Portta VHS to Digital Converter, Video to Digital Recorder with Remote, Compatible with VHS, VCR, DVR, DVD, Hi8, Mini DV Players, Camcorder, Gaming Consoles (VHS/Tapes/DVD Player Not Included)

I’ve been wanting to convert old VHS and cassette tapes to digital for a long time. I thought about using a conversion service but one time tried that and the original was lost in transit. I bought this as a solution to do it myself and this device did the job perfectly. No glitches and easy to use. No computer or software needed which was an extra plus. Just connect it to your VCR or cassette player. A good solution for digital conversion of those old tapes.

I just finished a 3 week stint of digitizing all of our old VHS, VHS-C, and Hi8 family videotapes. The Portta worked great!I did replace the RCA cable that came with the Portta because it wouldn't connect reliably to our old Hi8 camcorder, but I suspect that's more the ancient camcorder's problem rather than the Portta's. You may want to use a higher-quality RCA cable than the one that comes with the Portta.I read several one-star reviews of people complaining about stuttering video or corrupted files. I suspect these problems (which I didn't experience) have two causes: 1) a USB thumb drive that can't keep up with higher video rates, and 2) not waiting for the Portta to finish saying "Saving..." before removing the USB thumb drive. If you buy a high-speed USB thumb drive and follow the instructions, the Portta should work great for you.

Overall: The product works most of the time. It's simple and easy to work with, however, there's only one issue I found.The Setup: I had a portable hard drive connected to the device, and the device was connected to the VCR to record from VHS tapes. I used the 3-color cables and had the display showing the recording so I could monitor the device from a distance as I needed to record dozens of hours of recordings.The problem: Every once in awhile, the screen would freeze up showing a still picture and the audio would continue playing. I attempted to stop recording to save the data, but the device was frozen, even when the 3-color cables are disconnected. I would be forced to disconnect the power cable since the screen continued to remain frozen, and all data from that recording session would be corrupt. Once the session was restarted, the recordings worked as intended. It's a bit of a pain, but luckily this has happened 3 times over 30 sessions of recordings so take it with a grain of salt.

I love that I can finally put my old home videos into a digital format. This device is super easy to set up and use. So far I love it.

I ordered this so i could capture shorter clips of long videos of family from DVD's. It was very easy to use. Simply plug box into DVD player, plug flashdrive into box, watch on small built in screen, and press record button to start or stop. I then plugged flashdrive into my computer and pasted each individual clip onto its own slide in Microsoft Powerpoint to create a memorial video.

The description states "No capacity limitation for the USB drive", however this is not always the case. While transferring longer recordings (say 45 minutes) from a VHS or Hi 8 to a micro SD, the recording does not transfer over to the SD card. The steps were followed, the device reported it was saving though never did after multiple attempts to multiple SD cards. This takes time to manage and adds the greater potential to older tapes failing while being played to record. I will say that shorter recordings tend to save to the SD card. Longer recordings would need to be stopped incrementally to allow the device to actually save the increments to the storage device though this is not an ideal experience.

This device works great! Using it to digitize videos from an old Sony Hi8 video recorder. I added a 512gb thumb drive to hold all of our home videos. The quality is excellent.

The Portta device provided us with an amzaing value. Before you spend a lot of money elsewhere, I suggest you try this product first. The advantages outnumber the disadvantages which I’ll describe first.- The video that looks fine on a 3” screen is going to look pixalated on your 8k 75” flatscreen. Given that my camcorder was built in the early nineties, I shouldn’t be surprised, and- The USB port can be fickle. Pull it out and stick it in again. Eventually, it’ll work.Okay, now the advantages.+ I saved a lot of money transferring 26 Hi8 tapes to MP4 format, so far. I also purchased a pair of flash drives, but the Portta is coming out ahead.+ I had control of what was converted and what wasn’t. Less wasted time.+ With AAA batteries in the remote, I could start/stop file transfer without getting up.+ By setting a kitchen timer, I could transfer files and do other tasks around the house at the same time.+ The transfer rate to the USB was fine, no lag time.+ Customer service was faster than advertised with their response times. Thank you.So, is it possible that someone else has built a device that grabs more data from input and moves it to output? Maybe. But not for $130 they didn’t.