I like what you are saying about the upper end tape deck. If you are interested in quality you need good equipment. However, I disagree with how you feel about miniDV.
Looking at this over simplified, if you want a cost effective way to preserve these tapes, you need to determine if you want keep the media analog of convert to digital.
If you keep it analog, I believe S-VHS is your answer. If you want to go digital, then you should look at miniDV.
DV will keep the resolution as high as possible (capturing as much information from the analog signal as possible). And is still cost effective. Audio sync problematic when doing a analog to DV as opposed to other AD conversions. Once you have it in a digital format, keeping the bits along is easier as time goes on.
I would only look at compressing (MPEG2/MPEG4) when you want to make a DVD. MPEG is a lossy compression so I would not use it to archive.
I have used a DataVideo DAC100 (http://www.datavideo-tek.com)for analog to digital conversion with good luck and I have yet to see any audio sync problems.
Also, I would save the VHS tapes once you are done. Who knows what technology the future holds. Good luck.
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I like what you are saying about the upper end tape deck. If you are interested in quality you need good equipment. However, I disagree with how you feel about miniDV.
Looking at this over simplified, if you want a cost effective way to preserve these tapes, you need to determine if you want keep the media analog of convert to digital.
If you keep it analog, I believe S-VHS is your answer. If you want to go digital, then you should look at miniDV.
DV will keep the resolution as high as possible (capturing as much information from the analog signal as possible). And is still cost effective. Audio sync problematic when doing a analog to DV as opposed to other AD conversions. Once you have it in a digital format, keeping the bits along is easier as time goes on.
I would only look at compressing (MPEG2/MPEG4) when you want to make a DVD. MPEG is a lossy compression so I would not use it to archive.
I have used a DataVideo DAC100 (http://www.datavideo-tek.com)for analog to digital conversion with good luck and I have yet to see any audio sync problems.
Also, I would save the VHS tapes once you are done. Who knows what technology the future holds. Good luck.