vhs tapes onto dvd

My dad has just purchased a dvd recorder with a 80g hard drive. He plans on getting rid of his video but has loads of stuff he has recorded onto video. Can these be transferred onto dvd? I was wondering if it would be as easy as pressing play on video and record on dvd...lol

 

YES it is have done this many thime however macrovision can cause problems.

 

What is that and how do I get around it?

 

Macrovision is the copy protection used on VHS tape movies. If you're trying to copy store bought movies from tape to dvd, you may run into a problem. But, if you're copying home movies onto dvd, you should be just fine.
Good luck!

 

I have purchased a macro copy decoder so I can now back up the videos onto dvd but I need help with connections. We currently have the tv, cable box and dvd recorder all connected to each other. How do I add the video into that?

 

You'll need to:
1) connect your VCR's A/V outputs to the Decoder's A/V inputs
2) connect the Decoder's A/V outputs to one of your Recorder's available A/V inputs
3)power everything up, adjust your recording speed on your Recorder, play the tape and record on Recorder's hardrive
4)edit raw footage and transfer to disc.

Good Luck and have fun !!!

CC

 

Would I be best disconnecting everything so that its just the tv video and dvd recorder connected?

 

If you want, you don't really have to, you should have enough inputs in the recorder to accept both the cable box and the decoder, you just need to choose which source(input) to record.

 

I did try that originally but never picked the picture from the video up when I selected source.

 

Odd, make sure that both the decoder and vcr are on and play a tape, some recorders will look black on sources where nothing is passing through. If all fails unhook and try as you mentioned, just the VCR to decoder to recorder to tv.