Question: I have hundreds, if not thousands, of VHS tapes, music audio tapes and vinyl records. I would like to transfer all of them to DVD-R and CD-R to eliminate some of this clutter. I do not own a computer. What sort of reasonably priced, stand-alone machine would you recommend to accomplish this task?

Answer: Before we get to equipment you should consider the logistics of transferring thousands of VHS tapes, audio cassettes and vinyl records to disc. It may not be worth transferring your complete collection.

VHS, audio cassettes and vinyl records are all analog formats and transfers take place in real time. If you have a two-hour VHS tape it will take two hours to transfer it to disc, plus another 10 minutes or so to "finalize" the disc which allows it to be played on other DVD devices. If you devoted around nine hours per day to the task you would transfer only four complete tapes per day. If you have 500 of them you are looking at more than four months of continuous work just for the VHS tapes.

Vinyl records must be flipped every 20 to 30 minutes so you can record sides A and B. Ideally they also should be cleaned before recording to ensure the best transfer possible, so transferring will probably take an hour per vinyl record.

Analog cassettes require changing sides as well, but you can get up to 45 minutes per side if they are home recordings. Unfortunately an audio CD holds only about 70 minutes, so it may be easiest to just put one side per CD.

Given the amount of time and work required to transfer everything, you may want to consider how often you will be watching the videos or listening to the music and be selective about what you transfer. Given that you said you want to "eliminate some of this clutter" you also should consider whether you want to dispose of the originals or not. I strongly recommend against it and find a place to store them in case you need them again, especially since the copies will not sounds or look as good as the originals.

I do not know of an all-in-one device that will handle all three formats, but you can get by with two devices.

The Crosley Memory Master can convert both vinyl records and cassette tapes to CD-R. I have not used it but can tell from the configuration that the record player is far from an audiophile quality device. Your vinyl records will lose a lot of the sound quality when copied to a CD, but the music will be there. Your cassette tapes will likely fare better. The Crosley Memory Master also can be connected to a computer via USB. It lists for $399 and can be seen at www.crosleyradio.com.

Any combo VHS/DVD recorder will transfer your VHS to DVD for you. They can be found for $150 or less if they do not have a TV tuner, $250 with a tuner. I prefer the Toshiba models for these components.

Which brings us to a final point: If the tapes are prerecorded, copyrighted movies, the DVD recorder will not record them because of the copy protection.

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