vhs is not dead yet!

[Noa Put]

Medion, a German electronica company selling tv's, laptops and building their own modified pc's for a cheaper price and selling through a very large foodshop chain called Aldi had a very surprising offer I saw in the Aldi magazine a short while back, it was this device:

Medion md 83425 combirecorder dvd-video

It records directly from tv to a dvd but can also copy from dvd to vhs and from vhs to dvd.

What was more surprising was the price, at 225 euro I"m sure it's worth it's price but at 9 times the cost of a regular dvd player I wonder how much people end up buying this. They are selling it in a store which is known for it's low prices and limited assortment, the shops electronics department is usually very small as it is still a shop that mainly sells food.

I found it surprising to still in almost 2015 see devices sold that can play and record to vhs cassettes, probably they aim at people that want to digitize their large collection of vhs cassettes but 225 euro is a very steep price especially in a store that sells budget items.

[Jo Ouwejan]

Desalniettemin, Uh sorry, Nevertheless Aldi is repected for the level of their quality, paired to their illustrious low pricing. And Medion is seen as a respected brand these days.

[Noa Put]

Yeah, but unless you are Dutch, who would pay 225 euro for such a recorder with ancient technology? :) Just kidding, but it's still a lot of money for a technology that doesn't make much sense anymore to sell today, I guess it's mainly for enthusiasts that want to digitize their collection or maybe earn a few euro's converting other peoples vhs tapes?

[Roger Gunkel]

Interestingly enough, I have been asked on several occasions recently whether I can convert old VHS to dvd, usually by parents of wedding couples. They seem to be happy to pay up to £25 per tape, which could justify the cost of a machine.. Until about a year ago they could still be bought for about £60-70, but are now becoming rare and presumably you are paying a premium for 'Retro'.

It does amuse me though that people would want to convert from an obsolete format to one that will soon be obsolete. Perhaps it shows how little most people outside of the industry actually understand technology.

Roger

[Jon Fairhurst]

Like they say, content is king!

If you have family tapes, they are irreplaceable. Converting those tapes (or making money by converting for others) makes sense to me. Using a newer, good quality machine that won't eat the tapes makes sense too. Finally, now that there's no high volume supply of VHS players, a higher price makes (some) sense too.

[Chris Harding]

I have even copied 8mm (not even Super 8) film to DVD for people ...OK, it's a pain in the butt but as Jon says these are precious memories and you simply cannot put a price on that! It doesn't matter what technology you are transferring to ...you are making someone happy by letting them see family videos that they wouldn't be able to watch otherwise.

[Noa Put]

But would you pay almost 340 Australian dollar for it? That's what they are asking for it now, it also records tv programs directly onto a dvd, I wonder if anyone still does that, especially since you can just save all programs directly on a box that comes with your cable subscription and because you can just order about any film you'd like true your cable provider or just online. All vhs/dvd rental stores I know in a very large radius all went bankrupt because no-one rents anymore in a actual store.
There are also much cheaper alternatives to move a dvd to a pc but you still need a dvd player and pc for that.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Noa

For the amount of people that ask me for a VHS conversion, absolutely not!! However we do have guys here that make a living doing VHS to DVD and in their case a DVD recorder/VHS player would easily pay for itself if you had enquiries aplenty. I don't think I would want to sit and capture tape to my computer and then have to edit/enhance/render for around $50 ...the guys that do it for that price just toss a tape in a dual machine and insert a blank DVD and press "GO" .... 7 conversions later and your machine is paid for so despite the price it's not really expensive IF you are using it for running a conversion business..I'm not of course so I wouldn't want to pay $340 just to have one!!!

Just for interest LG have a model with a VHS 6 head player and DVD recorder plus USB too and a tuner for $290.00 ... As already said it's not a huge amount of money if you have a steady stream of clients.

Chris

[Noa Put]

If you are making money from it then that's easy earned back, but I wonder how much they actually sold of these, most people that do these vhs to dvd conversions already have the right equipment and I think a normal consumer would not waste that amount of money.

I actually have a boatload of vhs tapes and mini-dv cassettes to go through, they all belonged to my father and I want to be sure they don't contain any precious memories before I trow them into the bin, that will be a job for the following wintermonths.

[Paul Cascio]

You can pick up something similar on Ebay for $30-75.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Noa

That's exactly why the LG is a current model and is available from most of our retailers... once you go past half a dozen VHS tapes is more economical to buy a machine rather than sent a stack to your local guy! More than likely most people will have a bunch of family tapes that they need to convert ... I guess after that it simply is used as a DVD player.

Paul ... are you talking about those horrible USB devices that you plug into a VHS player ? Those are absolute garbage and you end up with out of sync audio and poor images from already low res footage but memories are memories ! If not I'm sure there would be used items on eBay at much lower prices but anyone having more than a couple of tapes will find the dual units are the easiest and do the best job unless you have a specific task of removing all footage od Uncle George as no-one liked him!

Chris

[Paul Anderegg]

XETV Channel 6 in San Diego still air-checks all their newscasts on VHS tape.......heh.

Paul

[Bob Hart]

Maybe I should fix one of the five Sony EIAJ half-inch tape machines which are out in the shed.

[Rob Cantwell]

few years ago, I bought a combi Samsung DVD/VHS job, it plays DVDs ok and will play VHS tapes as well, the few times I was asked to copy across from tape to DVD it refused to work, few months back I got a request to convert a wedding tape to DVD it wouldn't do that either, lucky I knew a guy that I do a bit of editing for that has a Phillips combi that actually works, looking at the 20 year old video, I've realised how far the whole process has come, the production value, the image quality - everything!!

[Chris Harding]

Hi Rob

The only DVD/BD players that I have issues with playing wedding DVD's happen to be Samsung! Their 5300 and 6500 BD players have dozens of grumpy users who find that playing a DVD is a hit and miss affair ...they play some and not others so it's not surprising that the VHS/DVD machine has an issue ... I try to stay away from their electronics ..yet I have a Samsung fridge and washer and they are brilliant !!

Luckily I have had no requests for VHS to DVD conversions in the past 10 years .. if I did I would pass them onto a local guy who does a good job!

Chris