Another one bites the dust As I mentioned earlier, I’m working on a big project to put all my old home video tapes on DVD. I have, at last count, 162 tapes to watch and catalog. On the 145th tape, my trusty old Magnavox VCR I’ve had since high school grabbed a tape, shredded a portion of it, wouldn’t eject, and died. Ok, that’s alright. I have my parent’s nice VCR, which I intended to use for capturing the tapes since it was better anyway, sitting on my desk. Last night, when trying to insert the 157th tape, VCR #2 goes beserk, getting caught in a loop consisting of load tape, fast forward, rewind, eject halfway, repeat. Taking it apart I saw no obvious failures (broken springs, slipped belts, etc.)
I still have to capture all of these tapes (probably 75% of which are VHS). So, it’s the almost the year 2006, and I have to buy another VCR… I never thought I’d do that again. Good news is they’re way cheaper than they used to be.
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You should almost just rent one or something. Or better yet, find someone who has one that you could borrow for a week. That is a stark statement that you have to actually buy a VCR… Sounds like my dad trying to find a camcorder that can play those little tapes just for the purpose of feeding them into a PC.
An alternate could be to scrounge around Bradley and see what the AV departments might have. You never know what they’ve got in their dusty old cabinets…