Transfer old VHS Home Movies to DVD

[rstynkl]

Please help, as the box store "experts" cannot: What should I look for when buying a DVD Recorder for the primary purpose of transferring old home movies, some of which are beginning to fade? I would like to salvage the best practical copies, but am not interest in quality beyond that discernable. I know next to nothing about DVD.

I am looking at the new Sansui 4500, which contains both a VCR and a DVD recorder. It seems that there might be some advantage in the fact that all circuits would be integral.

On the other hand, some manufacturers advertise circuits that the Sansui may not have. Samsung DVDR4000 has "digital noise reduction" and Phillips DVDR75 has "Virtual Time Base Correction." Do these things really matter? I would also be willing to step up in price, if that would make a discernable difference.

Thanks for any help/recommendations you can make.

[donpedro]

I would say yes, they matter.

Not sure about those that you listed, but real Time Base Corrector that is in Panasonics burners could realy help in case of old tapes.

[verchad]

I have a panasonic dmr-hs2 which has the time base correction in it. It makes some older tapes better. It can only do so much though, some 10 plus year old tapes were better. They still showed some odd colors, or distortion at the top or bottom of the screen no matter what settings I played with on the vcr. Remember, you'll only get as good or a little better output than the signal you feed into the dvd recorder.

Consider what you are transferring from. If your camcorder uses firewire/i-link, usb, s-vhs, or rca outputs, get a recorder that can accept whatever the best output is you have.

[donpedro]

TBC is mostly needed to avoid problems with synchronization (video vs sound).

[thoots]

rstynkl,

I have been recording my old VHS tapes to DVD-R discs on a Panasonic DMR-E50, and I have been absolutely thrilled with the results. I would heartily recommend any of the Panasonic recorders to you -- I'm confident you would be happy with the results you would see!

Good luck!

thoots