Beta home tapes to DVD? How to Convert Betamax to digital?
 

My Friend has 1990's Video tapes from BETA(max?) tapes, transfered from his (?)Player or Cam to DVD that look absolutely HORRIBLE,Guess he went from Recorder/cam to DVD Recorder? Any suggestsions on finding a suitable BETA Deck that has output with s-video? I looked at E-bay and saw mixed players,I Am working on AIW capture computer ,Don't Know if any BETAmax players still out there even have S-video Output, or if just composite,and another bag"o"worms to deal with!!...Very Important because master BETA tapes feature ME!! and friends playing music live,and i think audio is stereo and quite good!:)

The only Betamax machines with S-video were the rare SL-HF2100 and the ED Beta units. Both go for sky high prices on the market due to scarcity and collectors. If the tapes are indeed stereo, any SuperBeta Hi-Fi deck will do. All the Sony models start with "SL-HF" in their model number. There were a few non-Sony models such as the Sanyo VCR-7250, but they weren't all that common and parts are unavailable nowadays.

If you can find out what source VCR made the tape it would be great. If it had SuperBeta, chances are the tape was recorded with it turned on (small resolution boost). If it wasn't SuperBeta you have to make sure its turned OFF, otherwise your video may distort on playback.

I will check with my friend,but I think his original vcr died.I'm also wondering what different names the BETA format was even called (for consumer-grade),I'm pretty sure the tapes almost look like vhs,but are BETA. Not sure if BETAmax is the proper term that I used in the 1st post. Maybe there is another form of "consumer" grade BETA that may have re-furb cameras or vcr's that are more available???? or maybe not?? What,(if any) do the duplication guys,or maybe you guys use to play them in?? Or is there even any demand for BETA to DVD??? THANKS

There's basically zero demand for Betamax work. (BetacamSP and Digital Betacam are a different story!)

Betamax was mostly used for two things: (1) recording TV, (2) studio releases to Beta tapes.

Many things -- maybe even most things -- have been released to VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, or even streaming media (Hulu, for example, which carries quite a few things not found on any other released physical format). The people who have content NOT available in any normal mainstream method tend to be die-hard video enthusiasts, especially given the fact that people have (in the 2000s) hung on to tapes from a "dead format" of the 1980s. They generally take care of themselves, or their own crowd takes care of them. There's a pretty big Beta hobby scene out there, though it shrinks exponentially every year, as gear disappears and people have migrated their content to other formats.

If you need a service for Betamax conversion, contact TimelessDVD.com and tell the owner that KP of digitalFAQ.com sent you. (They also do VHS work, etc -- but we'd prefer to keep that work, as those are video services offered by digitalFAQ.com.)

Sanyo labeled their VCRs "Betacord", rebranded machines from Sears (mostly Sanyos) were called "Betavision".

Keep in mind that there is some demand for Betamax work, a lot of early adopters of camcorders purchased Sony BetaMovie camcorders from 1983 to 1985 or so until full size VHS camcorders became commonly available. If someone in our family had one of these camcorders like we did, its vital to have a working machine around to recover that footage.

If you only have a handful of tapes, send them to a transfer service, otherwise pick up a VCR and have it refurbished. Mr. Betamax and Absolute Beta exclusively repair/refurbish the machines. Classic VCRs also seems to do a lot of Betamax repairs, he sells his refurbished machines on ebay all the time. (He also fixes Panasonic AG-1980s and older high end JVCs too)