Digitisation4 min read
Get your VHS tapes digitised before they go
Tape does not last forever, and the machines that play it are disappearing faster than the tape is degrading.
Video tape has a working life. Magnetic particles shed off the backing, the binder that holds them on breaks down, and damp storage accelerates both. A tape from 1994 that has sat in a roof space is already losing picture whether anybody has watched it or not.
The bigger problem is not the tape though, it is the hardware. VHS machines stopped being manufactured in 2016. The ones still working are ageing, and the heads on them wear. Every year the pool of machines that can read your tape cleanly gets smaller.
We transfer VHS, VHS-C, Betamax, Video8, Hi8 and MiniDV, in real time, on to USB or DVD. Real time is the honest bit: an hour of tape takes an hour to capture, which is why a box of twenty tapes is a job rather than an errand.
Weddings, christenings, communions, first birthdays and holidays are the usual contents. Occasionally somebody finds footage of a relative nobody has seen moving in thirty years, which is the part of this job that makes it worth doing.
Bring the tapes in and we will price the batch. You get the originals back, always.
Got a question we have not covered?
Call in to 7 Monaghan Street or ring the shop. We would rather tell you something will not work before you pay for it.
028 3026 9555
