[OT] Where have all the VCRs gone?

[JoeJoe]

I think I know the straight answer to the question, but...

I am looking for a working PAL VCR to digitise some VHS tapes for a friend.

As luck would have it, I binned our old VCR last year after doing the same for our old tapes, thinking that it would not be needed any more.

I put ads on Gumtree and Freecycle a few days ago, and also searched on eBay (for local ones), but nothing apart from a few silly-priced ones on eBay.

I will be in the tip tomorrow and plan to speak to the guys there to see if they happen to have any.

Failing that, any other suggestions as to where to get hold of one from? I will only need it for approx one day.

[Graham.]

British Heart Foundation charity shop.

[Brian Gaff]

Well since nobody is making the guts any more and most of the late models were crap, its going to be very hard to find one that works. The belts and rubber parts tend to fall to bits and getting new ones is almost impossible these days. Brian

[Muddymike]

Leyburn Friday market has a stall selling new old stock VCR players.

Mike

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , JoeJoe escribió:

Your local car bootie usually has a couple.

[JoeJoe]

Haven't thought about it - will give it a go.

[JoeJoe]

A bit far for me (200 miles+), but thanks anyway.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Do make sure it works before parting with cash, though. Which might be tricky at a car boot sale.

[Clive George]

I played a video tape last year on our still-working video.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 13:46:33 on Mon, 20 Feb

2017, "Dave Plowman (News)" remarked:

I usually find it quite easy to part with cash at a car boot sale.

In other news, I've got a UK one in the attic, and very likely a USA on too (I threw out the USA DVD player only a few months ago).

[ARW]

Silicon heaven AICMFP.

[Vir Campestris]

I really must digitise the rest of our tapes... I have three players, but that sounds like they might all die :(

Andy

[Huge]

I thought, "Oh, f*ck it" and chucked the tapes away and freegled the player.

[Max Demian]

If you are keeping the tapes (and players) "in case" you want to watch them "some day", then non-functioning VCRs are probably as good as any, especially if you don't check them.

[Scott]

They are an extremely rare and highly valued collectors item, now investments by the very rich. You can have mine for £15,000 - a real bargain.

[JoeJoe]

Went to the tip again earlier today, and the guys kept a working VCR for me as promised.

I am planning to use one of these to capture the videos:

but unfortunately the VCR I now have only has one output - a SCART.

I have one of these in a draw somewhere:

but the audio connections on both the SCART adapter and the capture device are all female.

Would one of these make everything work?

Sorry, I am pretty ignorant when it comes to all these antique fittings?

[NY]

LOL "antique" :-)

Yes I think that should work OK. Given that the phono lead is designed for video as well as audio, the cable will be good enough to carry the 6 MHz video as well as the 20 kHs audio. You may find that the digitising device has trouble with poorer VHS recordings. I bought a Hauppauge one (supposedly good quality) but I get a lot of dot patterning and horizontal timing jitter, which I don't get on the PCI card in my ancient ("antique"?) XP computer that I keep just for digitising from VHS and the Sky box.

[JoeJoe]

Good point! I still have a 2003-vintage XP desktop in the attic with a TV card that I've used before for this purpose, and kept for this reason only.

Last time I used it was ~5 years ago when I digitised the last of our VHS tapes, so I am not sure it still works. I'll try it first and use the above option if the plan fails.

Thanks a lot.

[tabbypurr]

AAOSwI3RW8k-M

that's what I thought. But in fairness many of the connectors in use today are antique, including RCA/phono.

NT

[NY]

Yes I'm hanging onto that PC. I panicked last year when something got corrupted in the drivers and the device disappeared, but luckily I was able eventually to find a site that had replacement drivers and it's as good as new.

The only thing I've used the USB Hauppauge device for is to digitise from a pre-recorded VHS so I can add it to my library of DVDs (the film isn't available on DVD so I don't feel too guilty). The PCI card in the XP machine rejects Macrovision copy-protected tapes whereas the Hauppauge doesn't care. I did wonder at first whether the patchy dot-patterning was a legacy of Macrovision, but it does it on my own VHS recordings and even on the cleaner signal from my Sky box where there should be no timing errors due to the mechanical speed of the tape/head varying very sligthly.

The biggest problem I have with the XP PC is remembering the incantations to get the correct sound input to the recording software - it always seems to take several goes to get it to remember that I've changed away from the default for the sound card.