "best" way to put my irreplaceable vhs tapes onto dvd? "Best" = quality or price or (for me)simplest. I have an iMac which God has designed to punish me for my sins in several previous lives. I have a GREAT stereo system which I've spent 50 years building up to: Conrad-Johnson CT 5 preamp, Marsh A400 amp, Nottingham 294 'table and arm, Dynavector 17D3 cartridge, Musical Fidelity 308 cd used as a deck, Lavry Engineering DA 10 dac and Dunlavy SC IV speakers. lI'd like to leave the bloody iMac out of the process since it is particularly difficult to use to copy anything unless there is a simple, direct (iMacs particularly discourage directness)way to do it.
Thanks for any help.
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Sony has a standalone DVD copier that would do it very simply and inexpensive.
Mr Schneider is right, all you need is a Sony combination VHS/DVD player and recorder, they sell for about $300 at Best Buy. Make sure you use DVD RW+ Recordable DVDs. These work the best with those machines. Note, some of you VHS may be copy protected with Macro Vision. Sony Will not record these, so don't bother, but they will probably be around 10% of your total VHS. Disney used Macro Vision if that's any help. Also record them as regular VOB files, don't bother with AVI as they might not play over all DVD players. This will enable you to see your VHS tapes as DVD's. Of course you could then take those DVD's and record them to a
1tb or 2tb USB hard disk using a program such as DVD Decrypter which is free on the internet (just google it). All you have to do is set up DVD decrypter, create a folder named after the movie and make that the destination you have DVD decrypter send the ripped files.
Then you could for about $100 buy a HD media player, for example Wester Digial makes one. These players accept the USB output from a stand alone disk drive, and output HDMI to either your TV or Home theatre receiver, display the interface with all your movie files, and enable to play everything on that ripped disk right on your TV at up to 1080p. Thus in one fell swoop you get rid of both VHS and DVDs and have everything on a storage medium the size of a paperback book. A 2 tb hard disk holds roughly 450 feature length uncompesss DVD quality movies, the "Media player" is roughly the size of a small paperback book, and has a full function remove.
Have fun!