Convert Your VCR Tapes Into Digital Video
May 27, 2008 by Sean R.
Filed under Home Entertainment, Misc. Gadgets
VHS. Some of you won’t be old enough to remember video tape. And those of you who are doubtless have a stack of low resolution cassettes somewhere in the basement, maybe next to the box of 8-Tracks and Zip-Disks. Good news. Now you can rip those tapes to digital files, and even burn them to the next soon-to-be-obsolete format, DVD.
Ion’s VCR 2 PC is a VHS player with a USB port. It converts movies into MPEG-4 files, and the included software will take those files and make them ready for various portable devices. That’s pretty much it, but if you, like my grandmother, have the entire collection of Murder She Wrote on VHS, the $250.00 USD player is a lot cheaper than re-buying all those episode’s on DVD.
The VCR to PC will also do double-duty as a general purpose converter. It has standard video and audio-in sockets on the front for hooking up old video cameras and the like. A one-trick-pony, yes, but it’s both a good trick and a cheap trick.
If you’ve got all kinds of different analog sources that you want to capture to your computer, you can consider this USB devices: http://www.gizmosforgeeks.com/2008/02/25/review-honestechs-vhs-to-dvd-30-deluxe/