Posted on 03/09/2007 4:20:44 AM PST by siunevada
A New Box From Sony Turns Videotapes Into Shiny DVDs
Citizens of ancient cultures made no multimedia records of their own birthday parties, weddings or babies’ first steps. How tragic and boring. When they sat down in front of the TV after dinner at family gatherings, what on earth did they watch?
The Sony DVDirect VRD-MC3 converts video from various formats to DVDs, working by itself or with a PC. Yet even in the most recorded, videotaped and photographed society in history, we have our own issues. For example, we insist upon upgrading our recording technologies every few years, each time orphaning millions of disks, reels and cassettes in older formats. All over the world, VHS and camcorder tapes from the 1980s and ’90s are slowly turning to dust. And it’s becoming harder and harder to find the equipment you need to play back some of those videos.
Even the DVD will one day turn out to have been a temporary format, but at least it has advantages over tapes. The video quality is terrific. You can skip around without rewinding or fast-forwarding. And homemade DVDs may last 100 years, if you believe the vendors of those gold-coated blanks.
Now, the technologically savvy computer nut thinks nothing of connecting an old camcorder or VCR to a well-equipped Mac or PC; hitting Play; waiting two hours for each tape to transfer in real time; editing and touching up the result on the computer screen; and then waiting another two hours for the resulting video burn onto a DVD.
But in Sony’s opinion...this is much too laborious, expensive and time-consuming. Enter the Sony DVDirect VRD-MC3, a $218 box that converts old (and new) videotapes into shiny new DVDs with an emphasis on two extremely important attributes: simplicity and reproduction quality.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Except it probably won't convert any of my copy-protected VHS movies into a shiny new DVD.
I think the selling point it the time.
two hours for each tape to transfer in real time; editing and touching up the result on the computer screen; and then waiting another two hours for the resulting video burn onto a DVD.
In a couple of years there will probably be generic knockoffs for much less than $218.
A $218 box for suckers. I bought a $99 Miglia TVMax box. Not only did I then record all of my VHS tapes to DVD, but my cable TV plugs into it, and turns my Mac into a DVR.
By the way, NYT, it only takes twenty minutes for me to burn a 2-hour DVD, not 2 hours.
You have to play the VHS tape real time to convert to digital format.
Also, the quality of the typical analog video to digital video encoder is pretty poor.
That's nice.
But how do I convert my music cassettes to cds?
connect your receiver line out into your PC/Mac line in on a decent video card and do it with Roxio or Nero and your CD or DVD burner. convert to mp3 or use audio format. works pretty well, but you're limited to the quality of the cassettes (they deteriorate over time) and your old cassette player and your stereo.
copy-protected VHS movies
No such thing. If you can see it, or if you can hear it, you can copy it.
...but if technological advances continue, we will eventually learn to detect such records from their stone, glass, metal, et al. relics and convert them to video, photographic, and sound records ourselves.
Everything is recorded in the Akashic Records.
The problem with analog video tapes is that they canonlkhy be copied in real time; hence, a 2 hour tape will always take 2 hours to copy to any machine.
What do you need on your PC to do it right now with the new Sony box?
I mean, how can I plug my camera into the computer and make digital recordings.
Anybody?
:D
A DVD-R is only $60?
We are buried in videotapes.
Finally, are the final movies in an easily convertable format? Can you convert them to Quicktime? Can you use the Mac like a TV tuner then?
Sounds great and I'll eventually get around to it (hopefully after the price comes way down). My first priority is to figure out how to transfer all my old vinyl albums to CD without spending a fortune.
Cassettes can be ripped to CD, but because the tapes are of inferior quality to start with, the results will not be gratifying.
But if your tapes are material that can't be repurchased on CD, there are some commercial services on the web that will do the transfer for you at very resonable prices. My brother did that with an original tape and was happy with it. Then he just duped all the copies he wanted.
I have heard some rips from vinyl LPs that were quite good. But the persons doing it were very serious hobbyists.
Ping for later.
I've been thinking about ripping movies off the DVR and burning DVDs.
Don't have the time right now to examine the thread.
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