VHS is chaos contained on tape. When played, chaos is unleashed. It must be tamed.
Signal is complex. You have visual and non-visual errors. Line TBC tackles (mostly) visual, frame TBC tackles (mostly) non-visual/signal. You need both.
TBC are essentially whips, and VHS is a pissed female lion mama. To put it back in that cage (digitize it), it must be tamed. Otherwise all hell break loose in the conversion process. The VHS tape wins, you lose.
Make more sense now?
WinXP or Win7 are best. Good capture cards exist for both, mostly ATI AIW/600, but there are also some others.
Both laptop and desktop are generally fine. Specs details matter. Card used based on this.
Right now, I have good cards for all situations. PM me about getting one.
Storing TBC in a safe seems extreme. I put mine in a drawer when not in use. Nothing to open, nothing to clean, at least if the TBC comes in good condition.
- If you get a TBC from me, I've already refurb'd it, and you should never have a need to open it or clean it.
- Member selling on marketplace forum here have historically been fine, usually reselling gear bought from me.
- If you buy from a place like eBay/Facebook/etc, unknown.
Certain TBCs need a break after 6 hours (hour is fine), unplugged. Then max 12 hours from it.
Some are built to be more robust, can run for a day or two before needing power off. However, it is still highly suggest to give a break after 6 hours, no more than 12 per day, to have it last a long time.
When it comes to places like Youtube, you need to realize the advice is often from people that know no more than yourself. So the advice is skewed from a place of extremely limited knowledge. It's truly a case of the blind leading the blind. Any moron can make a Youtube video (and get followers/likes/comments), but it doesn't mean the person is experienced and education in the topic. The advice is often bad, and is generally an extended variation of an "unboxing" video. Rather than just watch the person remove it, they futz around with it to demonstrate how it functions. But that still doesn't change the fact that the quality is bad. Never get reviews from Youtube, seek out expert knowledge from sites dedicated to those topics.
Do NOT assume that people "must" have good results. Again, blind leading the blind. Quite literally, in this case. Most consumer sadly do not realize how good VHS conversions can look, and assume quality must be bad. The root cause is user error and cheap hardware/software. With some knowledge, and the right hardware/software, you can do the quality job that truly archives the footage with quality. Also remember that Youtube skews young, and a lot of those folks weren't even born when VHS was the format. They truly have no idea how it's supposed to look!