TV/VHS Combo Units in Library

I sure a lot of you have TV/VHS Combo Units in your Libraries.

We have one that been broken for a year, and the other two are almost never used because they only have VHS functionality and not DVD.

Since 95% of the media used in our building - I would like to purchase two TV/DVD Combo units.

My question is: Are Wards expected to purchase their own equipment?

and

Are there any more folks out there with this same issue?

heyring wrote:My question is: Are Wards expected to purchase their own equipment?

I'm fairly certain that's though the FM group. I'd send a email to your stake presidency outlining the problem.

The only TV/VCR combos I've seen in our library are the 12" ones.

We have both in our ward library in the stake center, I think one DVD and two VHS, since the library has a large number of VHS tapes.

At some point though, given the amount of older equipment, mainly VHS players, I'm wondering if this equipment should be replaced completely with DVD players. Most will work with the older analog TVs (US) for the forseeable future, and most Church media is now only printed in the DVD format, it might be wise for a strategy to replace library materials from the VHS tapes with the corresponding DVDs with the exception of those items where there is no DVD equivalent available, and discard most of the VHS tape copies, leaving one or two for members to borrow that still own only a VHS player.

We've just gone through this. We have previously added DVD players to a few of the older TV/VHS players, and this works to a degree. Some of the TV/VHS players are broken. We asked our local FM group what the policy was for replacement. The stock answer was that if something was broken we should try to get it repaired. If the repair cost was more than 50% of the replacement cost it would be replaced. That was not very encouraging.

There is no pro-active mechanism in place to "upgrade" existing units. However, our stake has started an initiative to replace all of the old VHS tapes with DVD's so we wanted to equip our libraries with more "current" technology. To that end, the stake allocated a modest amount of year-end capital budget to be used for the upgrade. The FM group provided us with their "catalog" of library AV equipment, and it included things like DVD players, 32" LCD TV's and 19" combination TV/DVD players. While the prices shown on the FM catalog were not terrible, we found that we could get newer versions of the same products, often with enhanced features, at a lower cost (for example, the 32" LCD TV offered in the catalog was 720P while we found a comparable unit from the same manufacturer that offered 1080P and was priced $80 less). We ended up getting some things through the FM group, but mostly from online suppliers (Amazon.com). The items we purchased online showed up in 2-4 days, while we are still waiting for the items we ordered from the FM group.

I hope this helps...

As I mentioned before, we don't have one-piece units except for the very small ones. What we've done is move from VHS decks to DVD/VHS decks connected via a video/audio cable. That keeps things fairly simple while accommodating both formats. That's probably what we'll stay with until the VHS format completely dies.

We had the same situation so we purchased two vhs/dvd combinations rather than a $30 dvd player to add to an existing vhs player which would have multiplied the number cords going everywhere. The combo unit was about $70 at Bi-Mart and uses only one set of cords. One mistake we made was to purchase two with hdmi (now too late to return them) rather than s-video as the hdmi may never be used and the s-video could be used to connect to a projector. Most always come with the composite connectors. So we had these two combination units connected using composte cables to the only connectors on the tv's which was in the front. One of them had been bumped because it was in the front of the tv so it loosened the connector inside the front of the tv and would have cost $40-60 to fix. The only other connector was the coax in the back of the tv so I purchased 2 RF Modulators off ebay for around $3 each and free shipping then connected the vcr/dvd to the modulator and from the modulator to the tv using coax. They work great. Only one problem, had to purchase a power strip at Home Depot for about $4 as the tv carts had built-in power strips with two connectors - one for the tv and one for the vcr/dvd so had to add additional power availability. Next time I will purchase a combination unit with S-Video so we will have one more of them. We paid for them out of the Stake budget without even asking the FM group. Oh, and a roll of those tear apart velcro cord fasteners from Home Depot really make the cord situation look nice!

I'd have to say I'll go with DVDs, DVDs are very interactive, you can select a specific video with out having to go to a specific second on the VCR's little clock. DVD's can take up less room in the church's library, meaning you could possibly have either of these: more of a specific video or more church videos to choose from. General Conference might need to be recorded onto VHS for a month until the church releases the DVD of conference.

Another thing is...that DVDs last longer, they are able to keep its quality through many uses, where as, VHSs tend to its quality after a few uses.

Would DVD recorders be a good option?

allen.blodgett wrote:I'd have to say I'll go with DVDs, DVDs are very interactive, you can select a specific video with out having to go to a specific second on the VCR's little clock. DVD's can take up less room in the church's library, meaning you could possibly have either of these: more of a specific video or more church videos to choose from. General Conference might need to be recorded onto VHS for a month until the church releases the DVD of conference.

Another thing is...that DVDs last longer, they are able to keep its quality through many uses, where as, VHSs tend to its quality after a few uses.

Would DVD recorders be a good option?

Our stake has been recording on DVD's for a couple of years. We have a DVD recorder locked inside the satellite cabinet and use it make recordings of the broadcasts that we're interested in, including General Conf. These copies are kept in the stake library and made available for members to check out and view.

We gave up on recording on VHS as the quality wasn't too good plus the VHS tapes are getting more difficult to find.

Techgy wrote:Our stake has been recording on DVD's for a couple of years. We have a DVD recorder locked inside the satellite cabinet and use it make recordings of the broadcasts that we're interested in, including General Conf. These copies are kept in the stake library and made available for members to check out and view.

We gave up on recording on VHS as the quality wasn't too good plus the VHS tapes are getting more difficult to find.

Techgy, i can't thank you enough...my dad just so happens to be the ward a/v person and i sent this off to him, he is actually contemplating using this technology instead of VHS.

I took a look @ http://www.walgreens.com and compared prices of a VHS to the price of a single DVD (in a package), and found DVDs to be much cheaper. This could be a better solution...any other takers?

allen.blodgett wrote:Techgy, i can't thank you enough...my dad just so happens to be the ward a/v person and i sent this off to him, he is actually contemplating using this technology instead of VHS.

I took a look @ http://www.walgreens.com and compared prices of a VHS to the price of a single DVD (in a package), and found DVDs to be much cheaper. This could be a better solution...any other takers?

Thanks. Glad to help.
One additional thought. If budgets permit you might be able to purchase a DVR (digital video recorder) that would record the broadcasts on a hard-drive. You could then make multiple copies from the original master. We've considered this, but budgets have been tight, so we stay with our little ole DVD recorder.