Im considering buying equip. to dub all our old VHS tapes to DVD for saving and copying for kids etc. Have any of you done this yet? I dont want to send tapes out to anyone, but get the equipment myself, then when done, pass the equip. to other relatives for them to do it.
Are combo units any better than just DVD recorder that an old tape player would plug into?
Thanks for some ideas.
graemlins/thumbsup.gif

i've been thinking of doing the same thing for a while. my grandmom, mom, etc. have a ton of vhs tapes that need to be converted. i was just waiting for the price of dvd recorders to drop down. they have dropped a lot, but the cheapest i've seen is a little under $400. i don't think i would spend the extra change on a combo unit either. if you have quality connections to a vcr, it should work just as good.

You can buy a video capture card and DVD burner for your computer and created them yourself. It will not be easily portable however. You would have to uninstall and reinstall the hardware and software. You would have more flexibility however in creating them. Custom menus and such. Check out the ATI All-in-Wonder series for video capture and Optowrite for the DVD burner.

In October I bought a Panasonic DMR-E80H which is a DVD player, recorder, and digital video recorder all in one box. This thing is sweet! My purpose in buying it was to start moving our VHS and Digital 8 home videos to DVD as many of them are almost a decade old. If you have any old videos that you haven't watched in a while pull them out and you'll be amazed at how bad they have degraded.

This system works great for this as you can copy your original video to the hard disk drive and then do some editing before burning it to DVD. You have a lot more flexibility with a PC setup, but how much time are you really going to spend editing each tape?

The best part of this box is that it can be used just like a VCR to record your favorite shows. Just setup the timer like a VCR and forget it. Don't worry about having a blank tape or forgetting to rewind a tape. Just relax! Even better is the fact that you can tell it to tape the same show every week or day. Just make sure you watch it before the next record time as it will overwrite the old one unless you have protected it which is a manual operation.

Anyway... I really like this box and would recommend it if you just want to get those old movies to DVD.

I bought mine off of Amazon.com for $540. Here is a link if you wish to check it out: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00009KXA3/qid=1074562469//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i0_xgl23/002-2194863-9104018?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846

If the link doesn't work go to Amazon.com and search for E80H. That will get you there. They have a link to the owners manual so you can download it and look it over before you buy.

If you have any questions about this box I'd be happy to answer them for you.

I've VHS home movies into VCDs, you can download some free trial software from www.ulead.com, (http://www.ulead.com,) the software is not the greatest, but its okay for amateur transfers, if you've got a DVD burner, then you can increase your frame sizes allowing for better quality movies, the movies I made on VCD are the same quality as VHS cassettee..

Try going to avsforum.com (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/search.php)
go to"search all open forums",and look for"DVD RECORDERS" there is a bunch of stuff there,hope this helps,as i've been looking into this stuff too. graemlins/thumbsup.gif

thanks guys, now I have some things to study, Im staying away from computer run systems since I will be sharing this with other family that dont have the computers that can handle it or the brains to make it all work hehe.
graemlins/thumbsup.gif