Can you help a desperate and equally sad man in need??

I'm an expat living in The states who up to a few days ago was relying on friends back in the UK who very kindly sent me tapes of programmes I enjoyed. I had a Samsung Worldwide VCR that converted my PAL tapes to NTSC to watch on my NTSC TV. All was fine until this morning... DA DA DA DA! It broke.

I don't know why I'm sounding so chirpy to be honest I'm devastated. I have over 200 tapes and now no possible way of viewing them. I've been frantically searching online desperate for a replacement and the Samsung is no longer in production and all the others either convert NTSC to PAL but not the other way around or require a really expensive converter.

Can anyone help here?? Does anyone have a simular product to mine that I could purchase or advize on the place to go for great bagains oir even (not to be too cheaky) do you have one you're not using that I could convert my 200 tapes with.

Thanks so much
I hope I've come to the right place. As I say the majority of things I've seen online play NTSC on PAL TV's but not the other way round without paying some ridculous amount on a converter. If anyone can offer any solutions you'd make my day. I know VHS is on its way out and I do plan on coverting these cassetes to DVD to keep them forever but as of this morning I have no way of playing them. Thanks in advance.

VCR's are dead in the UK so there's little hope of getting a specialist one like the one you need.

Your safest bet is to get a PAL VCR then get a PAL-NTSC converter in the US so that you can put it between the VCR and the tv.

Depending on the scale of your needs you could get a dvdr that records in PAL and transfer the tapes to disc and the discs will play on your PC

If you have an HD tv then the discs would play on any upscaling dvd player into your tv

Can see a few videos on e-bay.com that will do the same as your old machine.

here's one.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Samsung-SV5000W-...QQcmdZViewItem

You could encourage your friends to move into the 21st century and stop recording things for you onto a medium that is dead in the water - i.e. start recording to DVD. And watch them on a DVD player at the other end. Cheaper, easier to send to America, can be watched on TV or a computer at your end...

I do hate the attitude of some posters here. They can and very kindly send me the tapes because that's the best for them but the issue here is keeping them and I was in the process of copying them to DVD when the VCR gave up the ghost.

not trying to be funny but why not ring up the British Embassy wherever you are and ask them? I'm assuming some of the staff there might have the same needs as you?

Cheers