Anyone use Costco's VHS to DVD service?

[MrBond]

I'm home visiting my folks this week and since Mother's Day is next weekend, I've been trying to figure out what to get my Mom. Today my Costco magazine came in the mail and they had a short writeup about their VHS to DVD converting service. My folks have a bunch of old VHS home movies and I bet Mom would love to have more robust copies of them on the DVD format.

Has anyone used the service before? I know lots of places offer it, but the Costco service looks pretty nice. How long does it take and how much does it cost? Were you happy with the end result?

I could probably do it cheaper myself but once I factor in my time, I'd probably be better off having it done professionally.

It looks like they use the YesVideo service, which a bunch of places (like Rite-Aid, Walgreens, etc) use, so if you used it there I'd be curious to see how you liked it.

 

[jonks]

Nope. But more importantly, anyone pronounce the T in Costco? I say Kaus-ko.

 

[Tobolo]

How much do they charge? I bought a Plextor converter last year for about $150 that does this awesome. Granted that will be more than they charge, but you could do it all you want!

 

[effowe]

If you do it by yourself it would be more of a set it and forget it thing. You press play on the VCR as the computer records, go do something else. Once you have the AVI you set up your DVD authoring program and again, go do something else. I would do it this way as it would save a ton of money, and the only real interaction would be switching the tape and clicking a few buttons.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

Costco outsources the work to a Company called YesVideo.

It's really good quality. Ritz/Wolf Camera use YesVideo as well. You can do it in-store at Ritz/Wolf or mail your tape directly to YesVideo.

 

[Miramonti]

According to yesvideo.com, Walgreens does it for $20 for 2hr tape, and have a kiosk that it and other retailers have in-store.

locations

 

[MrBond]

Originally posted by: jjsole
According to yesvideo.com, Walgreens does it for $20 for 2hr tape, and have a kiosk that it and other retailers have in-store.

locations

$20 is right around where I expected. They probably have at minimum 10 tapes and I wouldn't be surprised if they were all longer than two hours, so I'm looking at $200+ to do it via YesVideo.

Maybe I'll tackle the project myself for a Christmas present for them. That will give me plenty of time. I'll have to buy some hardware, but maybe it'll give me that excuse to buy a Mac that I've been wanting.

 

[sjwaste]

My dad had some old home movies he wanted to transfer, so I bought him a dual recording deck from Walmart. This one, iirc:

http://www.walmart.com/catalog....do?product_id=6457304

It's not the most basic thing in the world to use (gotta set the DVD "bitrate" as SP, LP, EP, like a VCR and also go into a menu to finalize the disc when you're done), but he's figured it out and it does work pretty well. It has some basic editing functions afterwards, but I haven't tried those.

I'd recommend it if you have some time to teach your folks how to use it. I think my dad just sets a tape to dub and then goes to bed, since most of our old home movies were VHS recorded at SLP (6 hrs each).

EDIT: I see in your last post you might do it for them. This thing would be a good way to do it, or you could buy a capture card and record to MPEG-2 then burn it. You'd be able to edit a bit easier that way.

The Hauppauge PVR-150 is a good tuner card, so I'm sure it could be used for this too. It has an s-video input and would be under $100. Good if you already have a VCR you can use for the project.

 

[MrBond]

Originally posted by: sjwaste
The Hauppauge PVR-150 is a good tuner card, so I'm sure it could be used for this too. It has an s-video input and would be under $100. Good if you already have a VCR you can use for the project.

I have an HVR-1600 that's sitting around from an unsuccessful HTPC project, so if I can shoehorn that into my PC it'd save me some cash. All I would need then is more hard drive space and some software.

 

[sjwaste]

Originally posted by: MrBond

Originally posted by: sjwaste
The Hauppauge PVR-150 is a good tuner card, so I'm sure it could be used for this too. It has an s-video input and would be under $100. Good if you already have a VCR you can use for the project.

I have an HVR-1600 that's sitting around from an unsuccessful HTPC project, so if I can shoehorn that into my PC it'd save me some cash. All I would need then is more hard drive space and some software.

Definitely, that'd work. Use the s-video input for slightly better quality.

Figure about a gig per 30 mins at average bitrates. That's just for capture, so you'll need editing space.

Depending on what kind of editing you want to do, there might be free stuff out there.