In today's swift digital landscape, transforming old memories is intrinsically tied to digitizing. The choice of a home movie & photo digitizer holds paramount significance. As we step into 2025, the arena of digitization is saturated with options. Let's compare digitizing services to highlight one company that redefines your pixels for countless generations.

Ads for Legacybox

It's difficult to talk about companies that digitize old media without beginning with Legacybox. Since 2007, the company is known for ads selling a shipping box that includes a prepaid amount of digitizing services. They convert printed photos, film reels, and VHS tapes to DVD or thumb drive, and recently began offering digital downloads. In 2019, Inside Edition alleged that Legacybox lost precious memories and fabricated positive customer reviews.

Legacybox Complaints

Actually, Legacybox and its sister brands, Southtree and Kodak Digitizing, have hundreds of negative customer reviews. On Google, the Better Business Bureau, and even as comments to the company's own Facebook ads, shoppers describe poor quality, hidden fees, and telephone calls that go unanswered for months. This poor press serves as a critical warning to those shopping around for a professional digitizing service.

DVD Your Memories: Drop Off Your Media

Unlike Legacybox which does not allow any customer to visit their facility, DVD Your Memories offers a few drop off locations in southern California. There, customers can deliver photos, tapes, and reels for conversion to a DVD or USB thumb drive. DVD Your Memories charges unit fees per item digitized, with printed photos up to 8x10 scanned at $0.49 each.

ScanDigital: Quality Digitizing

ScanDigital provides quality conversion of photos, tapes, and reels to digital. They return your files on a USB thumb drive, or even upload them to your personal account. Unlike Legacybox that makes the customer prepay a digitizing fee to convert a fixed amount of media, ScanDigital charges a unit fee per item digitized, with VHS tape conversion costing $28.00 per cassette.

DigMyPics: Color Correction Included

DigMyPics has provided quality digitization of photos, tapes, and reels for nearly two decades. The company will return files on a set of DVDs, a USB thumb drive, or make them available with a digital download. DigMyPics also charges a unit fee per item digitized, with printed photos up to 8x10 scanned at $0.49 each.

ScanCafe: Millions of Memories

The ScanCafe website claims to have hand scanned over 200 million images. The company charges unit prices to digitize photos, tapes, and reels, with photo scans starting at $0.48 each. ScanCafe charges additional fees to transfer the digital files to USB thumb drives, external drives, or make them available as a digital download.

Heirloom: Redefining Digitization

Amidst the multitude of digitizing choices, a common trend persists “ the majority of companies continue to convert camcorder cassette tapes, printed photos, and film reels to DVDs. Even transferring to USB thumb drives perpetuates the problem of outdated media. Heirloom has never believed in transferring priceless content to anything less than the secure cloud with its 99.999999999% durability. Heirloom's innovative cloud application allows customers to stream & share all content from any device. Here are the other ways that Heirloom leaves all digitizing companies behind:

Veteran Owned & Operated

Heirloom was founded by two United States Navy veterans, Geoff Weber and John Rahaghi. They actively recruit fellow veterans, who've also benefited from the world's best technical training. Willing to die to defend something much greater than themselves, these vets certainly know what it means to serve Heirloom customers.

Drop Off at Any UPS Store

Using an Heirloom box, customers drop off their media for digitizing at one of 5,000 UPS Store locations across the United States. They're provided a printed receipt, and immediately begin receiving tracking updates by email until their shipment arrives at Heirloom.

Itemized Quote & Free Samples

Heirloom sorts, counts, and sends an itemized service quote within two days of receiving each shipment. Also included is a free Heirloom account loaded with unique samples of their digitized tapes, photos, or reels. Customers chat with customer service agents to resolve any questions before paying their quote.

Neurodiverse Workforce

Digitizing hundreds of different media types requires great attention to detail. Heirloom's neurodiversity recruiting ensures a highly focused team of digitizers perform these tasks, with a 90% reduction of errors compared to neurotypicals.

Don't Pay for Blank Tapes

Heirloom charges $14.99 to digitize each camcorder cassette received, which may include a free repair to put the tape back on the spool. Occasionally the company may still find a tape with no usable signal after hours of playback. In these cases, Heirloom makes a transferable credit for each blank tape in the form of a gift card.

Are you ready for the best?

Heirloom is the digitizing leader due to its unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction and top-notch technical services. This veteran-run company understands the value of your memories. Heirloom goes the extra mile to ensure a seamless and delightful experience. From the moment you engage with the company, their customer service sets them apart. Are you ready for Heirloom to preserve your memories for countless generations?

Written by Geoff Weber