Looking for information on DVD/VHS recorder/players?

Question

I have a lot of vhs tapes that I would like to transfer to dvd. I would appreciate help from anyone with experience with them. I am looking for something easy to use, good quality recording and playback but reasonable cost.

Answer 1

Hi gramma44,

I embarked on a project to transfer my VHS tapes to DVD and I had some problems. First I found most of my VHS tapes had copy protection and could not be copied. I went to Best Buy and bought a "Simo T120 GoDVD" which you put in-line between your VHS player and your DVD recorder. It removes the copy-guard and "enhances" the video. It was, I think, $59.95.

Remember to start with your VHS quality is passable but certainly far below a DVD. Now the copy process degrades it further. Don't get me wrong - my copies are certainly watchable.

The other thing that wore me down was you have to copy in real time. A two hour movie takes two hours to copy. I learned to set it up before I went out and just let the tape and DVD run out. If a movie is over two hours you have to use the four hour mode on the DVD recorder. That reduces the quality slightly.

That is my experience. I still have some tapes I haven't copied but my stack is greatly reduced.

Back to the Simo - I can't testify how much the video enhancer feature actually did because I didn't compare two copies of the same thing. The quality I got was acceptable so I just tolerated it.

Oh I almost forgot - for hardware I used my old VHS player to play my tapes and fed it through the Simo with composite (Red White Yellow) cables into a new Panasonic DVD recorder that I bought at Walmart.

Norm