Toshiba D-VR600KU good combo to transfer VHS tapes?
 

I wish to transfer old VHS Tapes to Digital. They're family home videos.

I have a VCR/DVD combo "Toshiba D-VR600ku". I think this is the one (or at least similar, doesn’t have the "ku"): https://www.ebay.com/itm/Toshiba-D-V...75.c3#viTabs_0
Is this a decent player for the job? Says it supports “S-Video” and “Recordable Media Format: DVD, VHS, S-VHS”.

My PC has Windows 10.

The old VHS Tapes are mostly "tc-30hgxb" (I think this is "VHS-C")":
As far as I can tell there are no "S-VHS" tapes.

I'm planning to buy "Diamond VC500" Capture card.

The software I'm planning to use with this is "VirtualDub" with Huffyuv or Lagarith lossless format (based on the recommendations on these forums.)
In an AVI or MPG container?

If this is not a good setup, then under $100-$150 what's the best VCR/TBC I should get for old home VHS tapes?
Anything else I need? Any advice is welcome.

Generaly combos are not that great as they were quite cost-reduced, though they vary a bit. The toshiba dvd-recorder/VCR combos were often made by Funai and had a very janky mechanism and issues with the gain control in the digital video decoder chip going wild so they don't work too well. This one seems to be different though, it's based around a zoran chipset and has a different mechanism (not sure who ultimately made this mech but I've seen it in some other combos.)

It looks like this one has S-video, hdmi and component output that goes through the internal digitizer so how well it works is going to be up to that, rather than the capture card which just has to digitize the stable signal that comes out of it. The datasheet blurb from zoran claims the chip features time-base correction but I don't know how well it works.

As has been discussed numerous times on the forums, the alternative for that budget (unless you happen to be very lucky and find a fancy SVHS deck with TBC for cheap somewhere) would be a quality hi-fi or budget svhs vcr + panasonic dmr es10/es15 dvd-recorder for stabilization, so I would maybe give the toshiba a try with a capture card first and see how well it works.

Nope. Not that unit. Toshiba has been Funai junk for years. The new DVDs will look worse than the source tapes. I tested this one was it was new, well over 10 years ago.

Transferring tapes requires some form of TBC. The ES10/15 is probably the least-worst option, if you insist on doing VCR>DVD. The Panasonic encoding is blah, but it has the essential TBC(ish) function (minimalist). If you go VCR > ES10/15 > Toshiba, it'd probably be better. The Toshiba encoder was better than the Panasonic encoder. Just stick to 2-hour SP mode DVDs.

Sorry to bump this, but are you implying If I use this method; "VCR > ES10/15 > Toshiba" it can go directly to DVD only and not to Desktop/PC?


Also if say I raise my budget to $300-$400 would this be a good combo: Diamond VC500 Capture Card + ES10/15 + budget svhs vcr around 200$?
^^And I assume the Toshiba would be useless in this case?
Would it be better to buy ES10/15 for 200$ to use as a TBC + the vcr around 200$. Or a vcr for about 400$ with a TBC inside of it?

BTW here's a test recording I made on the Toshiba D-VR600KU:

You could record directly to dvd like that yes, though it looks like there is something wrong with the Toshiba (or the capture card but some electronics issue with the VCR seems more likely), those gray dots are not supposed to be there.

200$ for an ES10/15 seems a bit much (unless it's like verified refurbished including capacitors and with warranty or something), you can usually get a ok-working one for less than that. IMO I would go with ES15 + decent VCR as having the ES15 is a bit more robust than relying an the internal TBC only.