[Big G]

Evening gents, it's been a long time since last visiting here!

Apon looking into transfering my old VHS tapes to a digital format I noticed that posts on various forums mentioned needing a time base corrector. There was mention of using a Panasonic DVD recorder inbetween the vhs player and a pc capture device to sync the audio/video before capturing (as stand alone time base correctors can be expensive)

Then I remembered the old Thomson TiVo in the loft. Do they contain time base correction hardware? Set to record in the highest quality I could kill 2 birds with one stone if so. Although the resulting file would be MPEG, rather large and would take a while to transfer off the Tivo over the network.

Any ideas?

Cheers

G

 

[Gavin]

The Main use of a TBC on copying VHS tapes was to get around the Macrovsion anti-copying system that was often used on pre-recorded tapes. You'll find them called video stabilisers. They are not really TBC in the true sense, but help stabilise a VHS image especiaily an old tape, where the tape may have got stretched or the video deck is old and not quite as precise (if VHS was ever precise) as it was when new.

I've a vague memory that the Tivo wasnt fooled by this protection as it did some correction when digitising and recording the tv signal. I've done it in the past and got reasonable copies given the source quality, so it may help but the issue probably going to be the VHS will look so soft compared to what we now see on dvd and digital recorders.