How to transfer VHS tapes to DVD?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Our VHS/DVD combo player has died, after a couple of years of light use. Extensive internet research has led me to believe that there are no really good combo players, so I am looking to an alternative to replacing it. I would really like to have only a DVD player, but we have VHS tapes in two categories:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>tapes that we made that can be copied onto DVD. We copied some, but not all, of these before the combo player broke.</p></li>
<li><p>commercial tapes that cannot be copied because of embedded signals preventing it. I have read that there are ways to bypass this, and I’d like to do it. We’ve bought the content, and we would like to copy from the obsolete medium to DVD and throw away the VHS tapes. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>I’ve also read that it is possible to copy VHS tapes onto DVD using a PC. We have several PCs with DVD burning capability. What do we need to get the VHS signal into the PC?</p>

<p>We also have mini-DV tapes that we’d like to put on DVD. </p>

<p>Any suggestions would be most welcome.</p>

2

<p>I am embarrassed to say we bought this a couple of years ago with the intent to transfer some of our VHS to DVD and haven’t tried it yet:</p>

<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Roxio Easy VHS to DVD: Windows: Software](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Roxio-Easy-VHS-to-DVD/dp/B001LQO4P4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290792164&sr=8-1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Roxio-Easy-VHS-to-DVD/dp/B001LQO4P4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290792164&sr=8-1)</p>

<p>We bought it at Costco.</p>

3

<p>Thanks, abasket. I looked this up at Amazon and there are an awful lot of negative reviews. There is a similar product ([Amazon.com:</a> EasyCAP DC60 - USB 2.0 Audio/video Creator Capture High-quality Analog Video: Electronics](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002H3BSCM/ref=pd_sim_sg_2]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002H3BSCM/ref=pd_sim_sg_2)) that seems to work better, but from the reviews it appears that it only works for XP (not Vista or 7). </p>

<p>I think that for either of these, I would have to have a VCR, and I no longer have one (and I’m hoping to avoid having to buy another one). It’s hard to imagine how I could get the tapes transferred without one, though - maybe I could borrow one.</p>

4

<p>All you need is a TV to PC device. Some of these are really small and work on your USB2 port and some come as cards to go in desktops. I’ve copied VHS tapes to digital format with no problems. Just connect a cable to your VHS player and the other end to the TV to PC device, run the software on the PC in capture mode and hit play on the VHS player.</p>

<p>Some comments: you should have a PC with good performance. You shouldn’t be doing anything else on the PC (unless you have a monster of a system) while you’re recording. The internal cards will generally perform better than the USB2 devices as they have more bandwidth available.</p>

5

<p>Or you can play the tape on a cheap VCR and send the VCR output to your new DVR input. Use permanent, not rewritable, DVD disks.</p>