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This Guy Is Digitizing the VHS History of Video Games (vice.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: UK-based gaming journalist and blogger Chris Scullion is on a mission to preserve his collection -- and maybe your collection, too -- of these old video game VHS tapes. In the 80s and 90s, video game companies and trade magazines made these tapes to accompany popular titles or new issues with bonus material or promotional footage, giving a glimpse into how marketing for games was done in the industry's early days. Scullion has 18 tapes to upload so far, and plans to provide accompanying commentary as well as the raw video as they go up on his YouTube channel. Scullion's first upload is a promotional tape for Super Mario All-Stars, given away by Nintendo UK in 1993. It's hosted by Craig Charles, who played Lister in the British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf. Digitizing his collection keeps that sweet nostalgia content safe from degradation of the magnetic tape, which starts to go downhill within 10 to 25 years. He's capturing them in HD using a 1080p upscaler, at a full 50fps frame rate by converting to HDMI before grabbing -- a higher frame rate than many standard commercial digitizing devices that capture at 30fps -- so that no frames are missed. Some of the tapes he's planning to digitize have already been converted and uploaded to YouTube by other people, he says, but most are either poor quality or captured with less-advanced grabbing devices.
I think because, as nerds, we've all actually... DONE IT.
I have. i transferred several old VHS tapes of various shows and such that aren't produced anymore as well as some old recordings I made way back when on my parent's VCR. I had the actual original airing of the first Borg contact on ST:TNG. Ironically, i decided to digitzie it not because it was ST:TNG (I can get blu-rays for that) or the first airing but because of the commercials!
Before that I digitized my old Laserdisc copies of Space Ace and Dragon's Lair.
I had a buncha old CD's from NextGen that I tossed though but those were all windows based and probably wouldn't have worked anymore.
I also scanned all my grandfather's slides using an actual film/slide scanner. (Something I thought would be a few months' of weekends that stretched into 4 years)
Keeping in mind that VHS resolution is 480p AT BEST, and you're not going to improve it unless you do lots of filtering (I'm sure there are companies which will do that for you, but I can't afford that kind of service). I have a VHS player / DVD recorder that is relatively simple to operate. I have managed to transfer most of my VHS stuff (personal videos, weddings, parties, like that) to DVD, from which I can rip MP4s with ease. I'm sure there are easier/more efficient/better quality ways, but these videos were shot by drunks at parties - how much better is it gonna get? AND - the price is right.