Tendak S-video to HDMI Converter, S-video RCA AV CVBS Composite to HDMI Converter Upscaler Adapter N64 SNES to HDMI Adaptor Support PS2, Blu-ray Player, Nintendo 64, SNES, Sega Genesis and More

Like me, you may well have cupboards groaning under the weight of your old camcorder and VHS tapes. You might well have DVDs and Blu-rays that occupy metres of shelf space, and you may well be feeling that it’s high time they were all neatly compacted. There’s no time like the present. While you still have the ability and the hardware to replay those Mini DV, VHSc, S-VHS tapes and silver discs, it’s time to bring them all together into digital HDMI.Once you’ve converted your assorted mountain of tapes you can take a couple of Brave pills and clear out your drawers, drawers that are bursting with old camcorders, chargers, instruction books, spare batteries and the like. Your lumpy VHS (or V2000 or Betamax) recorder can be jettisoned, because all this ancient kit hasn’t got much life left in it now, has it?The Tendak Video ConverterThe Tendak black box weighs in at 173 gm, encased as it is by black aluminium alloy. You may find that your VCR, portable DVD player or camcorder only has composite (yellow for video, red and white for audio) outputs, and this is where the £30 Tendak converter box comes in. Even better if your player has S-Video out though, as this transfers a higher quality video signal. You plug in the Tendak’s power cable, connect your device using the front sockets, and the box will digitise (convert) the signal and send it forth through the HDMI socket. You can then view all your old tapes and DVDs on your modern TV, which these days will generally only accept HDMI or USB signals.Round the back of the Tendak box it gets more interesting. There’s the 5v power in socket followed by the operating LED. Next there’s a tiny button that toggles the innards to accept either the composite or the S-video input signal. Next, another toggle takes you sequentially through the HDMI’s output options, and you can choose to output at 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i and 1080p. I can’t really see the point in outputting at less than the Full Monty resolution of 1920 x 1080 30p, as they all encode at 16 mbps and some of the settings default to a very jerky and unusable 15 fps. The 1280 x 720p outputs 60 fps video, but this isn’t going to make your original 25 fps footage look any smoother. As it’s a toggle switch, all the output settings are shown briefly on a connected monitor by the way. Next there’s an audio out socket, followed by the HDMI socket – which is video and audio together of course.My photo shows a set-up whereby I can play VHS or S-VHS tapes, full size or camcorder variety. I can also play MiniDV or HDV tapes, and while any of these are playing I can check to see all’s well on the connected 7’’ Feelworld monitor. Neither the camcorder nor the VHS deck has HDMI out, so their signals are sent through the Tendak, which upscales them to 1920 x 1080 and sends them via the supplied 17” long HDMI cable.Performance on testThe Tendak video converter isn’t perfect, bit it’ll take in anything analogue and convert it to digital, though some of the settings stretch 4:3 out to 16:9. Sometimes video footage has very small blocks (like cine frames) running up the right hand side of the image, and some settings shift the image slightly over to the right, leaving a thin black bar down the left hand side. These small faults are easily corrected in an editing package should you feel the need to. If you don’t feel the need to, we can’t be friends.My Tendak is converting old camcorder tapes even as I write this, saving my memories for another day.Tom

I originally purchased a converter, 1/4 of the price of this one - but it failed to convert the composite video signal from my bird box camera. It alternately flashed the correct image, then a 'no signal' message every second, so couldn't cope with the relatively low strength video signal. I returned that one and decided to purchase this one, as it appeared to be a more robust unit with a better specification, anticipating improved amplification. I was pleased to see that this was a good buy, as it works well and the image is as good as with the direct input to my old TV.

Before I used this my N64 looked awful on my hdtv. Colours were washed out to the point of it not being playable. This converter has totally changed that. Colours pop out the screen now and the picture is sharper, although there's only so far it can take the N64. I'm connecting via s-video to hdmi and will try composite to hdmi for my ps2 & Xbox to see if it can work magic there.No idea why in the description it says they font recommend it for N64, it's worked wonders with mine.Recommended.

Other reviews suggest this is a good unit.Mine was defective so returned.I could get no signal through it despite various cables and sources and every mode pushed. I did get audio passed through. I spent several hours trying different options (M. Eng.)Cables and sources tested on old TV dug out from the loft, that had composite and s-video inputs. HDMI cables tested via both loft TV and Phillips 4k digital only from PS5 and PS3. Cables definitely fine as were the sources. Other sources were NAD T743 (actual reason I wanted this unit) and Sony DCR-5E camcorder - sources can do both s-video and composite outputs.Handled via Amazon returns.

There are a number of these devices available, most of which use the same chip-set and have similar performance characteristics. This particular model is notable in that it works with my composite modded ZX81 where other such converters tend to lose lock and keep flashing up a blue "No Signal" screen. To be fair the ZX81 bit-bangs its output rather than generating a "real" TV output so locking on to that is asking a lot, but this one works. Minus one star for stretching a 4:3 source to 16:9 (but I can correct that on my TV) but this is as good as you can expect for a 40 year old, pseudo-analogue-TV image. If it works with a ZX81 then it will probably work with anything with a genuine composite or S-Video output, just be aware that the aspect ratio of the source is ignored.