View Single Post
Old 5th Jun 2021, 5:36 pm   #47
spamfritter
Pentode
 
spamfritter's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Braintree Essex UK.
Posts: 217
Default Re: Transferring VHS to DVD?

This subject is a bit of a minefield . I have a Toshiba RD 97DTKB Freeview DVD / HDD recorder and I think it is impossible to go from a DVD to the HDD as that would allow unlimited copying and I cannot find a way to do it in the 95 page handbook. Copying the other way works OK but I have found that the aspect ratio of the Panasonic TV it is connected to needs to be permanently set to 16 : 9 otherwise the DVD aspect is squashed horizontally. You cannot leave the TV on auto aspect as they seem to talk to each other over the HDMI link. I can couple a VHS or Beta player to the back and record from there to the HDD and then burn a DVD. I also use a Honestech vidbox to convert tapes to my PC via a USB port.

As has already been said DVD's deteriorate even though originally we were sold the idea that there is so much redundancy and error correction that they should still play forever. Ditto CD's but even the commercial recordings fail and the amount of error checking / correction has been reduced to increase capacity. The days of the Philips test of black line across a CD have long gone.

Going back to my Toshiba recorder. It has a 1TB HDD and can store a lot of films etc but the big problem according to the handbook is that the HDD is tied / coded to the recorder so I can not plug it into a PC. A similar problem occurs if you plug in an external HDD to the USB port so that method of long time storage is not particularly practical and if the Toshiba goes "T**S UP" then the lot is lost. I believe they use some proprietory custom form of the Android system.

I spent a lot of time in 2019 prior to going to Australia to visit family in that I copied literally a hundred or so home recorded DVD recordings over to a 1TB HDD USB module as MP4 recordings using my PC and took it with me. All the recordings played back OK on my PC but when I got to OZ and plugged it into my daughters USB port on her TV which is allegedly MP4 compatible less than a third played back reliably so when I got back home I checked and sure enough I had the same problem here. It appears that not all MP4 recordings are the same and there are many factors that can effectively b***er up the structure of the encoding. It appears MP4 has may dialects !

PC's. Where can I begin ? The big problem is legacy systems. Y'know -- Mr microsoft decrees that the picture or video format you used is no longer liked so they drop it. All your recordings suddenly become obsolescent as does the software needed to play them back. e.g. Flash player. It may be bug riddled but now microsoft has cut into my windows 10 and not only disabled it, but on the last major update wiped it completely out of the computer. Unfortunately Mr HP used some modules of flash player so now my printer scanner is useless in win 10 so I resort to Vista on another PC. Similarly you have to make sure all old recordings / pictures are updated to a new format immediately. Even JPEG has several incompatible dialects now and I have 3 PC's running Win XP, Win Vista and now Win 10 just to get round problems. To cap it all, I made a terrible mistake recently and everybody learn from this one -- On the last windows 10 big update which sneaked through without me knowing it I had left my backup drive for all my data and my MP4 recordings drives plus an SD card all plugged in to various ports. Mr microsoft came in with his big hatchet and as part of the "upgrade" with new but probably unwanted whizzbangs etc. proceeded to not just tweak win 10 but wipe it and replace the complete operating system with a new one. Took about 6 hours of continuous downlods and HDD working to do it. Aparrently now when they say you OS has reached the end of it's life they mean it ! This upgrade scrambled my data backup drive which I am now slowly recovering but completely b***ered the MP4 video recordings drive which is unrecoverable and wiped the SD card of all its pictures. Again, unrecoverable. Oh, and by the way, I have found out that HDD's also have a finite mechanical life as well. after 5 or so years of continuous use they can or will commit suicide.

I have come to the conclusion that no storage mechanism / device or method is foolproof ! You pays your money and hope. Tape grows mould and deteriorates over time losing magnetism as well as shedding surface as the plasticiser dries out. Tapes also take up a lot of room and need to be stored at the right temperature and humidity. All the film and TV companies must have a nightmareish situation maintaining and retaining recordings.

Rant Over !
spamfritter is offline   Reply With Quote