Transfering VHS to DVD
 

It is time to clean up my stack of old VHS tapes that are collecting dust. I have also purchased books that look like photo albums to hold my surprisingly large collection of DVD's and CD's. So I thought I would dub all my old VHS tapes that I rarely if ever play. I may want to watch some of these old movies in the future if I ever have a long weekend stuck home in the rain...like that ever happens.

I have made a real dent in the pile, but some of the tapes are copy protected. As I will be destroying the tapes after dubbing them, is there an easy and inexpensive way for a technophobe to get around this?

i haven't seen a VHS tape in a long time, but i think there is a little plastic tab you can break to prevent copying. try tapping it up.

Black tape over the hole on the bottom left hand corner of the tape always worked for me.

Of course, it's been a while since I had my hands on a copy protected VHS tape, so I could be wrong on the specifics.

The little tap on the VHS tapes is there so you can record on them. Remove the tap and you wont be able to record on them. Its a safeguard against recording over something important but has nothing to do with copy protection.

This may work with a VCR, you can try it. I take my DVD player and run it to the input jacks of my DVD Recorder, with AV cables. I can then play a copy protected DVD on the player, while burning it onto a DVD in the Recorder. Just hook up the VCR to the input jacks of your DVD recorder and try it.

If you're trying to destroy the VHS tapes go rent or buy a bulk eraser. It's a powerful magnet that was made exactly for erasing tapes. They're not expensive.

There was some kind of copy protection scheme on some VHS tapes that made the quality crappy when you tried to record by running cables from the out jacks of one VHS deck into a second VHS recorder. I had what the manufacturer called a "video clarifier" that defeated it.

I'd try plugging the cables from the VHS deck into the DVD recorder, like someone else said.

If you're TV has input-output jacks you can use the TV as a sort of filter. Run the VCR you're playing the tape on, to the input jacks of your TV, then out to the DVD recorder. I used to do this VCR to VCR to get rid of that crappy quality Necrosis was talking about. I tried a video clarifer, although I think mine was called a color correcter, but wasnt able to get rid of the video problems with it. The TV as a filter worked better.....for me.

The copy protection on VHS tapes is called Macrovision. Macrovision killers are illegal to have now, but you can still find them.