[retiredguy123]

I just got an email from Legacybox. I was shocked at the prices they charge. The regular price to convert one VHS tape to digital is $31.25. In my opinion, most people will almost never watch the digital version. Has anyone used this service and are you satisfied with the results? Why not just preserve and watch the actual VHS tape when you want to?

[villagetinker]

No comment on the charge, but VHS cassette players are getting hard to find and units from 20 + years ago are getting hard to repair, so while you may be able to preserve the tapes you may have a problem playing the tapes. Also, all of the older units have RCA analog outputs and I have not seen a TV set with analog RCA inputs in years.
Personally, I would get a VHS converter, and then convert to digital format for a hard drive or thumb drive. The conversion devices are available online for around $100 to $200 depending on capability, so depending on the number of tapes you have you should break even around 6 or 7 tapes.

[biggamefish1]

Check in the village's sun paper. Usually, an add or two for this and also check the Classified

[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by retiredguy123

I just got an email from Legacybox. I was shocked at the prices they charge. The regular price to convert one VHS tape to digital is $31.25. In my opinion, most people will almost never watch the digital version. Has anyone used this service and are you satisfied with the results? Why not just preserve and watch the actual VHS tape when you want to?

Have not had a vhs for many years.

[asianthree]

Originally Posted by Stu from NYC

Have not had a vhs for many years.

Probably not but isn’t your wedding, 50 Grandparents Anniversary, and one designated for each kids birthday/christmas. Ours were converted during pandemic. As tinker posted doing it yourself breaks even at 7-8. We had 11, but price dropped after 8. Plus some crap stuff edited, adding info, with graphics, so timelines are easy, that we wouldn’t have done, make the results look professional. Well worth it for us.
Our grands have all of them, play on birthdays, holidays and during snowstorms when they don’t want to face the white stuff….Yet.

[Papa_lecki]

I had a local guy (not in the villages, but near home) do our VHS tapes - he did a terrible job, total waste of money.
Had legacy box do a few, and they were great.

My kids are adults, don’t watch them often, but it’s nice that they are in the cloud.

My parents and my in laws had thousands of pictures. Wife and I bought a scanner made just for pictures. Scanning was easy and fast - hard part was organizing them.
Moms got to the point they were just taking pics, getting them developed and keeping 2 sets of pics in the bag from developer.
They are mostly scanned and organized in nice storage boxes.

[Ignatz]

Originally Posted by Papa_lecki

My parents and my in laws had thousands of pictures. Wife and I bought a scanner made just for pictures. Scanning was easy and fast - hard part was organizing them.

What photo scanner did you use? I’m about ready to take on that project with our families photos.

I’ll also be using El Gato to convert the VHS tapes to digital.

[CarlR33]

Originally Posted by retiredguy123

I just got an email from Legacybox. I was shocked at the prices they charge. The regular price to convert one VHS tape to digital is $31.25. In my opinion, most people will almost never watch the digital version. Has anyone used this service and are you satisfied with the results? Why not just preserve and watch the actual VHS tape when you want to?

I know slides and film will degrade over time (what kind of storage do you have) not sure about VHS tape and playing it will further wear it down? Your comment about who will watch it….if on a cloud service you can send a link to anyone and they can then watch (share) remotely. We did this when we converted our slides and pictures and it was popular with the extended family. It should be the last time you have to convert anything, LOL

[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by asianthree

Probably not but isn’t your wedding, 50 Grandparents Anniversary, and one designated for each kids birthday/christmas. Ours were converted during pandemic. As tinker posted doing it yourself breaks even at 7-8. We had 11, but price dropped after 8. Plus some crap stuff edited, adding info, with graphics, so timelines are easy, that we wouldn’t have done, make the results look professional. Well worth it for us.
Our grands have all of them, play on birthdays, holidays and during snowstorms when they don’t want to face the white stuff….Yet.

Good point. Have to ask my wife where all of that stuff is

[Cuervo]

You stated you had 6 or more VHS tapes, and I agree with those who are suggesting you get a converter. For those who only have a few go to the link below:

https://consumertestedreviews.org/pr...9&gad_source=1

They list a number of sites that will do the job, the top of the list claims they will do it for $14.99.

[TeresaA]

I use a company called Imemories (in Arizona). I had 13 vhs tapes transferred onto a thumb drive. It was about 10 years ago and I was charged $14.99 per tape to transfer. The scariest part was sending off our precious home videos hoping they arrived safe. It was such a seamless transfer. The packaging they send you is very safe for your memories. Then you send it back to them. It was the best $200 I spent. I had everything put on a thumb drive which my son recommended because it’s hard to even buy a computer these days with a disc player anymore. Out of your choices, in my opinion, I think a thumb drive is the safest route to go. I still have my vhs tapes but definitely transfer them somewhere safer. VHS tapes don’t last forever, the film will eventually snap. It was easy to just pass out the thumb drives to our family members.

[Cstrabel]

Originally Posted by retiredguy123

I just got an email from Legacybox. I was shocked at the prices they charge. The regular price to convert one VHS tape to digital is $31.25. In my opinion, most people will almost never watch the digital version. Has anyone used this service and are you satisfied with the results? Why not just preserve and watch the actual VHS tape when you want to?

Our daughters wanted us to do this with all of our VHS tapes. Last year for Christmas we did this using Kodak. We sent them 41 VHS tapes and the cost was approximately $850. Also be aware that it takes time. We sent our tapes in last November and didn’t get them back until April. All 41 tapes were out on one small little flash drive and you do receive you original tapes back. We had a mix of VHS and the smaller camcorder tapes. They will also do photos. Kodak does run specials all the time. It wasn’t cheap but well worth the money to have our memories preserved.

[Buzman]

Check out Your Priceless Memories Digitized | iMemories Pricing They did a nice job on mine.

[Berwin]

I got the video converter from Walmart years ago and did my own. It was under $20.00. There is also a place in Belleview on 441 called Video Vault Productions that does this but I've not used them (since I did my own) so I'm not sure how much they charge or if they are any good.

[GinaTalk]

I converted our family VHS using Elgato Video Capture. The most expensive part was buying a VHS player on eBay! I put the videos on portable hard drives and gave them to my nieces and nephews before I moved to TV a month ago.