I've got a crapload of old Japanese FX shows on VHS, mostly 2nd and 3rd gen copies. My VCR just died.
I've been capping them haphazardly with an older USB device (link has a quick write-up).
Now that I need to buy a new VCR, is there any point in trying to get some whoopity-shit high-end VCR (lol) to work with this?
Or does this fall under "You can't polish a turd"?
Well you can't polish a turd, no. You eat it.
Secondly, is there any reason why you're VHS ripping when say, DVD's of the said shows might be available?
If the VHS tapes are aged (and especially if they're copies of copies), then I wouldn't bother with the super-duper high end VCR's.
In fact, I'd go look in the second hand shops and see what they have. Chances are you could get a decent VCR there, for well under what it'd cost to get a brand new one, and with sufficient quality to meet your need.
I can swing the money for a pretty good VCR, so I'm not worried about secondhand. Besides, I tend to buy hardware new, media used. Anyway, auto-tracking has made some big leaps in the past few years, and a good manual tracking knob is the only thing I'd gain by getting an old one. Like my VHS of Shock Treatment, which met an unfortunate end in a VW trunk for a Florida summer, was able to play almost flawlessly on one my folks recently bought.
>>Secondly, is there any reason why you're VHS ripping when say, >>DVD's of the said shows might be available?
Because there aren't. Unless you bring your laptop through a time machine with you to do an RGB upscan of The Space Giants off of TBS in the day. When I say FX shows, I mean, like, the newest thing is Ninja Sentai Kakuranger. Old-ass TV commercials, Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot, Street Fighter II (the Korean live action TV series) and so on.
Thanks for the help, though. I wanted to make sure there wasn't some amazing development in VCR recently, as I don't follow AV stuff that closely.
When you have shit like what you describe in >>4 the answer is HELL YES! And remember, sharing is caring.
>>I've been capping them haphazardly with an older USB device
A standalone VHS/DVD Recorder combo (~200USD) should facilitate the process.
Besides freeing up your system, you'll be archiving to optical media.
It's not like those tapes are getting any newer (degrading).
Just make sure to verify the brand-maker's (+R/-R) is readable on your Mac before you buy.
>>8
And remember to reburn your DVDs every 6 months or so, because those suckers can degrade pretty quickly too when exposed to heat/cold/light/darkness/etc; and the disadvantage is that once they're gone they're gone, unlike analogue media that you can at least get some signal out of by, say, fiddling with the tracking.