From the 80s until the end of the 90s the only way to keep the party videos, to record programs on TV, to watch a rental movie or to record a memory of the most important events of our life included the use of video tapes or VHS . Their quality was not high but they cost very little and the VHS video recorders presented affordable prices to anyone (in fact there was no house where there was not at least one). The technology, however, has gone on and with the arrival of DVDs, Blu-Ray (of decidedly superior quality) and streaming on-demand, the videotapes that we had kept with such care have now become unusable on our modern Smart TVs, even whereas most of them have removed the support for the SCART socket (the most common type of connection on video recorders). If we want to re-taste the old films and the old videotapes in the modern era, in this guide we have collected all the methods to be able to see the old videotapes on Smart TV, maintaining the original quality as much as possible.
How to watch old videotapes on Smart TV
In this guide we will show you all the tools you need to be able to watch old videotapes on a modern Smart TV. We will show you what to do if we still have a working VHS video recorder and, in its absence, how to get an analog-digital converter, so we can convert the videotape into a comfortable digital video file to be kept on the PC and displayed on Smart TV via DLNA or via USB stick.Connect an old VCR to the Smart TV
If we have a still functioning VHS video recorder (better check with an empty or of little interest videotape, trying to insert it and check if the tape runs and that the cassette comes out without jams), the only obstacle is given by the obsolescence of the SCART connection, the most used at the time but in fact disappeared from all Smart TVs. In this case we can solve quickly by purchasing an analog-to-digital converter from SCART to HDMI, such as those present here -> AMANKA Converter from SCART to HDMI (€ 17).
Using this small converter we can view the contents of the videotape on a Smart TV using a classic HDMI port (before continuing, make sure that there is a free port to be dedicated to the purpose).
To use it, simply connect a SCART cable to the video recorder and to the INPUT port on the converter, then connect a latest generation HDMI cable to the OUTPUT port of the same name on the converter, with the other end connected to an HDMI port on the TV. Now we supply electricity to the converter, connecting the supplied USB cable to the power port and to a USB wall charger, move the power button of the converter to ON and set 720p as the output signal, using the appropriate selector quality.
To conclude, simply turn on the video recorder and the TV, tune it to the right HDMI source and insert the videotape, so that you can view it on our Smart TV at a good quality (obviously everything will depend on the quality of the TV in use, on the diagonal of the screen and viewing distance).
NOTE : the converter is unidirectional, therefore it cannot be used to send an HDMI signal to a SCART socket.
Convert the videotape to digital format
If we want to convert the videotape into a digital video file and we have a working VHS video recorder, we recommend using a USB capture card like the one available here -> MyGica EZ Grabber Box USB Video Capture Card (35 €).
All we have to do is connect the RCA type audio / video cables on the back of our video recorder and on the appropriate inputs of the card, then connect the latter to a USB socket of a notebook with Windows.
The CD supplied will provide the drivers for the card and a convenient video capture and editing program, with which we will be able to preview all the contents of the videotape and transfer it to a digital video file, also applying modifications and improvements.
NOTE : if our video recorder has only the SCART socket, we can connect the acquisition card cables via a SCART adapter such as the one available here -> HAMA S-VHS F + 3 RCA F / Scart M adapter (€ 6).
If we do not have a functioning video recorder, there are two ways to recover the video tapes and view them on Smart TV: buy a used video recorder on eBay or go to a trusted photographer and ask to convert the video tape to DVD, so you can quickly recover the digital video files and connect a DVD player to the Smart TV (much simpler, since we will often find the HDMI socket).
In both cases, the cost of recovering videotapes increases, but our advice is to act as soon as possible : the magnetic tape of the videotapes is easily worn out even without using it and the video recorders will become increasingly rare in the years to come; the longer we wait the more we run the risk of not being able to see our films and the most important moments of our life because of the obsolescence of the old VHS technology.
By instead passing the films digitally and keeping them on an external hard disk or on a reliable cloud service, the memories will be virtually preserved forever and we will be able to show them to our children or grandchildren even after several years.
Still to stay on the subject, in another guide we showed you how to record a VHS videotape on your PC and DVD, where we can find other useful tips to recover videotapes.
Conclusions
If we have a large collection of videotapes now full of dust, it is a good time to reuse them, especially if we still have a perfectly functioning video recorder! We can connect the latter directly to the Smart TV with the appropriate adapter or we can convert the analogue movie into a digital video file, so that we can preserve the content from the passage of time and view it without problems on a PC, TV or any other device multimedia.After converting all the videotapes into video files on the PC, we can view them on Smart TV by setting up a DLNA server as visible in our Guide to DLNA servers .
