Put Your VHS Tapes on DVD

Maybe you're sitting with shelves full of home movies recorded with a camcorder. Or perhaps you have a stash of favorite TV episodes, movies, and concerts saved to VHS tapes. Whatever it is you thought to preserve for posterity, chances are you--like many of us--have a slew of treasured videotapes you've accumulated over the years.

Trouble is, analog videotapes degrade with time and repeated play. Plus, VCR tapes are just not very convenient to keep around, as they take up a lot of space to store. And a tape's linear nature requires endless fast-forwarding and rewinding, making it tedious to use. And then there's the extra gear you have to keep around--playing VHS or MiniDV tapes means always having a VCR nearby, or having to dig out your camcorder from the closet, connect it up to the TV, and use its clunky controls to search through the tape. Wouldn't it be easier if you could put your cherished videos on DVD?

The good news: Transferring videos from tape to DVD can be relatively easy. You can either pay a service to do it for you, or just go ahead and do it yourself--provided you've got the right equipment.

But before you embark on your conversion odyssey, consider these two caveats. First, store-bought tapes of Hollywood films with built-in copy protection generally cannot be copied to disc (at least not without going through enough hoops and techno-witchcraft to make the effort not worth it).

Second, when you copy from tape to DVD, don't expect your resulting disc to look as crisp as your store-bought DVDs. Even at the maximum quality mode, DVD video is highly compressed, so you might lose something in the image quality (particularly with fast-moving sporting events). Generally, though, the quality differences are subtle, and in some cases, the quality of a DVD copy can substantially match your taped originals (depending on how you created that copy; more on this shortly).

Putting your videotapes on DVD can be fairly straightforward, and doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. Read on to learn more about your options.