Terapin Tames Tape Monster

I’ve got boxes full of priceless family memories, stored on a variety of camcorder tape formats all doomed to disintegrate before my kids get to college. For years I’ve been looking for an easy way to archive and store my home movies in a format that won't degrade over time. I finally found the answer with a little known product called the Terapin.
This funky-looking TV set top box acts like a VCR, but instead of tape recording it burns Video CD copies effortlessly, sans computer for playback on TVs, multimedia PC drives even some DVD players. To transfer video simply plug in your camcorder, TV or VCR, load a blank CD and the unit makes a copy. It’s truly plug and play. In fact, I’ve managed to store my entire videotape collection on CDR disc in a matter of weeks.

The Terapin accepts standard CD–recordable (CD-R) or CD rewritable (CD-RW) discs which store up to 74 minutes of audio and video. Not only do you create a Video CD of your home movies for space-saving archiving and playback, you get DVD-like features such a slow motion replay, split screen “chapters” for easy navigation, plus instant fast forward and rewind.

Unlike DVDs, Video CDs use a compression scheme called MPEG1 which produces some artifacts and pixelation during playback. For me however, the convenience of storing years of videotape on long lasting CDs outweighs the loss of quality. The quality is generally equal to the tape source anyway, meaning that my old VHS tapes look well, like old VHS tapes, but VHS-C, 8MM, Hi 8, and the Mini DV playback look as good as the originals.

Video CDs will playback in a number of devices. While I prefer to just watch the VideoCD played through the Terapin on my TV set, many DVD players have Video CD compatibility and most multimedia computers can playback the action as well. I recently made two VideoCD copies of a holiday video (in about 10 minutes), sent one to my brother who watched it in his Pioneer DVD player-- the postage cost more than the two CDR discs!

Terapin has all the inputs you need: S-video, composite video and RCA jacks for video plus digital coaxial and an optical input for audio recording. Although Terapin can burn audio CDs, record TV shows and oops, even copy DVD movies to CD, these features are fun, but only an afterthought. If you have closets and crannies filled with old home movies, buy the Terapin. It will tame your tape monster.

It sells for $475.00. For more information go to www.lowballvideo.com.