If you’ve ever tried to take your old VHS home movies and get them on DVD, you probably know what a pain in the ass it can be to hook up that ancient, possibly-functioning VCR to a PC-based video capture device. Once you get it capturing correctly, the fun begins: press play and wait. And wait. GoVideo hopes to change all that with their line of dual-deck DVD recorder + VCRs.
The VR2940 model is particularly cool, combining YesDVD (where it splits your VHS into ‘scenes’ or ‘chapters’ for easy selection from the DVD’s menu screen—just like the pros! That suck!) with a hi-fi VCR / DVD+RW. It also sports CleanCopy, which is supposed to clean up and enhance the picture and audio quality of old VHS tapes. The actual effectiveness of this ‘enhancement’ is unknown.
The unit also sports a FireWire in for your DV Cam, so you can compose and burn DVDs directly from your camera, as well as Progressive Scan out for those of you who can take advantage of such things. It will not, naturally, work with copy-protected VHS tapes such as those featuring Macrovision, but a little birdie (more like a parrot) tells me Macrovision is more of a ‘bump in the road’ than actual effective DRM.
GoVideo VR2940 [GoVideo]
