While there are multiple companies that digitize video tapes they are not all alike.
Pricing
Almost all have different pricing and pricing structure. Many charge per tape plus an additional fee for longer tapes. This is the most common pricing structure. For example if you have a 3 hour tape they’ll charge their per tape price of let’s say $25 per tape then an additional $10 per hour of video after 2 hours, a single tape ends up costing $35 or more. We charge a flat rate of $20 regardless of length. Your tapes can all be 6 hours long and it’ll still be $20 per tape.
Quality
Not all companies care about your tapes!
When any type of video tape needs to be digitized regardless of DVD or mp4, those tapes require a specific player to play them back. Inside those players are mechanical video heads and the physical tape from the housing wraps around these video heads.
Issue is all VHS, VHS C, Video 8, Hi 8, 8mm, Digital 8, Mini DV tapes degrade overtime and will completely erase. These degraded tapes are read by various video heads differently. Some will play them back as if the tape is losing its audio, some will play back as if the tape has choppy video, some both, some none, some with portions. We at Quick Digitals regularly service our professional equipment and modify hardware and software to best suit each specific tape for optimal digitized quality. While some other transfer companies will just convert the tapes on whatever equipment is available at the moment.
In fact Quick Digitals was started because our founder, Alex hiring a “big box” transfer company to convert his tapes and was disappointment in the outcome.
Outsourcing
Many digitizing places don’t digitize your tapes themselves! They present themselves as a digitizing company but they are really a middle-man. Those companies will accept your tapes then send to another establishment for conversion. Sometimes it’s shipped, sometimes it’s hand delivered. When you go pickup your completed order you are never told a silent business converted your tapes. The more people and businesses involved in your tape conversion process the risker it gets. In fact we are the “wholesaler” for several of those companies. People take their tapes to them, they bring it to us, and we end up converting the tapes and then we’ll see a 5-star review for that company about how great the quality of the videos came out to be not knowing we were the ones who actually processed their video tapes.
At Quick Digitals, we don’t send your tapes anywhere. All tapes are converted by us, one by one, in house. They never leave our facility unless it’s to get them back to the customer. We focus on speed while providing optimal quality. We can transfer your tapes too! We’ve been helping our community of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and even across the states to transfer videos to DVDs or digital files!