Beta & VHS tapes to DVD Questions / Thoughts

I am throwing this out to the community hoping for some creative responses.

About 7 years ago, I was going to start a video transfer business that would focus on converting Beta & VHS tapes to DVD. My plans did not pan out for a variety of reasons.

Since then, I have been actively working on video creation and transfers.

I am now back to "7 years ago" and am contemplating doing the same thing. I am just wondering if I am on the right path. In my mind DVDs are "dead". But that is just me.

What do people think? Is there a market for VHS/Beta/miniDV/Etc... transfer to DVD? Or should I be looking at a different model? If so, what would that model be?

I am hoping to stimulate some conversation here.

Just my opinion, but DVD is far from "dead". Sure, Blu-Ray is becoming popular amongst home theater enthusiasts, but if you look at the advantages it has over DVD for the mainstream consumer, I think you'll find that the appeal is fairly limited. For one thing, set-top DVD players are dirt cheap in comparison, and the media costs are a lot lower overall. When consumers made the leap from VHS to DVD, the advantages were astounding - no need to rewind, vastly superior quality, a multitude of viewing options, not to mention special features and extras. The advantages of Blu-Ray are far fewer comparatively.

Converting VHS, BetaMax to DVD

cwa107 said:

Just my opinion, but DVD is far from "dead". Sure, Blu-Ray is becoming popular amongst home theater enthusiasts, but if you look at the advantages it has over DVD for the mainstream consumer, I think you'll find that the appeal is fairly limited. For one thing, set-top DVD players are dirt cheap in comparison, and the media costs are a lot lower overall. When consumers made the leap from VHS to DVD, the advantages were astounding - no need to rewind, vastly superior quality, a multitude of viewing options, not to mention special features and extras. The advantages of Blu-Ray are far fewer comparatively.

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Great - this is exactly the feedback I am looking for.

In my case I have gone completely digital. I have converted all of my tapes to MP4. They are on our network and I can watch them throughout the house on our AppleTVs. But (of course) this is just me. I am not sure how the marketplace would look at this methodology.

If you were going to convert the media I mentioned (VHS, Beta, etc..) to DVD, how would you do it? Converting to MP4 is dead easy. Going to DVD in a cost-efficient way may be more difficult.

Your input is greatly appreciated!

I have done many transfers. For myself and others. One film transfer I had to send out and had it put on to a minidv. When I do transfers usually there is 2 different outputs. One goes to dvd the other remains a digital file that can be uploaded to video sharing sites. This way you can watch your own in full quality and share with friends and family via the internet.

I'm very sure that there is still a market for this kind of thing. I am currently ripping my VHS music collection to DVD using a dvd recorder, but I still have a VHS player, many don't but still have cherished tapes they need converting.
I would reckon if you can make it cost effective you'd be fine.

I still have (4) VCR's and the only one I'm still using is the one linked to my iMac. At times I think I'd be better off just uploading to a large remote HD and just watching them strictly on the Mac. Making a stack of DVD's at a cost versus uploading them to an extra hard drive (or two) is making a lot of sense to me these days.

Just my opinion, but DVD is far from "dead". Sure, Blu-Ray is becoming popular amongst home theater enthusiasts, but if you look at the advantages it has over DVD for the mainstream consumer, I think you'll find that the appeal is fairly limited. For one thing, set-top DVD players are dirt cheap in comparison, and the media costs are a lot lower overall. When consumers made the leap from VHS to DVD, the advantages were astounding - no need to rewind, vastly superior quality, a multitude of viewing options, not to mention special features and extras. The advantages of Blu-Ray are far fewer comparatively.

I certainly think there is still a market for this. Matter of fact, I just bought an EyeTV hybrid for this. We have a bag full of VHS tapes with home movies and I realized that I need to transfer these to digital before they wear out, and just to free up that space they are taking up.

bassgalcrash said:

I certainly think there is still a market for this. Matter of fact, I just bought an EyeTV hybrid for this. We have a bag full of VHS tapes with home movies and I realized that I need to transfer these to digital before they wear out, and just to free up that space they are taking up.

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Does the EyeTV allow you to stream videos from your Mac to a large screen television? Is that what the big tv at the Apple store is doing? If so, that might be the route I go instead loading and burning these mountains of old videotapes.

Kevriano said:

I'm very sure that there is still a market for this kind of thing. I am currently ripping my VHS music collection to DVD using a dvd recorder, but I still have a VHS player, many don't but still have cherished tapes they need converting.
I would reckon if you can make it cost effective you'd be fine.

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I was actually thinking of getting a DVD recorder to do the same thing. Can you comment on the quality of the DVDs? For simple copying, it seems that it would be a waste of time to import to one's PC, then rip to DVD. A recorder would be much more efficient.

electricianron said:

Does the EyeTV allow you to stream videos from your Mac to a large screen television? Is that what the big tv at the Apple store is doing? If so, that might be the route I go instead loading and burning these mountains of old videotapes.

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The EyeTV encodes to MP4 (Apple Standard). From there you can run your ripped VHS tapes across your network. IE from your AppleTV. This is what I am doing. I capture to MP4 and save the originals on a network drive. Then any computer (Mac or PC) that has access to the network can view the videos you ripped. Cool eh?

joomlales said:

I was actually thinking of getting a DVD recorder to do the same thing. Can you comment on the quality of the DVDs? For simple copying, it seems that it would be a waste of time to import to one's PC, then rip to DVD. A recorder would be much more efficient.

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You are correct if you just want to copy straight across. If you put on the computer you can edit the videos, like one I did was from a film transfer that was silent. Also you can create custom menus for the DVDs and add text to the videos.

joomlales said:

I was actually thinking of getting a DVD recorder to do the same thing. Can you comment on the quality of the DVDs? For simple copying, it seems that it would be a waste of time to import to one's PC, then rip to DVD. A recorder would be much more efficient.

Click to expand...

I was wanting to import multiple files from different tapes and merge them onto one DVD. Like make one DVD of one particular family member, or put all our Christmas get togethers on one DVD. I had several tapes that had one Christmas, then one birthday, then a TV show.... etc. Then use iMovie to build the DVD.

Also I wanted to rip commercials from old tapes. Which is what I started with. BUT... it was way too time consuming with the EyeTV and you can't see the video as you are fast forwarding on screen. But I did it using the TV tuner with coax cable, not from the video cables, which may have made a difference. It saw it as analog tv, not video.

The clips were HUGE. Unless you have a computer designed to do a lot of video editing, and a big backup drive, I would not recommend the Eye TV. For what I want to do, DVD recorder will be fine. Not what I really wanted, but I don't have the computer for the job. I have decided to just record the VHS tapes, as is, nevermind the organizing. I see now why people choose to use a business do to this. haha

The quality was AWESOME! I was impressed how a tape from 1987 looked. If I had the right machine, and the time, I would still go with the EyeTV. The EyeTV 250 even has a VHS assistant. So that device may be even better.