Grounded in how we work
Our guides come from real digitisation work in our Norwich lab, on the same equipment, turnaround and pricing as our service, and we refresh them when those change. Spotted an error? Tell us.
Every family has one person who is impossible to buy for, and it is usually the person whose house holds the tapes. They have the jumpers. They have the slippers, the gadgets, the book about the war. What they do not have is a way to watch the video of the children on Christmas morning in 1991, because the machine that played it went to the tip in 2009 and the tape has sat on a shelf since. VHS to digital as a Christmas gift gives them a file they can watch on the television on Christmas afternoon. Eight tapes on a USB drive is £106 plus shipping, and it gets watched again every year.
This guide is the practical version: how to collect the tapes without spoiling the surprise, what it costs, how to wrap something that is technically a file, and the one date that matters if it has to be back in time. Why it works as a present for parents and grandparents is covered in the gift guide for parents who have everything.
When to order to have it back before Christmas
Order your Media Box by Wednesday 25 November to have the files back before Christmas. That is the only date we publish. The box is dispatched with tracked postage, you post the tapes back on the prepaid label, and the lab captures each tape in real time and checks every file before the parcel goes home. The timetable has room in it, but not a lot, so the box should go back in the post as soon as it arrives rather than sitting in the hall for a fortnight.
Orders placed after 25 November are still welcome and get the same care. They just cannot be promised for Christmas. There is a way round that at the end of this guide.
Collecting the tapes quietly
The present only works as a surprise if the tapes leave the house without a conversation about it. In practice this is easy, because nobody has played them in years and a gap on the shelf goes unnoticed for weeks. The usual methods are borrowing a few to look at, collecting them during a visit, or recruiting a sibling who still has a key.
Take a photograph of the shelf or the box before you remove anything, so that every tape goes back exactly where it was, and write the location on a sticky note on each case. If the collection is a mixed box of VHS, small camcorder tapes, cine reels and cassettes, sorting a box of old home movies explains how to tell what is what and which items to send first.
If you can only take a few, take the ones with people in them. The 1991 Christmas, the holiday where Dad is still young, the school play, the wedding. Television recordings and bought films can stay on the shelf; they exist elsewhere and they are not the point. A wedding video is nearly always the best single tape to start with, because it is the one most often watched and most worn.
What a VHS to digital Christmas gift costs
The price is per item and the same for every common tape. VHS, VHS-C, Video8, Hi8, Digital8 and MiniDV are £12 per tape regardless of length. Cine reels are priced by spool size from £12. Audio cassettes are £12. Prints are 50p each and slides 75p. A USB drive to hold everything is £10 and a cloud link is £5, and you can have both. You build the quote on our calculator, secure tracked 3-way shipping is added, and you pay once at checkout.
Eight VHS tapes on a USB drive comes to £106 before shipping. A shoebox of thirty cassettes on top is another £360. They are the part people most often regret leaving out, because they are the ones with the voices on. What can be recovered from them is covered in our guide to cassette tapes to digital.
One order also covers the whole family. The files can be copied for every sibling and grandchild without a second order.
What happens between ordering and Christmas
You order, the reinforced Media Box arrives, you pack the tapes in it and post it on the prepaid tracked label. We call the whole route secure tracked 3-way shipping: the box to you, the tapes to us, and the originals back to you with the files. When the parcel reaches the lab every tape is logged and photographed and you get an email confirming it is safe. Each stage, and each email you will get along the way, is listed in what happens after you order.
Each tape is inspected before it goes near a machine, captured in real time on professional decks, and the file checked before it is signed off. The whole lab process is set out in how we digitise your tapes. Turnaround is typically 2 to 4 weeks from when we receive your media, because a three-hour tape takes three hours to play and there are no shortcuts that do not cost picture.
Packing is the part you control. Keep each tape in its case and pad the box so nothing moves. The short guide to packing tapes for the post covers it.
How to wrap a file so there is something to open
A present that is technically a file needs a physical thing to unwrap, and there are three ways people do it.
The USB drive in a card. The simplest. The drive comes back from the lab, it goes in a card with a line explaining what is on it, and the card goes under the tree. Choosing between a drive and a cloud link, or having both, is covered in VHS to USB or cloud; for a present, the drive is the one that can be held.
The tape, wrapped, with the file inside. Give back the original tape they did not know was missing, with a note tucked into the case saying it is now on the television. This is the version that makes people cry, so judge the room.
Watching it together. Put the file on the television on Christmas afternoon and press play without explanation. The children in the video are now adults in the room, and the people who filmed it are sometimes not, which is the point of doing this at all.
If you have missed the date
Give the order. Place it before Christmas, print the confirmation, and wrap it with a note saying the tapes are going in the post in January. The Media Box arrives, the tapes go in it together after the holidays, and the files come back as a second present in the new year, by which point the recipient has had a month to find the tapes they had forgotten about. It is a slower version of the same present and it has one advantage: the person it is for gets to choose what goes in the box.
Whichever version you give, the next step is the same. The full list of what we take is on our services page, and the calculator is one click from there.
Frequently Asked Questions
Order your Media Box by Wednesday 25 November 2026 and send your tapes as soon as the box arrives. That is the date we work back from so the files and your original tapes are with you before Christmas. Orders placed after that date are still welcome, but we cannot promise them for Christmas.
Video tapes are £12 each in every common format, cine reels start at £12, audio cassettes are £12, prints are 50p and slides 75p. A USB drive is £10 and cloud delivery £5. A typical present of eight tapes on a USB drive comes to £106 before shipping, paid once at checkout.
Borrow a few to look at, or pick them up on a visit. Tapes nobody has played in years are not missed, and a sibling with a key can do the collecting if you live too far away. Photograph the shelf first so everything goes back where it was.
Give the order instead of the files. Wrap the printed confirmation with a note explaining what it is, then fill the Media Box together after Christmas. The files arrive in the new year as a second present, and the person it is for gets to choose which tapes go in.
Yes. The files are ordinary MP4s, so a cloud link can be forwarded to anyone and a USB drive can be copied on any computer. One order covers the whole family.
