My almost 3-year-old, much-used DVD player stopped working recently so I had to immediately replace it . Because we don’t have cable TV, my sister and I rely on DVDs a lot and do marathon watching all the time. Naturally, when it started to work all wonky, I also started to panic and prepared myself to buy a new one. So I did and I’m currently loving my new player. Here’s why: it is very cheap and it is divx capable. Now I can watch my downloaded videos and .avi files without having to convert them to DVD (.vob files) format. The conversion process used to take me hours and I’m limited to a few (mostly just 2) movies in one blank DVD media. Now, the 4.7 Gb capacity of the DVD-R can take up to five .avi movies and I can watch them all using my new player on the same video quality! Yipee!
Now this all fine and good but what’s problematic is if you want to convert your VHS movies into another, more updated format. I don’t know of any device that you can currently use at home to do VHS to DVD conversion, but if anyone knows anything, please drop me a message. I have a few more VHS movies at home, like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet (the one with Claire Danes and Leonardo Di Caprio), that I would want to try to convert. I remember that when the VCD format started to come out, a lot of people are saying that VHS still provides better video quality. But now, in the era of DVD and Blu-Ray, you’ll hardly see any VHS movie, or players for that matter, anywhere. With commercial films, you can always buy them on the newer formats anyway. But some people have home movies, like wedding footage for instance, that they may want to preserve, and having them converted from vhs to dvd seems to be a smart move to do. Once it is converted, you can even make backup copies easily. Now, I don’t have Blu-Ray yet and it make take a while before it really takes over the DVD market, but those who are already using this technology can also opt for a VHS to Blu-Ray video transfer.
It can sometimes blow your mind to think about how fast technology changes and improves on itself. It’s also a bit disheartening that it doesn’t come without a price tag. The trick here, I found, is to be patient. Do not jump on the latest tech thing at once and you will soon get them on a much lower price when it becomes superseded by yet another upgrade.
ah, yes! we never had a betamax kaya I forgot about it 
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do you still remember betamax? the ‘in’ thing when we were finally able to afford a betamax was the vhs! and now, vhs is a thing of the past! deym! hehehe.
Posted by eks at March 1, 2009, 10:23 am