copy vhs tapes

[irharris]

I have a number of vhs tapes that I would like to convert to dvd. When I play them through the tuner on the pc they play for a few seconds and the screed goes dark. If I can get them to play I can record them but so far no luck. Anything old enough to not have anti-copy plays okay.
Ivan

[Neipas02]

What kind of hardware are you using to capture the feed? (Tuner card)..

[irharris]

The pc is a sony vaio rc110g with windows xp media center. The tuner is built in and I can't find anything in the documentation about it. I am using a vanilla vcr with a cable to the tv input on the pc tuner. A tape with no protection plays fine.
Ivan

[DABhand]

Yep it will..

Since your tuner card is not the same frequency than a standard RF socket uses on a TV. It will distort the picture.

This was to stop VHS to VHS copies way back.


What you can do is get a RF aerial signal booster, plug one end from vhs into box, another RF cable from box to tuner card.

[irharris]

I will give it a try and see what happens.
Tnx
Ivan

[spedmetal]

Originally Posted by DABhand

Yep it will..

Since your tuner card is not the same frequency than a standard RF socket uses on a TV. It will distort the picture.

This was to stop VHS to VHS copies way back.


What you can do is get a RF aerial signal booster, plug one end from vhs into box, another RF cable from box to tuner card.

You sure its not macrovision protection? This is a similar situation that I had with my ATI all in wonder card. I as able to locate a hack to the ATI's driver that removed the macrovision protection.

[GeorgeK]

It would be so much easier to get a combo dvd/vcr recording unit to work with your existing vcr. Then you need a decoder box, that blocks the tape protection, to place between your tape player and the dvd/vcr recording unit. Most of these recording units automatically create approximate 5 minute chapters on your created dvd.

[irharris]

The antenna booster didn't work. I have pinnacle installed and click to dvd, etc. None of the programs can find the vcr input. I have tried various cable conbinations. The only way it sees it is as tv and that won't play.

I put a tuner card in my old vaio and Lilfeview software. Using the composite input to the tuner and a cable to the audio in it plays them fine and puts them on the hard disk. When they play back they are not quite right. Any movement is distorted; kind of like the old days of isdn tv.

I see that Pinnacle has software for the purpose "Razzle" or dazzle or something like that. I also saw a new program at Frys that says vhs to dvd. Those might work better but the basic problem is to recognize the vcr.

I would be willing to get an unscrambler box if I knew where.

Ivan