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Digital Home DIY: Step-by-step guides that make home tech projects easy
Archive VHS video to DVD
The VCR is dead: long live the DVD! Now that DVD recorders and blank discs are so inexpensive, there's no good reason to keep all those old tapes lying around. For this project, we'll tell you how to go tape-free once and for all.
What the editors say
1
Tapes are a pain.
Compared to DVD discs, videocassette tapes take up more shelf space, break and get stuck in the recording unit more often, offer lower video and sound quality, waste your time cueing up, don't play on computers, don't travel well in person or in the mail, and never, ever impress the neighbors.2
Preserve the memories.
A typical write-once (DVD-R or DVD+R) disc should keep its contents safe for 100 years. A typical VHS recording can last as long as 20 years, but image and sound quality degradation becomes noticeable in as little as 5 years. If you want your wedding video to last 'til the grandkids can watch it, there's really no choice.3
Transfer is cheap and easy.
Forget about paying some jerk at the video store $25 a pop to transfer your tapes to DVD. You can get a standalone DVD recorder for as little as $100, and blank discs can cost less than 50 cents apiece. VHS-to-DVD-R decks are also relatively cheap, and they make the transfer as easy as dubbing audio cassettes.
What you say
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We want to hear about what DIY digital home projects you're working on, what you're thinking of working on, and what additional projects you'd like us to cover.
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