There are Media Markt, and Saturn. Two big electronics stores in Europe that are "rivals" to each other, however they both belong to the same parent company. The illusion of free choice, I guess.
I picked up the Sony VRD-MC5 on ebay after the vwestilfe video on it in order to digitize some Video8 tapes. Couldn't be happier with the results. It's a great machine! Apparently unlike this one, which is yet another example of how we seem to have de-evolved regarding modern digitizing products.
They can definitely make a unit comparable to the Sony ones, they just chose to make it as cheaply as possible because profits were more important than quality.
After that rigid ballroom dancing video with the girl with the giraffe neck, the dirty dancing video was playing, and I saw the "lady" shaking her ass from time-to-time. Something had to be up.
They move a lot of merch by having credit plans and credit cards aimed at people who lack credit, and taste, and brains, but who still want to have Dyson vacuum.
They shift a hell of a lot of goods. People at home all day with disposable incomes. Impulse purchases because it's on the TV and the money is nothing to them. Or people who want a retail hit who use their credit plans.
It's genuinely impressive how bad of a job it did with the audio, capturing that digitally was solved a very long time back and I feel like they actually had to somehow intentionally set the recording settings that poor.
I have a hunch that someone read that digital audio for video is supposed to be 16-bit, 48 kHz PCM, and they mixed up those two and set it to 16 kHz and 48 kbps instead.
@@vwestlife Check if a firmware update exists for this device, perhaps there are wrong settings in the firmware for audio digitization, if true then it can be fixed by a new firmware.
@@techmaster-ch5yd While that's a very good theory on paper, how many of these products actually receive firmware updates? I'd be most surprised if a firmware update for this unit even exists.
There’s actually one thing these DVDirect clones can be good at: if you really enjoyed RUclips’s early years and the videos that were released back then, you can use these devices to make your own late Oughties-style YT video! (judging by the picture and sound quality) 😊
I just know that they are archival grade Taiyo Yuden that will last 10,000 years and outlive humanity because HSN always sells only the finest quality products and would never sell cheap junk that you could buy for 10 dollars of aliexpress
First Legacybox tells me i need to "Digitize" my MiniDV tapes because they are "Degrading Analog Media" Now HSN says should make HD DVDS from my Betacams?
I suspect they meant Betamax camcorders or old Betamax tapes. I doubt that the people who put this together know the difference, or would much care if they did! Mind you, anyone in a position where they're wanting to transfer actual Betacam is likely to know enough that they're not going to be doing so on some worthless old toss like this anyway.
4:24 - Rick Rolled again! 6:42 - Instrumental of Debelah Morgan's "Dance With Me?" 🤣 8:06 - NewTek Video Toaster text overlay? Or Videonics MX-1? We've come SUCH a long way in a few decades. 9:21 - Where was this video when I was an adolescent? 🤤 10:47 - OMG I used to love Paula Poundstone's comedy act! And Rita Rudner, too.
I was a kid (9 or 10) when that song came out, and my mother put quite a lot of miles on the "Whenever You Need Somebody" cassette in her Pontiac, so I could sing the entire song _a cappella_ with the muted video playing if I wanted to. It's not his only hit, but thanks to the internet, it's the only one most people remember, or have even heard. In fact, I didn't even know what Rick Rolling was until somebody told me, and when they were explaining they said it was a song someone invented to troll people. I had to correct them and tell them it actually was a chart-topping hit from before they were born! Rick Astley's still actively singing, he posted quite a few songs on his RUclips channel during the pandemic that he recorded from his home studio. In fact, he's seemed to embrace being a meme.
This is why I keep coming back to your videos. Your droll sense of humor is hilarious. Gotta love the dirty dancing video as a demonstration of how it handles quality. 😅
The recording quality difference between the Sony and the Protis was crazy. I too feel really sorry for folks who bought the Protis or the other knockoffs.
The south park episode on the shopping networks just takes the cake. This video is good too. The audio on that thing was the real kicker for me. Night and day even on my phone speaker.
6:39 "Fantasy? No, you actually can make your wild dreams of dancing to glorious MIDI tango come true!" I'm getting an adrenaline rush just to think of it.
We used to leave the shopping channels on for the dogs so they wouldn’t get lonely at night. Until one day when we received loads of vegetable chopper-uppers in the mail and turns out Fudj had run up a huge credit card bill during the night! 😂😂😂😂😂 Guffaw!🤣
A lot of people probably don't remember that VHS tapes COULD look and sound as good as the examples you provide so they may just say, 'Look at how far technology has come; I can't believe we used to watch this!' Maybe they mute the audio during record on purpose so you can't compare the before and after.
In my experience VHS is quite difficult to digitize. The tape noise, which isn't a problem on uncompressed video, tends to overload compression algorithms.
@@MrDuncl There is also a problem linked to the analog nature of VHS : the lack of time base corrector (TBC) in most of VHS players, this can lead problems for the digitization.
Another irony lost among the optimistic sale pitches, is that writable DVD media has a far shorter shelf life than magnetic tape does anyway. I have audio tapes that are over 60 years old and video tapes that are 40 years old that all still play fine, while more than half of the DVDs I burned 10+ years ago are completely unreadable now.
Thats exactly why when companies need to store large volumes of important data. They don’t put it on any optical media or even hdd. They store it on tape it exactly because how long it lasts compared to anything else.
@@erikm8707 It's funny how such flimsy data storage can just last and last. I'm just like OP, and have VHS which dates back to 1982 (and older audio cassettes), and while I do stretch the tape every once in a while, they seem just as good as they used to. I would say my dvd/BD failure rate is probably four times what the VHS rate was. I do LOVE the higher resolutions possible through the advanced formats though. It's certainly a trip to see something as old as Gunsmoke in either 720 or 1080p. Now that I think about it, I notice my strictly audio tape failure rate was significantly higher than my VHS one. I suspect the mechanisms in VHS make it much less likely to get tangled, and even then you possibly can "iron it out", plus, given the convenience of audio and how much I used it, those tapes were probably played a lot more than my custom VHS's.
@@erikm8707 Archival magnetic tapes are awesome. Those data centers look like what we were told computers would be in the year 2000 from 70s futurism books.
Wow thats extremely depressing to imagine someone using this then throwing out they're vhs tapes n being left with these files that look and sound like u threw a blanket over them
Newer than the last version Samsung provided for my phone. That only went to 5.something. I later found out about LineageOS and installed that to get a jump up to Android 11. Unfortunately, even open-source community projects eventually have to discontinue support, but it still got me a lot more out of the phone than the manufacturer ever did.
Those tapes labelled "Powerpuff Girls" and "Weekend Cartoons" are ones I'd want to see. Also, when you selected the VOB file on the Top Gun DVD, you only selected the one that contained the warnings. There are usually several VOB files on the disc with different lengths and sizes and different contents. The one containing the movie is usually a few gigabytes in size.
Not technically lying about playing the DVDs you recorded from it but yeah it seems intentionally vague. It can playback the DVD data files stored on the disc, but not really DVD video, and can't play commercial DVD video, which they should've definitely been clearer about. I can imagine a lot of people might've picked this up as a very small DVD player since I could see there being some demand for that for a bedroom or something and they ended up with something that doesn't work for what they need. An odd quirk in the UI I can see, is that even for screens with no scrollbar, the selection highlight is only the width of the text area with the scrollbar so it looks weird and off-center. :p Kinda silly it recorded NTSC video in 25 FPS, especially when it would've _had_ to record in 30 FPS MPEG2 for DVD-video. It would've had to do an extra conversion step. This seems almost intentionally bad. Also, never realized when I was like 5 how hot hard hat harry was, damn. Shame he's dressed as a cop in this one. I had the one about construction equipment. :p
"We're going to do something quite extraordinary and special for you guys tonight." -- I love how these shopping channels always present it like they are doing us a favour. But I guess it sucks a lot of people in. I wonder how much they make these days compared with pre-internet shopping?
I noticed that the erorr/notification interface is actually an older version of android (i think android 4?). This probably is just a cheap android device with some software and a crappy capture card
If these contraptions are knock-offs of Sony's devices, then how could these be legally sold trough TV-Shop channels? Sony would go medieval on them. I'm sure that same, or even better can be find on AliExpress. That cassette on the bottom (weekend cartons) is sure intriguing🔍
As far as I know, there's no definitive timeline of when will magnetic recording degrade to the point of unwatchabe. I got quite a quantity of '80s VHS tapes and they're still playing fine. Naturally, I am aware that magnetic recording isn't permanent.
They weren't claiming the device was a Sony. p.s. For a very recent example of a knock off compare the new Ford Capri with the four year old Polestar 2.
@@MrDuncl You mean that new Ford Capri EV that is crossover SUV and has F.A. to do with original mid-sized coupé? Equally atrocious as new Mustang Mach-E (EV Crossover) that also has F.A. to do with Mustang the muscle car🤮 The dumbest thing ever in automotive industry💩
Coming from the UK myself, 13:08 rings clear warning bells for me: If _any_ product goes to the extent of bringing in some „posh“ presenter from a foreign country so „sensible“ it can't even keep itself inside a hugely beneficial trading union, *run away!* 🏃💨🇬🇧👍
I remember the Sony DVDirect being sold on HSN, with Aaron Berger calling the record button the "big red pancake" 😂 I guess this is one of those cases of the original is the better product. It's shame the DVDirect is discontinued; probably because nobody has DVD players anymore, so a product like this is kinda useless for most people now.
Don't think I'll ever part with all my dvd players, primarily because my BD player is garbage so much of the time. This means I may eat dinner starting off playing, or trying to play, a BD, but end up shutting it off and then playing a dvd on the dvd player instead. The dvd player never has a problem, but approximately 20% of my BD's won't play the first or second time around on that player. I suspect since this and the prior Sony were altered to destroy the region limitations, that it affects performance at times and it goes into a weird flashing warp instead.
9:20 - Why do I suspect that there are quite a few 90s kids out there who look back on "Hard Hat Harry" as a formative influence and the point at which they started to realise a few things about themselves...?!
It's not just that it's recording sound at a very low bitrate, but at a sample rate of 16 kHz? That will only yield a maximum audible frequency response of 8 kHz. No wonder the audio bitrate is so low because not much of the audio is being recorded in the first place. For comparison, CD quality audio has a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, which yields a maximum frequency response of 22.05 kHz, of which 20 kHz is usable for sound with the extra 2,050 Hz above that serving as headroom for reconstruction filtering. Sampling rate: 44.1 kHz > 16 kHz Maximum Frequency Response: 22.05 kHz > 8 kHz
I had one of these I got off Amazon back in 2016 for copying DVR recordings, and needless to say it was CRAP. Video quality and unit functionality was down the gutter, and I remember a glitch where for Video DVDs it would only record the first two minutes correctly, so I always had to make it a Data DVD in MP4 format. Ultimately I quit using it because one day when using it to copy a DVR recording it made a smell similar to burning plastic and then just shut off. I opened it up and the smell was there, but nothing looked obviously burned. I would ultimately buy a used Sony VRD-MC5 on eBay in 2017, which was of course a much smarter purchase and is in fact a much better product.
I found one of these in a fleamarket a while ago, i tried to get it to record into better quality modifying the apk, but nah, it's just garbage. It does run android though and if you plug in a mouse/keyboard combo you can escape the recorder software and do stuff around, but it's in general useless the one i found was used with a ultrasound machine, there was a dvd inside, maybe for that it was fine? maybe not, it was in a flea market after all lol
Oh another observation, I tried to capture a whole 8 hour VHS tape and the sound starts to drift if you get lucky enough for the device not to crash at the end
@@kiwatech I can confirm that from VWL’s demo versus the Sony, this uses very heavy handed transcoding on the audio track, possible to 128 or 160Kbps, it sounded like a high shelf filter after 5500Khz was applied,
I bought the VRD-MC6 after seeing your last video and it’s worked wonders! I can even use it to capture my DS TV Out mod footage for hardware accurate displays.
To record retro (mostly VGA signal), I use Unisheen field monitor with a built in recorder. It was expensive ($350) and had some lies in the description, like the ability to livestream via USB. That doesn't work. I know, because they didn't hook up the port to anything internally. But when it comes to regular signal, it can do very good quality capture to mp4 and has an aspect ratio switch. I wish I knew of a perfect device for retro capture, but they all have issues. Older Dazzle capture cars are good, but may be hard to find. I also have some Hauppauge capture devices, but they provide less than perfect image quality, recording in a checkerboard pixel pattern with their own special codec.
If they tried just a little more, they would have got a product of acceptable quality. At least with recording quality comparable to PCI TV tuners. But now the only use for this device is to create intentionally bad video. Like some musicians going overboard with cassette-style effects.
Then video transfer businesses such as myself, or more probably my friends across the pond in this case, are left to pick up the pieces when customers have used something like this.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a Sony VRD-MC5 based on your review. However, it doesn't work well with most discs. I've tried it a dozen different brand/type combinations of DVDs and only a couple seem to work more or less fine. HP and Philips discs work 80-90% of the time (after retrying multiple times though) while other brands simply always fail during the disc formatting process. Dual layer discs never work. I've tried cleaning the lens, reseating all ribbon cables and updating the firmware, but nothing helped. So something seems wrong with my unit, which is a pity because I really like the results from the discs that I painstakingly did manage to burn. Also, these things are more diffucult to find here in Europe than in the States. So if someone would have any suggestions on how to fix this thing, that would be much appreciated!
12:37 Obvious prop is obvious. We see a label on a VHS cassette with "Summer '87/Lake House" written on it, which is meant to make it look old. However, the label is for a cassette that is over two decades newer than 1987 if the "Memorex" logo that we see printed on it is anything to go by. That Memorex logo is not correct for 1987.
Now you post this. I purchased one of these PROTIS things from Amazon about ten years ago and for about that length of time this piece of crap has been sitting on a shelf collecting dust. It does work mind you, but trying to decipher the manual leaves this senior citizen dazed and confused. You think they would have made things easier. Maybe I can sell this thing on E-Bay to someone who is younger and has more technical knowledge than I do. Hope others take your warning.
I can't believe how cheap those recorders are despite their price tags. It's making me hard to believe that was the CPU's maximum performance for encoding and decoding the video. They must've used a really crappy analog to digital converter.
That audio sounds like the kind of low quality samples that old Flash games would use
audio/music from dial-up AOL online games (back when I didn't now better LOL)
@@youdontknowme5969 more like on hold music.
Yes, and early Internet radio stations too, I remember Triple J sounding like that back in 2001 using our old dial up Internet connection.
@@youdontknowme5969 "RealAudio Player" vibes!
The ballroom dancing tape was actually making my speakers rattle
It's funny you call HSN and QVC rivals, because they're now part of the same company!
@@imrustyokay lol thanks for the info.
The illusion of free choice.
@@novelezraThe product being sold under different names is giving off that same illusion too
Yeah, both QVC and HSN are under the umbrella of QVC
There are Media Markt, and Saturn. Two big electronics stores in Europe that are "rivals" to each other, however they both belong to the same parent company. The illusion of free choice, I guess.
4:24 I can’t believe we got RickRolled.
Silently.
I write documentation for my job, I may have silently rick rolled in a document or two in my time lol.
@pupslace gotta keep 'em engaged 😉
I'm a programmer and put a rick roll into my user guide video for an app I built :)
@@vwestlifethats the best way 😂🎉❤
7:18 "even worse than what I got from LegacyBox"
Now that's a rare insult lol
Hahahahahahaha
That is an insult, Legacybox is known to be laughably bad
Thats a smack down
"Put a cork in it, Amber." Too much.
I lol'd!
I was not expecting that at all and it absolutely destroyed me
"high definition full quality DVD mode"
My eyes rolled backwards towards my brain when I heard that.
It's THE highest quality. And it's DIGITAL
DVD was never HD.
@@kemi242 Who are you talking to?
But yet, this recorder can't write AVCHD-formatted discs.
AVCHD is the only known standard for doing HD video on a DVD, by the by.
11:24 Holy sh*t, the difference in sound quality on Sony is like experiencing lossless audio for the first time :D
Not to mention the video; the toaster looked like it was upconverted to HD for a second there.
I picked up the Sony VRD-MC5 on ebay after the vwestilfe video on it in order to digitize some Video8 tapes. Couldn't be happier with the results. It's a great machine! Apparently unlike this one, which is yet another example of how we seem to have de-evolved regarding modern digitizing products.
They can definitely make a unit comparable to the Sony ones, they just chose to make it as cheaply as possible because profits were more important than quality.
8:00 the art of dancing dirty. a rare jewel. love it.
Putting “the art of” in tiny font, Dancing Dirty in huge font, this must’ve been designed to be as deceiving as possible to increase sales.
@@Chickenpatty878 Plus the bad Swayze/Grey "lookalikes" on the cover. "Swayze" looks more like Tom Cruise.
After that rigid ballroom dancing video with the girl with the giraffe neck, the dirty dancing video was playing, and I saw the "lady" shaking her ass from time-to-time. Something had to be up.
It's fascinating that HSN or QVC are even still a thing in an age dominated by Amazon, etc.
They move a lot of merch by having credit plans and credit cards aimed at people who lack credit, and taste, and brains, but who still want to have Dyson vacuum.
Retired people who don't know how to use computers.
They shift a hell of a lot of goods. People at home all day with disposable incomes. Impulse purchases because it's on the TV and the money is nothing to them. Or people who want a retail hit who use their credit plans.
They are down the street from me in St Pete Florida and quite a large employer. Their outlet store is actually not too bad.
The question is which has the better quality. Amazon seems to be full of consumer electronics with obscure brands.
The choice of video clips is close to reaching high art. Outstanding work.
Well said!!
I bet the DVD playback problem was due to copyrighted media and self-burned DVDs would have played back just fine.
Probably Macrovision which it is then soft blocking, it has nothing to do with copyright.
It's genuinely impressive how bad of a job it did with the audio, capturing that digitally was solved a very long time back and I feel like they actually had to somehow intentionally set the recording settings that poor.
I have a hunch that someone read that digital audio for video is supposed to be 16-bit, 48 kHz PCM, and they mixed up those two and set it to 16 kHz and 48 kbps instead.
@@vwestlife Check if a firmware update exists for this device, perhaps there are wrong settings in the firmware for audio digitization, if true then it can be fixed by a new firmware.
@@techmaster-ch5yd While that's a very good theory on paper, how many of these products actually receive firmware updates? I'd be most surprised if a firmware update for this unit even exists.
@@Lachlant1984 well it supposedly runs Android. There might be a way to add custom software to it. Might make a good followup video.
Well... I wasn't expecting to Google "Hard Hat Harry" yet here we are.
“No, it’s not, Bret Chuckerman!” Seems like a bucket list statement. 👍
Another example of buying cheap crap so we don’t have to… fabulous!
I agree. It's more cheaply built and designed than it's cheap to buy, I might add, though.
I just love the way you owned the male presenter from the TV shopping channel, first class job Vwestlife, and this is why I love your videos.
There’s actually one thing these DVDirect clones can be good at: if you really enjoyed RUclips’s early years and the videos that were released back then, you can use these devices to make your own late Oughties-style YT video! (judging by the picture and sound quality) 😊
Remember when "RUclips quality" used to be a synonym for "godawful low resolution compressed mess"?
@@NotATube it still is
And looking and sounding like it was filmed under the ocean.
It is a great day whenever Volkswagen estlife uploads a new video.
Or, if you will, Veedub estlife
Whatever happened to his rival, SAABoyzone?
(Yes, I did eventually think of a car brand ending in "B").
Damn, that Home Shopping Network has really gone downhill with those recorders.
2:37 you can hear the cheapness as you handle it.
I'm sure those bundled blank DVDs were _only_ of the finest possible quality! Will it even try to record a copy protected DVD or video tape?
The manual says it won't record copy-protected video sources, but I didn't try.
I just know that they are archival grade Taiyo Yuden that will last 10,000 years and outlive humanity because HSN always sells only the finest quality products and would never sell cheap junk that you could buy for 10 dollars of aliexpress
The HSN live promo reminds me of QVC’s advertisement about the Funai VCR/DVD combo lol.
Yup
They'd also shill schlock like Esteban guitars, which are consistently maligned.
"high-definition" and "DVD" don't belong in the same sentence unless you're using HD-DVD, which is incredibly unlikely.
For a brief moment I parsed that as “Funeral VCR/DVD Combo”.
@@cysjunkextra well said!
First Legacybox tells me i need to "Digitize" my MiniDV tapes because they are "Degrading Analog Media" Now HSN says should make HD DVDS from my Betacams?
Really, anybody using BetaCAM would stay away from this junk.
I suspect they meant Betamax camcorders or old Betamax tapes. I doubt that the people who put this together know the difference, or would much care if they did!
Mind you, anyone in a position where they're wanting to transfer actual Betacam is likely to know enough that they're not going to be doing so on some worthless old toss like this anyway.
4:24 - Rick Rolled again!
6:42 - Instrumental of Debelah Morgan's "Dance With Me?" 🤣
8:06 - NewTek Video Toaster text overlay? Or Videonics MX-1? We've come SUCH a long way in a few decades.
9:21 - Where was this video when I was an adolescent? 🤤
10:47 - OMG I used to love Paula Poundstone's comedy act! And Rita Rudner, too.
4:24 THE S.O.B RICK ROLLED US 🤣 i could even hear the damn song in my head! Down to the drum intro. What has the internet done to me!
I was a kid (9 or 10) when that song came out, and my mother put quite a lot of miles on the "Whenever You Need Somebody" cassette in her Pontiac, so I could sing the entire song _a cappella_ with the muted video playing if I wanted to. It's not his only hit, but thanks to the internet, it's the only one most people remember, or have even heard.
In fact, I didn't even know what Rick Rolling was until somebody told me, and when they were explaining they said it was a song someone invented to troll people. I had to correct them and tell them it actually was a chart-topping hit from before they were born!
Rick Astley's still actively singing, he posted quite a few songs on his RUclips channel during the pandemic that he recorded from his home studio. In fact, he's seemed to embrace being a meme.
This is why I keep coming back to your videos. Your droll sense of humor is hilarious. Gotta love the dirty dancing video as a demonstration of how it handles quality. 😅
The recording quality difference between the Sony and the Protis was crazy. I too feel really sorry for folks who bought the Protis or the other knockoffs.
That Ballroom test recording is so bad it could be in an analog horror game and I wouldn't even question it.
Rick Astley - no audio. That sounds like a great feature.
That's because both the DVDirect, and its' clones, manufactured by Shenzhen Koho Technology Co., don't have any speakers at all.
The south park episode on the shopping networks just takes the cake. This video is good too. The audio on that thing was the real kicker for me. Night and day even on my phone speaker.
I think it's fair to say that it's so bad that the difference would still be night and day even if you pumped it through a Gameboy speaker
6:39 "Fantasy? No, you actually can make your wild dreams of dancing to glorious MIDI tango come true!" I'm getting an adrenaline rush just to think of it.
NTSC with 25 fps??? Wowww, that is right out of any standard.
Sort of NTSC-N …
What a weird creep that guy on the Dirty Dancing section.
We used to leave the shopping channels on for the dogs so they wouldn’t get lonely at night. Until one day when we received loads of vegetable chopper-uppers in the mail and turns out Fudj had run up a huge credit card bill during the night! 😂😂😂😂😂 Guffaw!🤣
Well, we can now safely say "put a cork in it Amber" to the Protis recorder! 😂 Can I have the hard Harry when you're finished with him please??
A lot of people probably don't remember that VHS tapes COULD look and sound as good as the examples you provide so they may just say, 'Look at how far technology has come; I can't believe we used to watch this!' Maybe they mute the audio during record on purpose so you can't compare the before and after.
In my experience VHS is quite difficult to digitize. The tape noise, which isn't a problem on uncompressed video, tends to overload compression algorithms.
@@MrDuncl There is also a problem linked to the analog nature of VHS : the lack of time base corrector (TBC) in most of VHS players, this can lead problems for the digitization.
Another irony lost among the optimistic sale pitches, is that writable DVD media has a far shorter shelf life than magnetic tape does anyway. I have audio tapes that are over 60 years old and video tapes that are 40 years old that all still play fine, while more than half of the DVDs I burned 10+ years ago are completely unreadable now.
Stop it, stop it, somebody fed starving orphans off the profits😆 of the new formats.
Thats exactly why when companies need to store large volumes of important data. They don’t put it on any optical media or even hdd. They store it on tape it exactly because how long it lasts compared to anything else.
@@erikm8707 It's funny how such flimsy data storage can just last and last. I'm just like OP, and have VHS which dates back to 1982 (and older audio cassettes), and while I do stretch the tape every once in a while, they seem just as good as they used to. I would say my dvd/BD failure rate is probably four times what the VHS rate was. I do LOVE the higher resolutions possible through the advanced formats though. It's certainly a trip to see something as old as Gunsmoke in either 720 or 1080p.
Now that I think about it, I notice my strictly audio tape failure rate was significantly higher than my VHS one. I suspect the mechanisms in VHS make it much less likely to get tangled, and even then you possibly can "iron it out", plus, given the convenience of audio and how much I used it, those tapes were probably played a lot more than my custom VHS's.
@@erikm8707 Archival magnetic tapes are awesome. Those data centers look like what we were told computers would be in the year 2000 from 70s futurism books.
A perfect example of why I only stick with name brands. The Protis DVD recorder is worth more in parts than it is as a working unit.
It probably has negative value, in that you'd have to pay to have the parts recycled. And you'd still be right!
Nothing like a brisk tango to 'Hernando's Hideaway'.
Every time you remove a protective sticker I think the classic game room is about to start.
I am so sick of those deceptive ads for cheap Chinese junk. It’s so dishonest. They know damn well the quality is garbage.
That could apply to pretty much everything sold on any home shopping channel, ever.
8:20 this is not how I remember Dirty Dancing
This was the prelude to Dirty Dancing. The place where the stars learned the dirty techniques 😲.
Wow thats extremely depressing to imagine someone using this then throwing out they're vhs tapes n being left with these files that look and sound like u threw a blanket over them
When Harry came on screen - wait... Poor choice of words.
Was scrolling through the comments specifically to find jokes such as this!
"OOER!! Sounds a bit rude!"😉
Looks like a Village People reject! 😂
@4:02 - Each time you push one of those buttons, I die a little inside.
I got rickrolled in SILENCE
android 6.1? WE NEED DOOM
Newer than the last version Samsung provided for my phone. That only went to 5.something. I later found out about LineageOS and installed that to get a jump up to Android 11. Unfortunately, even open-source community projects eventually have to discontinue support, but it still got me a lot more out of the phone than the manufacturer ever did.
I didn't even realize it was the same guy until the end. 😆
A huge part of the charm of your videos is the media you showcase. Would love to have your library of videos tapes and vinyls. Keep it up!
9:21 I got a nice jumpscare here, I thought it was corn 😂😂
Those tapes labelled "Powerpuff Girls" and "Weekend Cartoons" are ones I'd want to see.
Also, when you selected the VOB file on the Top Gun DVD, you only selected the one that contained the warnings. There are usually several VOB files on the disc with different lengths and sizes and different contents. The one containing the movie is usually a few gigabytes in size.
I wonder if it auto-advanced to the next non-VOB file and then complained, like cheap MP3 players did back then.
It auto-plays all of the files in the directory.
I wonder if the piece 'o crap can't play encrypted files.
Not technically lying about playing the DVDs you recorded from it but yeah it seems intentionally vague. It can playback the DVD data files stored on the disc, but not really DVD video, and can't play commercial DVD video, which they should've definitely been clearer about. I can imagine a lot of people might've picked this up as a very small DVD player since I could see there being some demand for that for a bedroom or something and they ended up with something that doesn't work for what they need.
An odd quirk in the UI I can see, is that even for screens with no scrollbar, the selection highlight is only the width of the text area with the scrollbar so it looks weird and off-center. :p
Kinda silly it recorded NTSC video in 25 FPS, especially when it would've _had_ to record in 30 FPS MPEG2 for DVD-video. It would've had to do an extra conversion step. This seems almost intentionally bad.
Also, never realized when I was like 5 how hot hard hat harry was, damn. Shame he's dressed as a cop in this one. I had the one about construction equipment. :p
8:03 Dear God it's like watching my parents dance
"We're going to do something quite extraordinary and special for you guys tonight." -- I love how these shopping channels always present it like they are doing us a favour. But I guess it sucks a lot of people in. I wonder how much they make these days compared with pre-internet shopping?
There's about 30 of them broadcasting in the UK, mostly showing pre-recorded programmes.
I noticed that the erorr/notification interface is actually an older version of android (i think android 4?). This probably is just a cheap android device with some software and a crappy capture card
Imagine TV shopping channels selling literal junk like it was a premium product... :P
"Chuck 'er man". More epic pwnage, that was funny.
If these contraptions are knock-offs of Sony's devices, then how could these be legally sold trough TV-Shop channels? Sony would go medieval on them.
I'm sure that same, or even better can be find on AliExpress.
That cassette on the bottom (weekend cartons) is sure intriguing🔍
I doubt Sony hasn’t forgotten about these DVDirect machines since they discontinued them a long time ago while these clones remain in stock…
Could be Sony possibly had a patent for the DVDirect, but has since expired, allowing these cheap knockoffs to continue to be produced and sold.
As far as I know, there's no definitive timeline of when will magnetic recording degrade to the point of unwatchabe. I got quite a quantity of '80s VHS tapes and they're still playing fine. Naturally, I am aware that magnetic recording isn't permanent.
They weren't claiming the device was a Sony.
p.s. For a very recent example of a knock off compare the new Ford Capri with the four year old Polestar 2.
@@MrDuncl You mean that new Ford Capri EV that is crossover SUV and has F.A. to do with original mid-sized coupé? Equally atrocious as new Mustang Mach-E (EV Crossover) that also has F.A. to do with Mustang the muscle car🤮
The dumbest thing ever in automotive industry💩
The sound on the Protis was so bad, when he said "Anthony Griffith" I heard "And Sunny Griffith"
Coming from the UK myself, 13:08 rings clear warning bells for me: If _any_ product goes to the extent of bringing in some „posh“ presenter from a foreign country so „sensible“ it can't even keep itself inside a hugely beneficial trading union, *run away!* 🏃💨🇬🇧👍
Wow! The audio is so much better from the Sony. Also much more vibrant, clearer picture (the Protis looks low contrast)
chukermans acting career won't be fading away any time soon
I remember the Sony DVDirect being sold on HSN, with Aaron Berger calling the record button the "big red pancake" 😂 I guess this is one of those cases of the original is the better product. It's shame the DVDirect is discontinued; probably because nobody has DVD players anymore, so a product like this is kinda useless for most people now.
Don't think I'll ever part with all my dvd players, primarily because my BD player is garbage so much of the time. This means I may eat dinner starting off playing, or trying to play, a BD, but end up shutting it off and then playing a dvd on the dvd player instead. The dvd player never has a problem, but approximately 20% of my BD's won't play the first or second time around on that player. I suspect since this and the prior Sony were altered to destroy the region limitations, that it affects performance at times and it goes into a weird flashing warp instead.
A friend of mine had a Sony and he liked it so much thanks Kevin for bringing us in the past. Miguel.
"Brett Chukerman" sounds like the sort of made-up name you'd use if you were doing an over-the-top parody of an American home shopping TV host.
Shopping channels often sell junk homewares and electronics, they have always done this 😅
9:20 - Why do I suspect that there are quite a few 90s kids out there who look back on "Hard Hat Harry" as a formative influence and the point at which they started to realise a few things about themselves...?!
It's not just that it's recording sound at a very low bitrate, but at a sample rate of 16 kHz? That will only yield a maximum audible frequency response of 8 kHz. No wonder the audio bitrate is so low because not much of the audio is being recorded in the first place.
For comparison, CD quality audio has a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, which yields a maximum frequency response of 22.05 kHz, of which 20 kHz is usable for sound with the extra 2,050 Hz above that serving as headroom for reconstruction filtering.
Sampling rate: 44.1 kHz > 16 kHz
Maximum Frequency Response: 22.05 kHz > 8 kHz
4:24 Us: We got Rickrolled, again!!
You[VWestlife]: SILENCE!!!!
This channel is outstanding
I can't believe even shopping channels have the cheek to sell such crap ! I don't think here QVC UK sell this type of garbage though
I had one of these I got off Amazon back in 2016 for copying DVR recordings, and needless to say it was CRAP. Video quality and unit functionality was down the gutter, and I remember a glitch where for Video DVDs it would only record the first two minutes correctly, so I always had to make it a Data DVD in MP4 format. Ultimately I quit using it because one day when using it to copy a DVR recording it made a smell similar to burning plastic and then just shut off. I opened it up and the smell was there, but nothing looked obviously burned. I would ultimately buy a used Sony VRD-MC5 on eBay in 2017, which was of course a much smarter purchase and is in fact a much better product.
I saw that you gave it so many chances for the unit to redeem itself. Final verdict, It SUCKS!
Thanks again Victor!
It's so bad, it makes me appreciate those DVD recorder/VCR combo units made by Funai.
Haha, "Even worse than what I got from Legacy box."
I was fortunate to see Mateo live in Omaha earlier this year. Such a talented guy!
Unfortunately, we can't see what the field handling of both devices are, as this upload was 30p. Did either device mangle the fields?
The files recorded by the Protis are all progressive, not interlaced. Yes, even when burning to DVD.
0:34
_"... all your old camcorders and Betacams..."_
Huh? Some consumers may have had Betamax, but Betacam?
True!
The best thing to come from this video is discovering Matteo Lane. This man is hilarious!
Oh god Pop Up Video. I vaguely remember that. I saw it on an episode of The Brady Bunch one time and thought it was neat at the time.
The pro tip, is never buy any home shopping crap.
Hardhat man video caught me off guard lol
Even the button layout...Sheesh how the heck did they get away with that?
I found one of these in a fleamarket a while ago, i tried to get it to record into better quality modifying the apk, but nah, it's just garbage. It does run android though and if you plug in a mouse/keyboard combo you can escape the recorder software and do stuff around, but it's in general useless
the one i found was used with a ultrasound machine, there was a dvd inside, maybe for that it was fine? maybe not, it was in a flea market after all lol
I’d be more curious about the DVD in the player when you picked it, if it was possibly used by the medical industry.
@@excrono yeah it was used by the medical industry, it had a Bupa (healthcare company) inventory sticker
Oh another observation, I tried to capture a whole 8 hour VHS tape and the sound starts to drift if you get lucky enough for the device not to crash at the end
@@kiwatech I can confirm that from VWL’s demo versus the Sony, this uses very heavy handed transcoding on the audio track, possible to 128 or 160Kbps, it sounded like a high shelf filter after 5500Khz was applied,
I bought the VRD-MC6 after seeing your last video and it’s worked wonders! I can even use it to capture my DS TV Out mod footage for hardware accurate displays.
To record retro (mostly VGA signal), I use Unisheen field monitor with a built in recorder. It was expensive ($350) and had some lies in the description, like the ability to livestream via USB. That doesn't work. I know, because they didn't hook up the port to anything internally. But when it comes to regular signal, it can do very good quality capture to mp4 and has an aspect ratio switch. I wish I knew of a perfect device for retro capture, but they all have issues. Older Dazzle capture cars are good, but may be hard to find. I also have some Hauppauge capture devices, but they provide less than perfect image quality, recording in a checkerboard pixel pattern with their own special codec.
If they tried just a little more, they would have got a product of acceptable quality. At least with recording quality comparable to PCI TV tuners.
But now the only use for this device is to create intentionally bad video. Like some musicians going overboard with cassette-style effects.
8:15 dang! I didn't know Joe Pesci was such a good dancer
I don’t know how this content could possibly get more uniquely geared to me as a viewer.
If I time travel back to the year 2005 I will be sure to heed this advice.
Then video transfer businesses such as myself, or more probably my friends across the pond in this case, are left to pick up the pieces when customers have used something like this.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a Sony VRD-MC5 based on your review. However, it doesn't work well with most discs. I've tried it a dozen different brand/type combinations of DVDs and only a couple seem to work more or less fine. HP and Philips discs work 80-90% of the time (after retrying multiple times though) while other brands simply always fail during the disc formatting process. Dual layer discs never work. I've tried cleaning the lens, reseating all ribbon cables and updating the firmware, but nothing helped. So something seems wrong with my unit, which is a pity because I really like the results from the discs that I painstakingly did manage to burn. Also, these things are more diffucult to find here in Europe than in the States. So if someone would have any suggestions on how to fix this thing, that would be much appreciated!
The blank discs are a nice touch, I’ll give them that.
12:37
Obvious prop is obvious.
We see a label on a VHS cassette with "Summer '87/Lake House" written on it, which is meant to make it look old. However, the label is for a cassette that is over two decades newer than 1987 if the "Memorex" logo that we see printed on it is anything to go by.
That Memorex logo is not correct for 1987.
Now you post this. I purchased one of these PROTIS things from Amazon about ten years ago and for about that length of time this piece of crap has been sitting on a shelf collecting dust. It does work mind you, but trying to decipher the manual leaves this senior citizen dazed and confused. You think they would have made things easier. Maybe I can sell this thing on E-Bay to someone who is younger and has more technical knowledge than I do. Hope others take your warning.
Notice how they are using a stretched version of the old iMovie logo.
0:40 well there's their first lie: "high definition" ??? 🤣 LOL
I can't believe how cheap those recorders are despite their price tags. It's making me hard to believe that was the CPU's maximum performance for encoding and decoding the video. They must've used a really crappy analog to digital converter.