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Thursday March 15, 2007
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If you're like me, you have shelves and shelves of old VHS tapes and Hi-8 videocassettes that are collecting dust, slowly wasting away. As the years go on, those tapes will deteriorate and eventually be gone entirely, lost to the sands of time. David Pogue, technology columnist for the New York Times, recently checked out a new gadget from Sony that hopes to take the confusion and the complication out of digitizing analog video tapes and converting them to DVDs that can stand the test of time and be played from any set-top DVD player.
The Sony DVDirect VRD-MC3 runs about $130 retail and has inputs on the side that should support just about any camcorder or VCR. Simply plug in the device of your choice with the tape in it and pop a blank DVD into the DVDirect. Press play on the VCR or camcorder, and the DVDirect automatically sees what device is connected and prompts you to press the record button to start burning the DVD. In a few minutes, the DVDirect will import the video from your VCR or camcorder and spit out a new DVD with menus that can be browsed and chapters that you can either create automatically by telling the device to make a new chapter every 5 to 20 minutes, or by pressing pause on the input device or swapping out tapes. The DVDirect also has a firewire jack for newer digital camcorders, and can support high-def camcorders, although it won't record high-def DVDs. There's even a card reader on the other side, so you can insert media cards from your digital camera and the DVDirect will burn a DVD slideshow of all of the photos on the media card, complete with menus.
Pogue reports that the device burned the occasional coaster or two, but all in all for a one-touch solution, it was pretty solid, and a great idea for people who either didn't know how to or didn't want to connect their VCR directly to their computer to import and convert video in real time. The real beauty of the device is that, even though you sacrifice the DIY spirit to it, it's an easy to use box that can sit anywhere in the house, even next to the video tape library, and you don't have to get your computer involved if you don't want to, and you don't have to baby-sit the video conversion. For $130 dollars, you may make your money back by preserving all of those old VHS tapes you've bought and your collection of home movies. [via NYTimes]
Post by Alan Henry
Posted By:
Gearlog
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March 16, 2007 4:19 PM
Looks like a cool product but the cheapest one I could find was $209. Where can you get it for $130?
March 17, 2007 1:53 AM
Wow! Looks like the prices have gone up there, Drew! I swore some of the promo docs I read said the price point would be atound $130, but searching around it looks like $220 is far more common. I was able to find one as cheap as $199 using Froogle - check there and see what you can find!
March 19, 2007 1:59 PM
Hi!
Interesting product.
I have 10 Hi-8 tapes about 2 hours each. How would this product be truly able to handle this kind of job?
I look forward to your response.
BTW - Do you have a Sony web link to this product?
Thanks :0)
March 19, 2007 2:36 PM
What was the purpose of this article? I mean, sure, pass along the link to the NY Times article, that's useful to Gearlog readers. But nothing you said goes beyond what Pogue said, and you screwed up perhaps the single most important fact in the whole story. So why did you bother writing anything at all?
March 19, 2007 2:53 PM
I did not have any luck with the product.
After attempting to record any VHS tape for about 55 min. it would just say recording didn't work.
The accompanying manual was no help and Sony's website was less help. Sony's live help on line asked what media I trying to burn to. Since I was using Sony DVD's that wasn't the problem.
Unit was returned and a VHS/DVD recorder (not Sony) was purchased and works fine.
March 19, 2007 3:05 PM
Are you able to edit out portions of the tape as the record process is going along or at some point before it hits the DVD? thanks.
March 19, 2007 3:19 PM
I wonder if my PC will then read and import the DVD. My sister recently passed away. I am trying to make a DVD of all of the video I have of her for her children. Of course the problem is that the video of her is mixed with other video on the tapes. If I could convert to DVD, then import into PC and pick and choose the parts I want, that would be great.
Also, does it work with copyright tapes. I have a VCR/DVR combo, but it will not copy copyrighted tapes.
March 20, 2007 5:28 PM
@Peter: I wouldn't call it a screwup, since my information turned out to be erroneous. And passing along links is what a weblog is for, isn't it? I would assume that is enough reason for it's existance, and I restated what Pogue said because I felt it was valuable. In fact, Pogue went much further in depth than I thought was necessary to allow someone to have a basic understanding of an interesting product and what it might be abel to do for them. I would then ask, what value does your obviously arrogant comment serve?
@Brian: Glad you found it interesting! You can learn more about the DVDirect line of Sony's apps here:
http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/discburners/dvdirect/index.html?detectflash=false
There are two different lines of the same gadget, you might take a look at either to see how they might differ and which might suit you better.
@Bruce: Sorry to hear you had such a a hard time! Looks like it's not foolproof by any means! What did you purchase to replace it?
@Jim: I highly doubt it. The whole purpose of the device is to make it something of fire-and-forget, so I doubt you'll have the ability to do any video editing. If that's more your forte, you might want to go the old fashioned route and connect up your VCR or camcorder to your computer! :)
@Robbie: My condolences about your sister. Sounds like you're in Jim's boat. This product seems to be geared much more towards people looking to archive and digitize old media libraries, not make their own movies based on that old media. This might help you get all of those old tapes onto DVDs from which it's easier to edit them on the PC, but then again you could, with a bit more time and effort, connect up your VCR and camcorders to the PC and import the video that way. Just make sure you have plenty of hard drive space! :D
December 4, 2007 3:21 PM
I would like to preserve over one hundred 8-hour VHS tapes. Since a DVD only holds 2 hours, and no editing is possible, that means 4 DVDs per VHS tape.
How long is the time to convert? Will I lose information, while taking out and inserting DVDs?