Technology Connections
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2019–2022
15:39 · 1M views · Jul 6, 2019
Technology Connections shows a cheap method for capturing analog video: a composite-to-HDMI upscaler feeding an HDMI capture dongle, aimed at digitizing home movies and VHS tapes.
HN people recommend it as an affordable, good-quality way to digitize analog video.
5 comments from Hacker News
For those in the Toronto-Hamilton-Montreal corridor, I've been running everpixels.ca for a bit as a side thing (though it's kinda on pause). It's primarily focused on photo digitization for families - but I've also done a ton of tape media. I can help any local HNers that need access to hardware. (Or just some info/direction) Technology Connections (YouTube) does some good coverage of capturing/converting analogue video - hardware choices make huge difference. this video There's clearly a need/desire for this kind of stuff (though it's sad how many times I'm approached as someone is near death). Don't wait til that moment to save the stories and memories that you have. I've been back and forth about how much I want to dive in with this project. If anyone is local and really interested in some of it, drop me a line. There are some cool avenues I've touched - seniors, alzheimers, story capture.
this video introduces the "use a composite-to-HDMI upscaler and a cheap HDMI capture dongle" trick. It looks like he might've linked a different capture dongle, though the one I bought was pretty near identical to the one this article is about.
A reasonably priced and good quality bodge is described in "The Best Easy Way to Capture Analog Video (it's a little weird)" this video
> Youtube was, is and will forever be for cat videos, not for serious information - or so at least the moderation policy makes it out to be. The problem isn't the moderation policy, it's the medium. It encourages easy passive absorption of anything presented in a slick matter by people who barely know what they're talking about. Take for instance this slick video talking about VHS capture by Technology Connections, which I used to have vaguely positive feelings about: this video The people on a forum with really deep knowledge on the subject have poor things to say about it: [LINK] . They say he only has a poor gasp of the subject, and half the time sounds like he's just reading off of Wikipedia. > There are plenty of alternative video distribution channels out there which don't have this problem, the only thing which needs to be solved is video discovery. No, those "alternative video distribution channels" are usually far worse, precisely because of that lack of moderation. Except in a very few cases (specifically some gun videos, and Serikzhan Bilash), most of the original content that has to flee to them is garbage.
The TV by itself might do it just fine! They often have good analog to digital converters built in as shown by Technology Connections: this video