Ask Slashdot: Which VHS Player To Buy? 201
stkpogo (799773) writes "I have several old VHS tapes that I'd like to digitize but my old VHS machine died years ago. What's a good VHS player to get so I can make nice clean digital videos from my old tapes before they're gone? I have a few TV -> USB adapters." How would you go about this, especially with tapes (like old home movies) you might be worried about sticking into a low-end VCR? And with what number of tapes does it make sense to outsource the digitizing?
I remember my first VHS player (Score:5, Funny)
It was like my first first post.
Don't get a VHS player... (Score:5, Funny)
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nah, Laser Videodisc is the future.
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Marty said different.
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It was like my first first post.
As in, sort of neat but ultimately of little value, right?
Pre Macrovision with 4+ heads (Score:2)
Something before the macrovision chip with 4+ heads... Though Im not sure if the heads affect playback...
Re:Pre Macrovision with 4+ heads (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pre Macrovision with 4+ heads (Score:4, Informative)
Not always. Heads are used for many things. The first 4 head units were done for better pause action not for better EP mode.
If you are playing back a regular 2 hour mode tape and don't care about the sound almost anything that was good quality will work. If you need good sound and the original was done in HIFI you should make sure the new deck you get is HIFI as well.
My last good VCR was an 8 head unit. 2 for SP, 2 for SLP/EP, 2 for better pause and 2 for HIFI sound.
Re:Pre Macrovision with 4+ heads (Score:4, Funny)
Not always. Heads are used for many things. The first 4 head units were done for better pause action not for better EP mode.
Was this right after "Basic Instinct" came out on VHS? ;-)
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Not always. Heads are used for many things. The first 4 head units were done for better pause action not for better EP mode.
Was this right after "Basic Instinct" came out on VHS? ;-)
If you want porn, watch porn. What the point on pausing a movie to hopefully see some cunt's crotch.
Because you're 13 and internet didn't exist yet, pausing a movie was the best you got.
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Or use a video stabiliser (AKA Macrovision stripper). But if they're not commercial tapes, there won;t be any protection.
Re:Pre Macrovision with 4+ heads (Score:4, Funny)
Good point. Get two.
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It depends on the way the "stabilizer" works. Most just blank out some lines while some might actually replace the whole sync signal which is what you want.
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Macrovision is record only.
Professional VHS and/or S-VHS recorders actually had a switch where you could turn of the Macrovision AGC so those never were a problem.
Such professional VTRs are now available fairly cheap, even the ones with little use. I'd gravitate towards an S-VHS one since they are able to play VHS, and they provide the S-Video output for no cross colour.
Bees knees (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy a broadcast-quality Sony player from eBay.
BTW remember to retension the tapes, which means to rewind the tape, then wind it to the end of the reel, then rewind it again.
Re:Bees knees (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy a broadcast-quality Sony player from eBay.
"Broadcast quality" Sony players run Beta, not VHS.
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Sony developed Beta, but manufactured both formats for the consumer market.
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"Broadcast quality" Sony players run Beta, not VHS.
Beta?! It's a trap!
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Not necessarily.
see: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-S... [ebay.com]
Studios still needed a way to replay VHS tapes from a variety of sources, such as mailed in VHS tapes from regular people. Production was done in a format that's derived from Beta, but not quite beta.
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Actually the "broadcast quality" equipment ran various forms of Betacam which only shares the cassette size with Beta. The closest thing ever promoted by Sony for actual broadcast use was U-Matic, an ancestor of Beta with 3/4inch tape. It came in Low Band, High Band and SP.
However as stated before, there's a professional market where quality doesn't matter, and that's where (S-)VHS came in.
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The Sony "SVO-" line of VHS/SVHS VTRs were used throughout studio production in the 90s. At dear University we had SVO-5800s, and these could record and play back VHS and SVHS, they had a 9-Pin P2 remote control implementation for editing controllers and so they could be controlled from an MC. They also had a full time base corrector, VITC and LTC recorder, reader and decoder, and they could also be genlocked. They had I/Os on BNCs and XLRs.
At my public access station in the mid 90s we had Panasonic AG-7
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Yes, rewinding (is a player that rewinds softly, not in one that just maxes the voltage to the motor) then playing, then rewinding again is a VERY GOOD IDEA.
Also, not all players are created equal. With some tapes, you want a high-end player, with others, you want a player that can follow the tape's errant tracking WAY OUT OF BOUNDS.
I go to a GoodWill store, buy 4-5 decent looking VCRs, exchange the 2 that don't work, and try the same tape in all of them. You will find different tapes work better in differe
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VHS never was broadcast quality, however there's still a large market for professional non broadcast TV. For example companies would want to put internal information video on VHS since it's cheap and "good enough". For that market you get better (S-)VHS recorders.
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Do the math (Score:3, Insightful)
And with what number of tapes does it make sense to outsource the digitizing?
evaluate the cost of a vcr and the amount of time you have to transfer, I cannot provide a value to your time then compare it to the cost of outsourcing and make choice.
Re:Do the math (Score:4, Insightful)
Send them out (Score:3, Informative)
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It is.
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In case you haven't noticed, $20 isn't very much money nowadays. Unless you already happened to have the required equipment on hand, you'd be hard-pressed to do it cheaper yourself.
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"That, exactly. I can't really imagine how it could be worth your time and effort to do it yourself, unless you have VHS tapes that have material on them that you don't want a third party to see. Send your tapes to someone else to have them transfered to DVD and spend the extra time you just bought yourself doing something enjoyable."
Exactly! Where I live, we have an audiovisual document center where all that stuff is archived for the community.
They digitize any analog materiel, even for free if you give th
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I did some digitizing using a TV card (around $120) and and a cheap $50 VCR. The recorded visual and sound quality was as good as the tape itself. But then you need to weigh up the costs of a large capacity disk drive, the TV card, VCR and cables. Those cheap VCR don't last long even with modern cassettes. The motors usually end up burning out. No different from those low cost USB cassette players. The torque required to just loosen up the tape is equivalent to holding a pen firmly in one hand and trying to
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Standard MPEG2 capture is fine for VHS. x264 won't give you better quality as it can't create lines of resolution. Besides, *everything* can read MPEG2...
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And while DVD may be a format approaching obsolescence (at least on the market), there are so many readers out there - and it is trivial to rip DVD to a file on your computer so you have another copy - that it is likely the most portable in the long-term sense.
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The biggest problem with most VHS-to-DVD transfers is inadequate sample resolution or encoding bitrate. VHS is low-res... but it's also noisy, and noise compresses badly. Encoding captured VHS video in a way that preserves it EXACTLY the way it was read from the VCR (preserving higher-order information like chroma shift and luminance noise) so it can be further restored later requires a MINIMUM 704x480 resolution and 6-8mbps bitrate. In English, that basically means you'll get about an hour of high-quality
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I still watch divx/xvid, and the worst thing is the 128Kbit/s MP3 sound. Sometimes sligtly better, 128K AAC.
I hope a streaming/download service will comes up that satisfies my needs.. I want low bitrate, low res video and high btirate stereo sound!
DVD is high bitrate and low res. Yes, the codec is old but with the max legal video birate you can afford with stereo or mono 48KHz sound, I'm sure it can look okay.
Oh, I guess you have a too big TV with too much processing enabled. I suppose that if you don't dis
Don't forget the other half of the equation. (Score:5, Insightful)
evaluate the cost of a vcr and the amount of time you have to transfer, I cannot provide a value to your time then compare it to the cost of outsourcing and make choice.
Include the cost of your time in dealing with the outsourcing service, too.
There's also the issues of:
- what values you put on letting others see your tapes,
- the risk of them making copies,
- whether anything you want to tansfer is copyright-encumbered and the service wouldn't copy that for you.
- the relative likelyhood of quality transfers and tape damage when done by a professional service versus do-it-yourself. They have the experience but you have the personal involvement.
You need to evaluate these as well.
(I often do things myself rather than hire them done because I'm more comfortable blaming myself than someone else if something breaks - even if breakage due to my efforts may be more likely. I also enjoy learning new skills and technical trivia, even if I'm unlikely to use them again later, and surprising situations keep coming up where some tidbit turns out to be useful.)
Panasonic AG1980P (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Panasonic AG1980P (Score:5, Informative)
Be sure to test every tape with the TBC on and off. I've noticed a hint of pixelation with it on, and the dynamic range seems to be a bit narrower too. I believe you should leave TBC off as much as possible as long as your capture device likes the signal.
Re:Panasonic AG1980P (Score:5, Informative)
These are excellent machines that will play back just about any VHS tape you can throw at them.
I am looking at 5 of them across the room from me right now. 3 are in excellent condition, one needs some audio work and one needs all the capacitors changed.
I also leave the screws off the covers so I can slide them back and manually clean the heads when I run into some bad tapes (tapes that were crinkled or damaged or have iron oxide flaking off).
The capacitors is the big issue with these. Every.Single.One needs to be replaced at some point.
I used to send my machines out to a place in Texas to have them changed for around $300 after I bought them on eBay.
Then there was a guy selling them on eBay with the caps changed out for around $300 and they were running like new.
I think he is still there.
These machines are excellent at playing back difficult to track tapes, or ones recorded in SLP/EP mode.
don't buy one of those all-in-one VHS to DVD machines unless your tapes are all in good condition and recorded in SP mode.
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The Panasonic AG1980P is really great - as good as it gets when it comes to VHS.
least amount of pain.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Hmm... No. I have one of these. It just ate a VHS tape. It does that time to time. Sucks it in and just keeps on grinding the tape to shreds.
I bought this unit for the ability to transfer VHS to DVD. I was not happy with the results.
It is better to just buy DVDs on eBay or used on Amazon for a couple of bucks if your VHS are commercial releases. The quality is far better and it doesn't waste your time. Put the VHS tapes in a time capsule.
I admit I have obscure tastes (Score:2)
It is better to just buy DVDs on eBay or used on Amazon for a couple of bucks if your VHS are commercial releases.
Unless it's something that hasn't been rereleased on DVD like the film Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, or something that was taped off air and never officially released on home video at all like the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea.
Ion Audio (Score:3)
I've had good luck with an Ion cassette-to-USB deck for ripping an old tape collection to digital on the computer. They've got a VHS-to-USB one as well: http://www.ionaudio.com/products/details/vcr-2-pc [ionaudio.com].
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That's been discontinued, and AFAIK only has PC drivers. Their replacement is just a composite -> USB box, but it does have OS X drivers.
Dunno if either has OSS support, alas.
I like the VCR2DVD deck idea, assuming one can be found that does a quality job. I reckon finding a higher-end (S) VHS deck (with 4+ heads, stereo, auto tracking, maybe jog/shuttle knob) and testing it with a few sacrificable tapes is the way to go for OP. For 8mm video I'd recommend finding a Digital8 deck or camera, since it in
Make sure it has s-video output (Score:5, Informative)
Of course if the original tape was recorded using a composite signal, then there's nothing you can do.
Re:Make sure it has s-video output (Score:5, Informative)
For old analogue audio recordings, being able to tweak the audio head azimuth will help bring out the best of the recording. I also consider this essential for archiving cassette and open reel recordings. You have to hear how much difference being able to tweak aziumuth makes to believe it. It is a critical adjustment and the playback azimuth has to match that of the recorder otherwise all your top end goes down the plug-hole and it sounds washed out.
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Eh?
There's a lot of misinformation here: Not just with your post, but everywhere.
Let's start with audio.
Initially, all VHS tapes had a monaural sound track that is recorded linearly at very low speed, in a manner not at all dissimilar to a Compact Cassette (but worse). It sucks, but it's all that such a tape has: If you have such a tape, you'll have to make the best of it.
Some VHS tapes (mostly original studio releases) also have a linear stereo soundtrack. This also sucks (again, because the tape speed
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Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 (Score:5, Informative)
For capturing content on a Windows box I cannot recommend the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 [amazon.com] highly enough. That capture card should also be compatible with MythTV [linuxtv.org].
The output from my current consumer grade 4 head Panasonic Omnivision (mono audio) VCR was friggin amazing. My wife had a selection of out of print VHS tapes and I captured them with that card. She was missing one tape and while searching for it I found a three pack of DVDs, one of which matched what she was missing and two of which matched what she had. I had to look at the output frame by frame to see if there was any perceptible difference between the Hauppauge output and the DVD. There was none.
Even with normal recordings from home there can be issues with the picture quality. If you have problems with the video becoming lighter and darker that my not be a copy protection issue (obviously as you are working with home movies). Consider purchasing a Digital video stabilizer. The guys at the electronics repair shop nearby recommend ones by MCM Electronics [amazon.com] to help mitigate transfer issues.
Tossing your MPEG-2 output from the Hauppauge through the NLE of your choice might help with noise reduction (I use NeatVideo> [neatvideo.com] and color skew. YMMV.
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My older Panasonic VHS (which I bought used in 1984, but it was about a year old then) is a two-head, and it does EP -- tho there's a considerable loss of quality. Not so noticeable on my newer Panasonic 4-head (got it about 1998, I forget exactly).
You still want to go with a 4-head if you can find it -- trust me, having seen playback side by side, it makes a BIG difference -- even on tapes recorded with the 2-head, and especially on tapes recorded in EP by the 2-head. No comparison. (I checked with that so
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WTF, that is a TV tuner. We don't need a TV tuner, we just need a VCR to PC adapter. Where do I get one? I don't even know where to start.
The WinTV PVR has analog input for recording from analog sources. It does happen to have both analog and digital tuners but I do not use them. Their analog capture is the best that I have ever seen.
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Most VCRs sport a composite video out RCA connector on the back. With a cheap RCA to S-Video adapter you could use the S-Video input on the Hauppauge and be in business. If your VCR is fancy enough, it may even have a S-Video output making even it even simpler. If you had to, you could also use the tuner, as pretty much every consumer-level VCR will also output on either Ch 3 or Ch 4.
Buy a new one (Score:3)
Sony SLV-R1000 (Score:2)
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/NICE-So... [www.ebay.ca]
That should do the job, and it'll keep its resale value. Skip the ultra cost-reduced thingies you see at walmart.
May not be worth it (Score:2)
Hire Someone (Score:2)
Send your VHS tapes into a company and have them do it. They have much better equipment than you can afford, and it saves you the hassle of having to find a recorder and do it yourself. I recently sent VHS tapes + 8mm reels + slides in to a company to have them digitized. The results were incredible. I have a VCR and a capture card, as well as a slide projector and a slide scanner, but the quality of their high end equipment was unbelievable. I didn't realize an old slide could hold such high quality photog
torrent (cough cough) is your best value (Score:2)
that is, if the content wasn't that which you created yourself.
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If they're available in a torrent they are 90% likely to have been released on DVD or Blu-ray. You'd be surprised how cheap older movies sell for even in HD.
Sony (Score:2)
Have a 17 year old Sony player and it works great.
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Speaking from personal experience (Score:4, Interesting)
I did about 15-20 of them last year, some of them Macrovision protected. I used an Hauppauge PVR-150 capture card (didn't seem to mind Macrovision like my Theatre 550), or I could have used my video stabiliser.
I used two vcrs. A really nice JVC from around 1986 (HR-830U) for most of the tapes with the PVR-150. for some of the tapes where I couldn't get audio from both channels (mangled tape), I used a Samsung VHS/DVD combo since that one allowed me to force left or right on both channels (but no manual tracking).
Most important thing, be prepared to clean the machine quite a bit using a wet cleaning system, not the abrasive ones, as those old tapes could flake (or be dirty). For capture, I used DVD movie factory (came with an old burner) and Video Redo (trial) for commercial removal and editing. Figure about 2GB/hour on DVD Quality (not worth going higher since it's only VHS.
If it's an old VCR, be prepared to replace straps as some of them might have dried out or decomposed / broken (like I'm about to do on the old Beta, one of them is slipping).
As someone else said in the thread, some home movies might have issues with white balance, a video stabiliser is helpful to help fix that issue...
farm it out (Score:2)
find a local place that will do it for you and pay them to do it.
If you absolutely have to do it yourself, find a local place that does it and ask what tape deck they use.
Several years? (Score:2)
A couple of hundred bucks and who knows how many hours of work and fiddling for movies you haven't watched since your last player died? That seems a bit steep to me.
We just came across a bunch of boxes of old VHS movies, and after some conversation... we're just tossing them in the Goodwill donation box. If we haven't watched 'em in five years, there's no point in going to all the trouble of copying them to a new format. The handful we might have converted, we've long since bought on DVD or Blu-Ray, no
DVD Recorder ZV427MG9 (Score:2)
Get a used Panasonic or Sony Pro/Industrial deck.. (Score:2)
These are going cheap (like all the other analog NTSC gear) on eBay or from video supply houses now that the world has gone digital. You likely can buy a good used rackmount VHS deck for less than the shipping will cost you. I bought a Panasonic AG-6500 for $40 about a year ago.
The only caveat here is that these things generally ONLY work in the SP (2 hour) mode. If your home movies were recorded in LP or EP/SLP, you obviously need to look for a deck that can play those speeds.
JVC DigiPure SVHS/DVHS decks and/or Panny AG-1980 (Score:2)
The Panasonic AG-1980P is best for EP/SLP tapes and is also better behaved with
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^^^ DVHS, some decks also had firewire outputs, firewire out to firewire in on a machine avoids the need for third party A2D.....
External TBC (Score:2)
>> To avoid frame dropping, you need an external TBC (different from the TBC in the VCR) acting as a frame sync.
^This
Let me add for the person asking the question that I found an external TBC extremely useful back when I was transferring family movies from VHS. Even though I used a nice SVHS unit with an internal TBC, some of the worst older tapes still had lots of dropping out, tearing, and sync issues that magically all but disappeared when I fed the signal through the external TBC. Perhaps you don'
JVC SR-VS10 miniDV and S-VHS (Score:2)
Get an A/D converter with DV output (Score:2)
I bought a converter like this one [amazon.com] and it works great, convertin
Just Experiment. (Score:2)
Homemade VHS quality is not great to begin with, I used a new (old but in the box) VCR and an EasyCap [amazon.com] (a clone i think). It worked fine. There was no noticeable degradation of quality. The mpeg was about 20GB for a two hour tape. The software i used was Virtual VCR [sourceforge.net]
To be honest, i think a lot of these best practices are voodoo (it entirely depends on how and when it was recorded), just to jack up the price. As for not wanting to risk a tape on an old player, just test
COSTCO DOES THIS! (Score:2)
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Good to know... is it a regular thing with the Photo Department? What do they charge, do you recall offhand? Chances are they didn't buy the cheapest gear around, either.
[You know you've spent too much at Costco when the manager sees you go by and pursues you waving the Executive Membership form... yep, he did. Really.]
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That would be a wee bit tough to replace, all right! Glad to hear the quality is good. I may use it sometime myself. Thanks!
How old are the tapes? (Score:3)
I tried something similar with some audio cassettes a few years ago, and found that I was too late: the tape had begun to stick together, and required more power than my high-end Denon tape deck could muster to play back. Rewinding didn't work either, as there's a tape tension sensor that shuts down the motor if it gets overloaded.
just search fleamarkets, junkyards, ebay or CL (Score:2)
you will spend $0 and while some of the VHS players you get won't be work well, you are bound to get a decent one. A VHS head cleaner tape is not a bad idea though. http://www.amazon.com/CleanDr-... [amazon.com]
Panasonic (Score:2)
Panasonic made good quality players that are remarkably durable. I'd pick one up used with little fear that it wouldn't work. My older Panasonic VHS dates to 1983 and still works fine. And no, you can't have my newer Panasonic, which also still works. Also, they have NEVER eaten a tape, and the older one in particular worked its little analog ass off. (I've often joked that Panasonic consumer electronics are too dumb to know when they're dead, since they generally work forever.)
You want a four-head player,
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you laugh but it was precisely because of VHS versus BETA that I spent 10 years trying to figure out why in one version of Return of the Jedi the Falcon loses it's sensor dish escaping from the Death Star II and in another it doesn't.
our BETA copy of the video didn't have it and my cousins VHS did. It was an off comment made by my cousin that went along the lines of "Not a scratch". Only years later did I realize that lucas randomly edited and rereleased versions of the movies.
Personally though if you go
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I have a couple reels of 8mm film from the promos for Star Wars. I've thought of bringing them to a video transfer service, but just haven't had the desire to spend the money on a novelty. Maybe next year.
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A "normal" tv -> USB dongle may not be sufficient for the usual VHS players, since their timing may be way off. You'll need somehting that has a TBC (time base corrector), either in the player or in the device to digitize the signal.
Other than that, I'd recommend a player made by Panasonic, since they used to make more robust, metal drives thatn most other manufacturers.
The older Panasonic models, perhaps, but by the turn of the century or so, theirs were pretty much the same inside as everyone else's.
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Fuck BETA!
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Yeah, my analogue video capture cards are XP (MCE) only
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Hauppauge PVR-150 works in 32-bit Win7. Same thing for my Syntek 1160 (EasyCap)
Hauppauge HVR-1600 works in 32/64.
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I think you have to go all the way back to XP to get a driver for those things.
All the way back? Kernel 3.15-RC3 released only a week ago still seems to have all the drivers.
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Yes and analog tapes are also quite good for long term storage - you can store a tape for 20-30 years without a problem, while digital media (other than digital tapes) cannot be stored for this long, they need constant copying.
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This is because the data density is so low. However, modern media (recordable CDs, DVDs, hard drives, flash memory) do not hold onto their data for very long. Hard drives might retain the magnetization, but their mechanical parts can wear out (if it's on all the time) or just fail (if it's off all the time, heads can stick or lubrication can harden and it's not like you can oil the hard drive like a floppy or tape drive).
OTOH, analog tape (video or audio) retains the data for very long time (I have a tape r
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....(I have a tape recorded in 1951 and it still plays OK) ....
Just curious, is that a 1/4" tape?
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Yes, and unlike more modern tapes it is made of paper, the brand name is "Soundmirror". The paper tape can snap in some tape decks (like the Revox A77), but in a tape deck with servo tension or on that has one motor (the tension is lower on these) it plays OK. It was recorded full track, but it looks like only in the center - if played on a 4 track tape deck, only the right channel plays.
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Your old tape probably has a very thick oxide layer on a fairly thick backing, compared to modern stuff.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I got my VHS blank tapes from a guy who bought it straight from TDK -- at the time that was the only place I could find their best retail tape, which was about half again 'thicker' than standard consumer tape (and cost about half again as much, too). Per what he told me, this was basically the seconds from their studio-grade tape, and it was still miles above standar
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Unless you want the unborked Star Wars.
One of these days I am going to get my parents VHS-DVD recorder and switch my VHS copies of the original Star Wars to VHS so I can forece my fiance to watch it-and also for when we have kids of course.
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I have a set of the earliest retail VHS tapes, and there are still things messed up in the audio (some substituted, some entirely absent) -- same stuff as is borked in the 1978 theatrical revision. Having seen the first run over 30 times, I noticed. :/
Not sure what version is on laserdisk, having never owned that platform. Wonder if some kind soul out there has ripped it for the masses...
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Agreed. The AG-1980 was excellent. The AG-6500 is also a good choice for SP only.
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The Mitsubishi HS-U52 was the best VCR I ever owned. The hifi stereo recording was so good I used to copy audio CDs from the library onto VHS. Back in the early 90s it was better quality than cassette and cheaper than DAT.