I'm looking for a company that can convert a PAL VHS to a PAL DVD.
I've found some websites that say they can do it for $15 or something, but are they trustworthy? Is there any place in particular anybody would recommend?

I asked one local company and they said they could only do NTSC. Thanks for the help.

I'd say $15 is a too-good-to-be-true price for such a service. It will mean a transcode into NTSC first, and then an encode to DVD. For $15, I'd suspect the quality wouldn't be up to snuff.

There are basically two routes to address this need. You can find a do-it-yourselfer kind of production company outfitted with all the necessary tools or send it off to a service company.

The necessary tools for a production company would be a non-linear editing system with analog capture card, PAL VHS player, and software to transcode from PAL to NTSC. Of course, they'll also need software to encode and burn the NTSC DVD you want, but if they have that other stuff, it shouldn't be a problem.

Service companies that handle this kind of task are usually found in major metro areas. I tend to ship to Atlanta since it's my backyard - Crawford or VTA can handle this job.

You did say "Pal" to "Pal", right?

Why not "post" in the "Helping Hands" section for one of our European members who happens to have a VCR to DVD machine (they're pretty popular there).

Heck, it's just a bit of "post"age.


CS

Whoops - somehow read it as PAL-NTSC. Yes, I guess $15 is a reasonable (still somewhat cheap) fee for transferring VHS to DVD. All you need is a $150 DVD recorder... At least that's what they cost in the USA.

Just leaves the small problem of finding a Pal VHS player in the US of A.

Probably about as common as hens teeth.

As for the companies offering the service in the USA, no matter where you send it, there's the chance of "lost in the post" etc.

Suppose it's about time to ask the Big Q:

What on earth is someone in darkest State side doing with a Pal VHS tape in the first place, and similarly, what are you going to do with a PAL DVD?

Confused.


CS

Hey now, as a darkest State-sider, I can say with no degree of uncertainty that we have a fair amount of hens teeth about...

There's always the standards conversion VHS players that can still be had. But, they grow rarer. I think B&H stopped selling them.

What gives?



CS

I have a PAL VHS tape of one of my favorite bands playing on a TV show. I don't have a PAL deck, though. So I want to put it on DVD. I want to keep it in PAL so there is no resolution loss. My DVD player has no problem playing PAL.

I'll try to Helping Hands forum, I didn't think of that.

Martin,

I researched this and found some of the sites you probably looked at. Resellerratings had only one review of PAL VHS/DVD video format conversion, convert PAL//NTSC DVD/VHS video MiniDV Digital video tape format conversion vhs 8mm dvd overseas pal system american european video system converter transfer (http://www.dvdoverseas.com/foreign_video.htm) for example, and although it may not be reflective of the business it wasn't a good review.
DVDOverseas.com - dvdoverseas.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings (http://www.resellerratings.com/store/DVDOverseas)

I would recommend you try several universities and see what they charge for the conversion.

Example:

Brown University: Media Services (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/mso/ins_detail.php?id=23)

John

Or.....

You can search the Helping hands section, and see that i've already done it for him...
Yep, in about 20 years, my AIWA System Converter will pay off.....