By Livia Bergovoy…

If you are of a certain generation, you might still have a slew of VHS tapes stacked (neatly?) somewhere in corners or judiciously stowed in humidity controlled storage containers. Whatever that generation might boomingly be called… Whateverrrr.

…Never mind. Recorded on VHS and digital video cassettes are some of our holiday and vacation memories; Secret Agent Man episodes; and many movies still in shrink wrap. Yes! And — audio cassettes with memorable lectures. Oh, and those LPs… They can all be converted to digitized movies and audio files.  You can burn the digitized versions to recordable DVDs — that’s called the “Easy Wizard Mode.” You can get fancy and edit out those embarrassing snippets of talking-with-your-mouth-full using the “Advanced Mode.” But you don’t have to edit any of it. The main difference between the two modes is that in the former you end with a DVD, and in the latter you can leave the converted file on your hard drive.   We won’t bore you with the details of the conversion processes. We’ll just tell you it’s easy — it’s a user friendly process with Honestech’s VHS to DVD kit.  Here’s a link to some of their helpful videos. And, even more important, Honestech’s tech support is user friendly too.

The Easy Wizard Mode really is easy. Just hook everything up and go about your business. A few hours later the DVD of your converted media is ready. The conversion to DVD seems to take the longer than the initial analog to digital transfer. What we like about the advanced mode is that the tape which was converted can be saved to the hard drive. No. 1, this is great for archiving and backing up, and No. 2, now-a-days most computers and TVs have HDMI connections, so the digitized videos can be viewed on your large screen TV directly from your computers hard drive.

Suggested retail price for Honestech’s VHS to DVD™ 5.0 Deluxe is $79.99.  By the time you’ve converted four or five VHS tapes you will have made up for the cost of taking those tapes to a conversion service. We prefer the do-it-yourself method because it affords control over those irreplaceable memories.

Now we must get back to that video we took when we climbed Mt. Washington (I remember now… brrr, it sure was cold and windy up there).