VHS to Blu-Ray - What You Need To Know

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Only VHS to BluRay deck available right now - amazon.jp

So you have some miscellanous VHS tapes from the 90s that you want to transfer to a blu-ray spec disc you can pop into a standard blu-ray player?  The main benefits to this are that you can fit more video on a Blu-Ray disc, brings your video footage to a more modern format, and Blu-Ray discs should outlast your VHS tapes with proper care.

Pros:

 

  1. Saves physical space.
  2. Modern format, longer ready-to-playback life.  VHS decks are harder to find.
  3. Longer term archiving.

 

Cons:

 

  1. Time consuming - No easy one-step solution.
  2. Expensive to DIY and extract the best quality.
  3. Blu-ray now, but what color-ray later?  Future cloud storage might be the answer.
  4. If one Blu-Ray disc gets destroyed, its like destroying a lot of VHS tapes of footage.
  5. VHS to DVD is much easier.

 

In the USA, there is no set-top computerless device that will take your VHS video and copy it to Blu-Ray playable disc in one step.  

To my knowledge, there is only one commercially produced product that might do this, and that is the Sharp BD-HDV22.  Japanese video on its introduction here.  Amazon.com in Japan page on the product.

Do not bother with JVC SR-HD1250US or its 500 GB equivalent, the JVC SR-HD1500US.  They will not record your SD footage to Blu-Ray disc.

Just get a standard Blu-Ray drive for your computer.  External one like the Samsung SE-506AB/TSBD External USB Blu Ray Re-Writer is more versatile and easily portable for both desktop and laptop use.  If you have a Sony HD Camcorder / Handycam, consider the Sony VBD-MA1 which I demonstrate and review.

Dubbing VHS tape to Blu-Ray disc will not make it HD, nor will the content be upgraded to HD.  However, most DVD players and Blu-Ray players with HDMI output upsample videos to 1080P now.  They may look sharper, and appear to have more resolution but its not going to hold a candle next to a real HD blu-ray disc.

VHS to DVD is the easiest way to go.  

There are decks that will have it all-in-one simple dubbing from VHS to DVD such as the Magnavox ZV457MG9 Dual Deck DVD/VCR Recorder.  However, you are much better off with a separate quality SVHS deck as the playback source and then a good DVD recorder, linked together with some quality S-Video cables and audio cables.

The key is to have a great VHS deck to play back your tapes.  Garbage in = garbage out.

You want to extract the highest quality you can from your tapes before they deteriorate completely. Great VHS decks are no longer sold in stores.  As you can imagine, they stopped making them a while ago.  But you pretty much want a broadcast quality deck, or one of those $500+ decks with TBC, dNR, flying erase head equipped decks such as the JVC-SR9600u, Panasonic AG-1980, JVC S9900, Sony SLV-R5UC, Sony SLV-R1000 decks with low head hours and in good working condition.  eBay is probably going to be your best bet here.

The deck I personally use to record to is the Sony RDR-GX7 DVD Recorder.  But really you should look at digitizing to a computer.

Recording to computer is the best option right now.

From the computer you can re-encode them to a compatible Blu-Ray format, or any other format of the future.  You can archive the footage to an online video sharing solution such as youtube, vimeo, etc. (as long as you own the copyrights). You also get the added benefit of being able to transcode the videos any way you want without having to rely on the limited processing power of live encoding.

There are a lot of devices out there that can do this, but right now the best bang for the buck capture devices are around $200-$300 price point, and support analog S-Video capture.

For me, I'd go with Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro HDMI Editing Card with PCI Express for my desktop editing machine, or for a laptop the Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle for USB 3.0 Computers.  Make careful note of the system requirements. These are more professional solutions that will capture HD footage just fine.

If you have an older computer, or also would like the added benefit of a TV tuner you might also consider: AVERMEDIA AVERTV HD USB DVR TV Tuners and Video Capture C874, or the Hauppauge 1445 HD-PVR Gaming Edition High Definition Personal Video Recorder (which does not have a tuner).

After you get it on your computer, you can make them blu-ray ready format for blu-ray authoring.  The most affordable and simple solution I've used in the past has been AVS4You products which only cost $39 a year!  Or lifetime here.

 

Why not just have a digital copy on your computer, and a separate media player, and copies you upload to youtube or vimeo?  

A lot of TVs now have youtube playback capability built in.  Not just TVs, but all sorts of devices like the Roku or my favorite, the The Boxee Box can playback online content from sites you can upload and share your videos.  Or better yet, you can store them on a portable hard drive which you just plug in and have all your videos on it.  (Make sure you backup!).  

I may update this with a real how-to video sometime in the future - if there is really any interest.  Well let me know by commenting below.