Pembroke Pines VHS & Photo Digitization | Local Service Directory
By Greg E.
Our table at 1000 Clint Moore Road, Suite 208, Boca Raton. Every order starts with somebody going through the box by hand. Pembroke Pines customers get the same call, and the same table.
Does Forever Studios serve Pembroke Pines, Florida?
Yes. We drive to you, and your collection never enters a shipping network. There is no drop-off counter in Pembroke Pines, no partner shop and no franchise. We come to the house, sort the collection with you, and the same company that picked it up is the one that digitizes it, 37 miles up the road.
- The studio
- 1000 Clint Moore Road, Suite 208, Boca Raton. 37 miles from Pembroke Pines. One building, no partner shops.
- Getting it to us
- Concierge pickup across Pembroke Pines, Thursdays. Free on orders of $250 or more, otherwise $30 plus mileage.
- What it costs
- Per item, not per box. $12 a tape, $0.50 a photo, $0.75 a slide, $15 a film reel or cassette, $13 a disc, $35 a hand restoration.
- How long
- 3 to 4 weeks standard. Rush is +25% at five days, +100% next day.
- What comes back
- Your originals, insured at declared value, with the files on USB, DVD or digital delivery.
Not sure what you have? Describe the pile over the phone and we will tell you what is worth doing.
Call (561) 235-7808. A real person answers, Monday to Friday 9 to 6, Saturday 10 to 5.
Where we actually are
Close enough to drive. Or we come to you.
We are one studio in Boca Raton, about 55 minutes from Pembroke Pines. Bring it in yourself and hand it to the people who will do the work, or stay home and we will collect it on Thursday.
What matters is not how close the drop-off is. It is how many buildings your originals pass through between leaving your house and coming home.
For us that number is one. For a mail-in warehouse, nobody will tell you.
Or bring it in yourself
1000 Clint Moore Road, Suite 208
Boca Raton, FL 33487
Open Monday to Friday 9 to 6, Saturday 10 to 5
Driving directions from Pembroke Pines1
building your media ever enters
55 minutes
door to door, Pembroke Pines to us
Logged by name on arrival. Checked three times by hand. Brought back the same way it left.
Call the studio
A real person answers.
Tell us what is in the box and we will put a pickup on the Thursday route to your Pembroke Pines address.
What Pembroke Pines sends us
South Florida collections, mostly.
Since 2007 you start to recognize a city by what turns up in its boxes.
From $12 per tape
VHS and camcorder tape
The tapes we get from this city tend to be first-house tapes. Chapel Trail, Silver Lakes, Pembroke Falls and Pembroke Isles all came out of the ground between the mid eighties and the late nineties, and the video that came with them is birthdays in a new back yard, school events, and a great deal of a pool that had just been finished.
- VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS, Hi8, Video8, Digital8, MiniDV, Betamax
- Cleaned and inspected first, and a shedding shell is rehoused
- MP4 on USB, DVD or digital delivery, priced per tape
From $0.50 per photo
Slide and photo scanning
The 55-plus communities are where the paper archive in this city actually lives. Century Village was built out between 1970 and 1995 and Hollybrook between 1973 and 1988, so a lot of the photographs and slides in those condos were shot somewhere else entirely and then moved down here in a box.
- 600 DPI archival scanning, prints, albums, slides and negatives
- Carousels and trays unloaded and kept in their original order
- Color-shift correction on faded Ektachrome and Kodachrome
From $15 per reel
8mm and 16mm film
Film in Pembroke Pines is almost always older than the city itself. Regular 8, Super 8 and 16mm reels here were shot in the fifties and sixties up north, then carried south when a family moved into one of the condo communities. Reels that old rarely arrive in good shape: acetate shrinks and splices let go.
- Regular 8, Super 8 and 16mm, sound or silent
- Frame by frame, brittle splices repaired by hand first
- Vinegar syndrome and shrinkage assessed before you commit
Published pricing, no estimate games
Ten tapes is $120. That is the whole quote.
No box fee, no bundle you have to fill, no per-order minimum. Call with a rough count and we will price it at your table in Pembroke Pines before anything goes in the van.
Everything we accept
If it holds a memory, we have seen it.
Bring us the formats nobody else will touch. We keep the decks running for machines that stopped being made decades ago.
VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS, S-VHS-C, Betamax, Hi8, Video8, Digital8, MiniDV, MicroMV, and 3/4 inch U-matic
8mm, Super 8 and 16mm reels, sound or silent, up to 400 feet, scanned frame by frame to true 4K
Loose prints from wallet size to 11x14, bound and self-adhesive albums, 35mm slides, Kodachrome, medium format, and color or black and white negatives
Compact cassette, microcassette, reel-to-reel, DAT, vinyl records, and 8-track
DVD, mini DVD, CD, Blu-ray, and legacy data discs recovered where the surface allows
Not sure what you have? Photograph the pile and call. Most people describing “old home movies” turn out to have two or three different formats in the same box, and each one needs a different machine.
Why Pembroke Pines collections do not wait well
Seventy-five percent humidity, most of the year.
This is not a scare tactic. It is the reason we tell Pembroke Pines callers not to leave it another season.
~75%
Average relative humidity in Pembroke Pines
85%+
Routine wet season readings
Broward humidity sits around 75 percent most of the year and pushes past 85 percent in the wet season, June through October. The developments out west sit right against the Everglades levee, and a closed garage in Chapel Trail or Silver Lakes runs well above the outdoor high all summer. Tape binder and film emulsion do not recover from that.
Wilma came through on October 24th 2005 and Pembroke Pines recorded a 92 mile per hour sustained wind with a gust of 101, with the western communities hit hardest. Irma followed in 2017. Between the storms and the heat, every year of delay costs real footage. Mold, binder breakdown and the sticky-shed that ruins a deck do not reverse.
Where they end up instead: a climate-controlled floor, not a garage in August.
Every year a tape waits in a Pembroke Pines closet is footage you do not get back. We are in Pembroke Pines on Thursdays.
(561) 235-7808How it works from Pembroke Pines
Four steps, no guesswork.
Step 1
Call and describe it
Tell us roughly what you have. We will tell you what is worth doing, what is not, and what it costs, before anything moves.
Step 2
We come to you
We are in Pembroke Pines on Thursdays. We come to the house or the condo, help you sort what is worth doing, and carry it out ourselves.
Step 3
We log it by name
Everything is counted and recorded against your order the day it lands, so you get a real number before any work begins.
Step 4
It comes home
Checked three times by hand, then your originals come back to Pembroke Pines alongside the finished files. Turnaround is 3 to 4 weeks.
If you are still comparing
The mail-in companies put this in their terms, not their ads.
We are not going to characterize them. These are their own published words.
“YOU RECOGNIZE THAT YOU MAY NOT RECEIVE YOUR MATERIALS BACK … BY PLACING AN ORDER WITH LEGACYBOX, YOU ACCEPT THIS RISK.”
Legacybox Services Terms & Conditions. Capitalization theirs.
“…we may choose to compensate you for loss or damage; or we may decline, entirely, to issue a refund or provide any compensatory monies.”
Southtree Services Terms & Conditions.
“IMEMORIES MAXIMUM LIABILITY … WILL BE LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT OF FEES ACTUALLY PAID BY YOU TO IMEMORIES FOR THE APPLICABLE SERVICE … FOR THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PERIOD IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO WHEN ANY CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION AROSE, OR $100, WHICHEVER IS LESS.”
iMemories Terms of Service. Capitalization theirs.
Legacybox, Southtree and Kodak Digitizing are the same company, AMB Media LLC, in the same Chattanooga building. For what it is worth, nobody outside our own staff handles a Pembroke Pines collection at any point.
One building
Once it reaches us it stays here.
Never sub-contracted, never sent on.
Zachary Goldberg
Founder and Owner, on site in Boca Raton
We built Forever Studios because every family deserves to have their memories preserved the right way, by real people, with real equipment, under one roof. Pembroke Pines families trust us because the process is simple: we come to you, we carry it ourselves, and our own team does the work.
Pembroke Pines, Florida
The city your collection came from.
Pembroke Pines was about fifteen hundred people at incorporation in 1960 and stayed small through that decade. Then it went up like a rocket. Most of the family archive in this city was made on tape between the mid eighties and about 2002, in houses that were brand new at the time, and it has been sitting in those same houses ever since.
C.B. Smith Park
A 299 acre county park on the west side, with a lake, a campground, ball fields and the Paradise Cove water park. It is the default backdrop for thirty years of birthdays and school picnics here, which is why so much of the tape from this city has the same trees in it.
Photo LittleT889, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
North Perry Airport
The county-run general aviation field on the east side, a training and small-plane airport rather than a commercial one. Generations of local families have footage of a first solo, a Young Eagles flight, or just kids at the fence watching the Cessnas come in.
Official site → Photo Alistair Cunningham, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Broward College South Campus
The college campus on Pines Boulevard, the local college for this end of the county and the dual-enrolment route a lot of students take. Graduations and first-day photographs from that campus turn up constantly in the boxes families bring us.
Official site → Photo leamericanos, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Pembroke Falls
One of the big gated developments that defined the city's nineties build-out, and a fair shorthand for how most of Pembroke Pines actually looks. Almost every tape we get from this city was shot in a back yard like these.
Official site → Photo LittleT889, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Park and nature
Chapel Trail Nature Preserve
A city-run wetland preserve on the far west side with a boardwalk out over the sawgrass, behind the development it is named for. It is a no-admission outing, which makes it one of the places people actually photographed on an ordinary Saturday rather than only on holidays.
Civic and arts
Pembroke Pines City Center
The civic block on Pines Boulevard holding the city hall, the library, the Frank C. Ortis gallery and the Susan B. Katz Theater. Community theatre, recitals and city ceremonies have run through that building for years, and what people bring us from it is usually somebody's kid on that stage.
Where our Pembroke Pines customers are
175K+
Population
1960
Incorporated
37 mi
To our studio
55 minutes
Drive time
Or bring it yourself
Rather not wait for the route?
You are welcome to drive it down and hand it to us. Same studio, same people, about 55 minutes from Pembroke Pines.
1000 Clint Moore Road, Suite 208
Boca Raton, FL 33487
Open Monday to Friday 9 to 6, Saturday 10 to 5
What Pembroke Pines-area customers say
Rated 4.9 from 3,937 verified reviews.
★★★★★
The films you worked with were 80 years old. I was very impressed with the sections of movies you were able to copy and enhance. My family couldn't believe how good they looked.
★★★★★
Received my link, very easy process. Shipping, status updates, app usage all were terrific. Even came through with a delivery right before Christmas. Was able to re-live memories with all my families over the holidays. Thank you Forever Studios
★★★★★
I've always hesitated to drop my valuable memories in a box and ship it off to parts unknown, but Forever Studios has made converting my old tapes easy. Five stars!
Frequently asked, Pembroke Pines
The questions South Florida callers actually ask.
Do you pick up in Pembroke Pines?
Yes. We are in Broward on Thursdays and Pembroke Pines is on that route. We come to the house or the condo. Pickup is free on orders of $250 or more anywhere in the county, and $30 plus mileage below that. We count everything in front of you, write it up and leave you a copy before anything goes in the van.
How far is your studio from Pembroke Pines?
About 37 miles, roughly 55 minutes up the Turnpike or I-75. That is our only location. There is no drop-off counter in Pembroke Pines and no partner shop, so it is the Thursday van or a drive up to Boca. Everything is digitized by our own staff in our own building.
What formats are most common from Pembroke Pines households?
VHS and VHS-C by a wide margin, because so much of this city was built and filled between the mid eighties and about 2002, which is exactly the camcorder window. After that it is loose prints and slides, usually out of the 55-plus communities, where the photographs were often shot up north decades before the family ever moved to Broward. Regular 8 and Super 8 turn up in those same condos.
My VHS tapes are from the early 1980s. Is the content still recoverable?
Usually yes. Forty year old tape that has lived in a South Florida garage is not in good shape, but bad shape is not the same as gone. We clean and inspect every tape before it runs, rehouse a shell that is shedding, and slow down for the ones that need it. Where the tape is genuinely damaged you lose seconds, not the whole recording, and we tell you what we found before we bill you.
Can you digitize a whole estate or a condo clear-out at once?
Yes, and in Century Village and Hollybrook that is a lot of what we do. When a parent moves or a unit is being cleared the media surfaces all at once and usually on a deadline. We inventory everything on site so the family can see the count, take it in one load, and you decide format by format what actually gets transferred once you know what is in there. If more than one sibling needs a copy we make them at the same time.
What does it cost in total?
Pickup is free on orders of $250 or more. The digitizing is per item, not per box: ten tapes at $12 each is $120, photos are $0.50 each and slides $0.75. Estimates are free, so call with a rough count and we will give you a real number before we come out.
Preserving Florida's most important memories since 2007
Why Pembroke Pines families hand it to us.
One studio
Everything happens at 1000 Clint Moore Road. Never sub-contracted, never sent on to another facility.
Insured
Shipped back at declared value, or collect it from the studio yourself.
A+
BBB rating, with thousands of reviews across Reviews.io, Google, Facebook and Yelp.
3x checked
Every tape, reel and photo reviewed by the technician, the studio leader, and your project manager.
Talk to a real person right now
Tell us what is in the box.
We will tell you what it costs and what is worth doing, before anything moves. One call and we will put you on the route.
Pickup in Pembroke Pines
We come to you on Thursdays, free on orders of $250 or more and $30 plus mileage below that. Logged the day it lands, digitized in Boca Raton, carried back to you.
Or bring it yourself
1000 Clint Moore Road, Suite 208, Boca Raton, FL 33487. Monday to Friday 9 to 6, Saturday 10 to 5.
Everything we do
Nearby locations
Forever Studios · Owner-operated in Boca Raton · Helping Florida families since 2007
Ready to digitize it right the first time?
Bring your tapes, film, and photos to the team that treats every project as irreplaceable. All work is handled in-house in Boca Raton, never outsourced.
