Our children may never get to experience the revelatory joy of wandering through the miles of barely organised VHS shelves of a sleepy local video store, but at least they’ll have this. [3600 via Metafilter]
There are mods and there are Mods. And the VHS Toaster definitely fits into the capitalised category. (Read on for video.)
While VHS might be dead, according to former Colbert Report/Daily Show writer Eric Drysdale, tape rewinders are alive and well, brimming with new features designed for the internet age. [Funny or Die]
While we know that media formats will come and go (be they physical or purely digital), the death of VHS is one of particular weight. Players have died, now tapes have, too.
Converting your old VHS tapes to DVD can be as exciting as watching grass grow, but Kaiser Bass has just released solution that aims at making the whole process simple. The Video to DVD Maker plugs into your PC or Mac and has composite and S-Video inputs for your VHS player (or any other video source like a video camera or iPod) and uses Cyberlink video editing software (or iMovie ’08 for Mac-users) to convert the video file to a digital format that can be burnt to DVD, or encoded for watching on your iPod, PSP or uploaded to YouTube. It’s $80, which sounds like a pretty good deal for anyone with the entire collection of Walker: Texas Ranger on tape in their garage – You need to get that on DVD sooner rather than later, my friend. [Kaiser Baas]
If you’re looking to waste away an afternoon and get a really unique USB hub out of the deal, Instructables has a step-by-step explaining how to build your own VHS USB hub. Essentially a gutted VHS tape stuffed with LEDs and an old USB hub, the larger form factor will be seen as advantageous to anyone who’s lost their hub behind the crack between their desk and the wall. Say what you will about the superiority of DVD and Blu-ray, but until modders are poking around with optical media 20 years from now, we’re considering it a tie. [instructables via Apartment Therapy]
Much like Master/Blaster, the Mad Max villain which consisted of a gigantic retarded guy with a smart little midget on its back, the Sharp Aquos BD-HDv22 combines the smart and the stupid in one bulky package. How so? Well, it’s a combination of a Blu-ray player/recorder and a VHS player/recorder. No, not DVD, VHS. You know, just in case you want to convert your collection of movies taped off HBO from the early 90s you have in a box in your basement to Blu-ray. How much will this monstrosity cost you, what with its decades-spanning techs brutally crammed together? $US1,100, due to be released on October 20th. I’ll take two! [CrunchGear via Boing Boing Gadgets]
A Blu-ray disc recorder and a VHS video tape machine may seem unlikely bedfellows, but that hasn’t stopped Panasonic from wrapping them up together in the same box for the DMR-BR630V. The 630V can write BDRs at six times speed, has digital and analogue tuners, new second-gen MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 encoder chips as well as all the standard HDMI and analogue connections and Panasonic’s Viera link for device interconnectivity. It also records to DVD. There’s even a 320GB hard drive inside, capable of recording video and later letting you dub it onto BDR or VHS. You’ll have to wait until October 1st for its Japanese release, though, if you’re absolutely desperate to get your collection of low-res, blurry Friends VHS tapes safely transferred onto spiffy high-res BDRs. And it’ll cost you around US$1,450 for the privilege. [AVWatch]
