VHS to DVD
2008-01-22 17:49:34.997754+00 by
Dan Lyke
9 comments
A friend of mine got a device to run VHS to DVD, and is running into the copy protection problem. Without having looked at the issue in years, I figured that a surplus Time Base Corrector (TBC) should be cheap in these days of everyone scrambling to digital video, but in looking around they're still pretty damned pricey. And I gave my old Targa card to Jay some number of years ago, not that I'd even have a machine with an ISA bus any more to use it on.
So imagining a bookcase full of old Macrovisioned VHS from times gone by, anyone got an idea for a cheap way to get 'em on DVD or to a solid NTSC signal, either one?
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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2008-01-22 18:54:57.315592+00 by:
ebradway
I've got one of the now-less-than-legal "image stabilizers" that just happens to disable Macrovision. I'll drop it in the mail to you- let me know - new address, I assume?
You can also build-your-own.
#Comment Re: made: 2008-01-22 19:29:37.960531+00 by:
Dan Lyke
10 Mission Drive, 94952. Holiday cards were supposed to be moving cards this year and have been waiting on the new address, and now they're waiting on that to bubble up the priority chain. Thanks for the "build your own" link, too!
#Comment Re: made: 2008-01-22 19:45:48.851881+00 by:
Mark A. Hershberger
I got one of those image stabilization things a couple of years ago from Radio Shack. They didn't cost that much. How much is expensive?
/me googles
Oh.
#Comment Re: made: 2008-01-22 20:13:16.071474+00 by:
Dan Lyke
Mark, yeah, I believe a TBC essentially has to have a full frame store for each input (because you could be syncing from roughly any set of frame overlaps), and since aside from duping Macrovision tapes the only time you'd be using one is during video mixing, there's no point to building one that isn't high quality. Although your search did find some cheaper ones than the first ones I looked at.
#Comment Re: made: 2008-01-22 20:14:42.545748+00 by:
Dan Lyke
(though there do seem to be a number of 'em on eBay for relatively cheap...)
#Comment Re: made: 2008-01-23 01:44:40.319076+00 by:
ebradway
Which ones are you finding on eBay for cheap? I paid about $60 for my Sima GoDVD! CT-200 while it was still legal. It looks like the price has pretty much doubled. I did some research and found that folks got the best results from this particular model. Since copying VHS to DVD is a serious time commitment, I didn't want to mess around with something that occasionally gave poor results.
#Comment Re: made: 2008-01-23 19:22:35.257067+00 by:
ebradway
It's in the mail. Should be there by the weekend.
#Comment Re: made: 2008-01-23 19:47:53.38216+00 by:
Dan Lyke
Awesome! Many thanks, I'll use this as cred to get some old personal tapes I've got ripped to DVD and see if there's any of those whitewater crash and burn incidents that are worth putting on the web.
#Comment Re: made: 2008-01-25 22:49:55.036828+00 by:
ebradway
BTW, I ended up just using a set-top DVD recorder. My wife had dozens of tapes of her performances over the years (theater and dance) that had to be handled tape-by-tape. She was much more comfortable in the living room than in the office at the computer.