Home audio & video forum: Best VHS to DVD "Converter"

The DVD recorder is nice, but will it side-step copy protection? It seems that the OP wanted to take VHS movies that were not his and burn them to DVD, and he asked about Piracy laws. Most if not all DVD burners won't allow this, unless that Magnavox is one of the old models that allowed copying? When I converted my VHS movies I had to use a hardware device that too S-Video from my VHS player and converted it to a digital signal fed into my computer via Firewire cable, then I could burn them to DVD. Boy, what a time consuming pain that was.

There are a lot of folk that want to enter into an argument about that, but depending on what country you are in, it rarely works out.

About the TIME CONSUMING PAIN. I hear you. If I can't go direct or use my Philips HDD 160GB DVD recorder it takes about 6 hours to make 1 hour of video. On the Philips it takes 1 hour to record one hour of video (1 to 1 so far.) Then I can snip off the extra at the beginning and end then dub to DVD in 15 or so minutes. That's more like it.

The OP's budget is too low.
Bob

My early model of Canopus took composite inputs from VHS and converted the signal to DV and used FireWire to computer for digitizing into my software. This device did not have the sync problems of many cheap hardware or software solutions and did not use USB, which does not really work for importing DV. And this old unit bypasses copy protection. Thankfully most movies I had on VHS became available on DVD. Most people did not want to spend $200 or so on a Canopus unit but they were happy spending $50 - $100 on methods that didn't work. The new Canopus units don't bypass protection.

Sorry, I didn't mean you. I was responding to "Kristi" above who stated in her post "Do I need to worry about piracy laws"? For me, I copied tapes for my own purpose so I didn't worry about piracy. Oh oh, there you go FBI, come and arrest me. Anyways, when my copied movies come out on DVD, I toss the copied version because the quality suffers on copied versions.

Sorry, I referred to a question I asked maybe a year ago. What I did was look up titles that by now should be on DVD. After all, there are some titles (especially sports titles for some reason) that I never see on DVD. So I just labeled "CP" on my tapes and don't lose any sleep over not finding them on DVD.

I do read where members highlighted the copy protection issue and you need to make and live with your choices.

However since all the models I see today honor the usual protection, you may be upset at the results.
Bob

The only thing I really don't like is that I never know if a tape is copy-protected until the DVD machine stops itself from recording and renders the actual disc unusable.

So you try with a rewriteable DVD until you know it's good. And only then you start over with a non-rewritable. Problem solved.

Kees

...were that simple.

FWIW, quite a lot of them puke up certain types of blanks DVD-RWs, and others won't accept/finalize specific brands. YMMV. Been there, done that. That's why most folks stick with the cheaper but much more reliable single layer DVD blanks.