ruk.blog

In the U.S., for the most part, we’re a group of “can do” consumers.  We have an unfailing optimism that often spills over into our attitude about do-it-yourself home projects — primarily thinking that if we do it ourselves, we can certainly save a buck or two.

So it’s interesting that Consumer Reports, the self-proclaimed guide to helping people find the best gadget for just about anything, has this advice in their June issue for families with old home movies: 

“Digitizing these yourself is usually impractical, especially if you want to preserve or enhance their quality.  Most readers who responded to our online inquiries about movie conversion used a service, as we recommend.”

No doubt their research highlighted the key problem with old home movies:  there isn’t a single gadget or device that will help a user convert their multi-format home movies to a DVD.  And even if there were such a gadget, the time and cost constraints, not to mention the expertise involved, would turn most consumers away. 

Brick-and-mortar stores as well as web-based services abound, but only 1 out of 500 are trustworthy or produce quality work.  For consumers, it can be like finding a needle in a haystack.  A tough situation considering the priceless nature of home movie collections. Many of the customers I talk to, for example, had their home movies transferred to DVD by services that skimped on steps or quality, and were unhappy with the end product, just as Consumer Reports’ testing group found:

“The picture quality from all was satisfactory, but some services did a better job at cleaning the film before scanning it. One service cropped the picture edges. None of them did much to correct for unnatural color or to adjust the lighting in under- or overexposed scenes.”

It just isn’t practical for anyone but a true team of pros to take on converting dozens (even hundreds) of home movie films and videotapes to a modern digital format.  The only way is for consumers to find a trustworthy brand with a long track record of high quality service.

When a lifetime a priceless moments is trusted to a service, quality is never a luxury. It is a necessity.