Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

DVHS on a Budget

Posted by Zonk on from the scissored-ingenuity dept.

Kerhop writes "ecoustics.com has an article on how to convert SVHS tapes to work in DVHS recorders which is similar to modifying a floppy drive (like we did years ago) to double the storage. There's two holes on a DVHS cassette and a single hole on the SVHS tape. The hole common to both permits DVHS tapes to handle SVHS signals; the hole unique to DVHS is what we want to focus on. Just cut off the top four to five millimeters of the pin within the recorder itself."

14 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. BE CAREFUL by brownblaket · · Score: 5, Informative

    Be very careful doing this. I read about this on a blog a couple of days ago and tried it with some of the tapes we have an the archive here at work (i work for a local news station on boston). Out of the 5 tapes I tried 3 broke, 1 worked and 1 kind of worked. This is a neat idea but it needs a little more thought before it should be tried with anything that really matters to you.

    --
    Want to Learn about all about Sex and sex related things?
  2. mnb Re:wrong for so many reasons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    good point about bypassing the switch
    to bad you didn't RTFA and see it was a plastic pin
    still, good point about bypassing the switch.

  3. Re:Perhaps there is a reason... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'd actually guess the opposite could be true.
    With a digital signal there's less reason to worry about noise, and thus less reason to use the highest quality media than there would be with an analog signal.
    If they're smart, they might just be taking their cheapest-to-produce tapes and selling them at a premium as DVHS.

  4. Re:This is dumb... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is not feature restriction, the manufacturer is not trying to screw you...

    I am not sure you understand Capitalism.

  5. Re:Good plan by bani · · Score: 2, Informative

    there arent any. there are even dvhs units which have the ability to record dvhs onto plain svhs tapes.

  6. Re:Perhaps there is a reason... by dirty · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you read the article you'd know that you're right, and that the author of the article tested several SVHS tapes and they worked fine.

    --

    -matt
  7. Re:Who has a DVHS? by bani · · Score: 2, Informative

    they're still the only consumer devices capable of recording full bandwidth HDTV in realtime to removable media.

  8. Summary is Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Uh, this isn't a way to "convert SVHS tapes to work in DVHS recorders." It's a way to convert your DVHS recorder to work with SVHS tapes.

  9. Been doing this for 7 years now by NitroWolf · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been doing this for 7 years now on my JVC DVHS recorder. Never had a problem, and the tapes are readily available and cheaper.

    I wonder how this is news, though, since this technique has been around since DVHS first came out.

  10. DAT and Tape by lxt · · Score: 1, Informative

    I'm pretty sure I read ages and ages ago when I was using DAT to record things, that you could do a similar trick with normal tape and a DAT recorder...

  11. Re:Old Floppy Disks by operagost · · Score: 2, Informative
    I think you have two different mods mixed up. As mentioned above, you could add a notch on a 3.5" 1MB floppy to make it HD 2MB (unformatted). The other mod was to add a second write-protect notch to a 5.25" double-sided floppy. This wasn't to increase its capacity, but so that its full capacity could be used in a single-sided drive like the Commodore 1541. Without the notch, if you flipped over the floppy the drive would think it was write protected. Why all floppies didn't just include this notch, I don't know. I used to get BASF floppies because they did, and I could easily use them in both my PC and my C64.

    Again, if you lost data doing this it was definitely just coincidence, as you weren't trying to get something for nothing -- just trying to use the reverse side of the floppy which couldn't be utilized by the drive mechanism.

    --

    Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
  12. You don't need to modify the DVHS deck by bwooster0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You don't need to modify the DVHS deck. When you put in an SVHS tape you can just press the "DVHS" button on the front of the JVC DVHS decks. Then it will treat the SVHS tape as a DVHS tape and let you record HD onto it. I have been done this onto more than 250 tapes. You DON'T have to modify the player and therefore you DON'T have to void your warranty.

  13. Re:This is not dumb... by Queer+Boy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Bausch & Lomb

    --
    Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
  14. This is an old hack by DaveJay · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, a similar trick can be used (and has been used for a long time) to use standard VHS tape in SVHS recording mode on SVHS VCRs.

    The end result is a picture that's better than typical VHS, although whether or not you get the quality of a "real" SVHS tape depends solely on how good the quality of your VHS tape is.

    The hack, IIRC, involved drilling an extra hole in the video tape. Easy peasy.