ADS TECH INSTANT DVD +DV ( USBAV-703 )

by ADS Tech

Product Details

Product Manual [6.17mb PDF]

• Item Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00009YUPM
• Item model number: USBAV-703
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #184,225 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 2, 2006

Product Description

Instant DVD + DV is a powerful hardware and software combo for saving your favorite shows directly to DVD. Convert your analog TV files to digital and transfer them to DVD more easily than ever. Just connect Instant DVD + DV to your computer through a USB 2.0 port, then attach to your TV. Transfer video at a blazing 15MB per second, while the "Direct To Disk" tools capture and burn to disk in one simple step. Users can also export their edited video to VHS for recording directly to tape. Brightness, Contrast, Chroma, Saturation and Hue controls Preview edited movies on TV before burning to disk 9 bit video digitizer with 2x oversampling and 4 line comb filter Supports MPEG 1 Layer 2 compressed Audio for VCD, SVCD and DVD formats Also supports LPCM or MPEG audio, and MPEG-2(DVD format) at video bit rates from 1 Mb/sec. up to 15 Mb/sec.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars You should avoid this product, March 5, 2004

By 

Kelly D. Larson (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ADS TECH INSTANT DVD +DV ( USBAV-703 ) (Personal Computers)

I bought the ADS Tech Instant DVD +DV after reading some great professional reviews in some of the online magazines. I was really excited to get this product. I now wish I'd paid more attention to the actual user reviews, as near as I can tell the people writing the magazine reviews must have never actually tried to use this product. Put simply... it doesn't work. Believe the user reviews, this is a bad product.

I wanted to transfer some old VHS videotapes to DVD, and I also got the +DV option thinking that it would be a nice way to add Firewire capabilities to my USB 2.0 based system for use with my new Digital camcorder. The Instant DVD box failed miserably to deliver on either of these goals.

Using the DV input with my digital camera I had strange artifacts start to appear on the screen. There were weird blotchy sections that started out small, but then grew as the capture progressed until half the screen was covered. While transferring my old analog VHS tapes, certain sections of the tapes would cause the box to completely lock up. When I could get a capture that didn't freeze, I couldn't get a capture where the audio and video would stay in sync. I tried multiple tapes, multiple DVD mastering programs, even multiple computer systems, nothing worked. This was simply making DVD's straight from the captured footage, I wasn't transcoding anything. The only thing that worked for me was taking a nice clean analog signal from my digital camera (since the digital DV capture didn't work.) That was the only thing that stayed in sync, any input that was less than perfect, like 10 or 15 year old VHS tapes, forget about it.

I sent several email queries to the ADS Tech support, after giving up on their telephone support after waiting forever on hold. Other than the automated "Well get right back to you as soon as possible" responses, I've heard nothing else from them. That was six weeks ago... and I'm not holding my breath. If you buy this product, you're definitely on your own.

I've long since returned my box, and chalked it up to a learning experience. Here are a few things to think about, first of all, do you really want a box that converts straight to MPEG2 format? If you want to change *anything*... clip out a few scenes, add a title screen, join several clips together... you have to reencode the file anyway. By uncompressing then recompressing you're sacrificing quality, and not gaining anything from the built in compression. Also, I didn't realize at the time, but you can get a Firewire card with a cable for almost the same price as just a cable... it's cheap, and much better than spending all the extra money for the +DV option.

I now own a Canopus ADVC-100, it's more expensive but worth every penny. More importantly... it actually works! That's much more than I can say about the ADS Tech Instant DVD.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars DV Feature Not Great, December 13, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: ADS TECH INSTANT DVD +DV ( USBAV-703 ) (Personal Computers)

ADS touts the Direct to Disc feature which Ulead DVD Movie Factory provides, where you can burn straight from a video source to DVD without going through the lengthy process of first capturing to an MPEG2 file then mastering a DVD. This is a feature similar to what a stand-alone DVD recorder for your television would allow. However, this feature only works from an analog source. If you try to do it straight from a DV source, the audio and video will not record smoothly. It will cycle through insanely fast, where everyone sounds like a chipmunk and moves at lightning speed, then pauses, then back to fast again. I've contacted ADS about this problem, and they instructed me to contact Ulead. I contact Ulead, and they tell me to download the latest ADS and Ulead drivers and patches. As of 12/13/03, I have all the latest drivers and patches from both companies posted on their respective websites and they still do not work. I've tried it on two different computers, one of which was a clean Windows XP Pro install on an Athlon XP 3200+ with 1GB of RAM and 160GB of free disk space. I think it is ridiculous for ADS to bundle software with their product and not provide support for it. I suspect that the problem is actually in their own drivers and yet they are just passing the buck to Ulead who passes the buck back the ADS. I didn't buy a single product from a single company to deal with two different companies that blame each other! To be clear, DV to MPEG2 captures do work, just not the Direct to Disc functionality. The DV straight to MPEG2 captures are convenient because it does it in real-time, however they are not as good as if you were to capture DV via Firewire then use a quality software MPEG2 encoder like TMPGEnc. I've also received better results capturing analog video by going from analog Hi8 to DV to TMPGEnc than I have from analog Hi8 straight to MPEG2 with this product. Also, this product does not use standard capture drivers so you will only be able to capture using the ADS Capture Wizard program or the bundled Ulead software. The touted DV device control is unresponsive and only works with Capture Wizard is and more of a distraction than a useful feature. In short, if you need convenient DV or analog to MPEG2 captures, this device may work well for you. But if you need the best quality video or want to burn from DV straight to DVD, look elsewhere. Hopefully they do fix the DV straight to DVD problem.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars hunk o' junk, March 10, 2004

By 

Aaron Widera (Long Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ADS TECH INSTANT DVD +DV ( USBAV-703 ) (Personal Computers)

I can't really add too much to what's already been said. The product doesn't work, tech support is non-existent. I bought it online, received it on a Friday, returned it the following Tuesday after reading about the tech support problems everyone else has been having. When I was installing it, as I plugged in the USB connection, I got the Blue Screen of Death and my computer crashed. When it rebooted, Windows told me the hardware was not designed for XP and that I should not install it. Hmmm, why then does the box for Instant DVD have the "Designed for Windows XP" logo on it? I went ahead with installing the updated software and drivers anyways. When I tried to preview captured video, I got nothing. A black screen. Could not get it to work or do anything. Tried capturing even without seeing anything in the preview in 2 different programs. After 20 seconds it stopped and told me the file was corrupted. And despite the fact that the unit was doing nothing, every time I had the device plugged in, my computer slowed down, my mouse wouldn't respond, and the programs would crash. So I had even less success with this product than the other reviewers here. I have a month-old computer with all the latest gadgets and gizmos. If this doesn't work with my computer, whose computer does it work with?

Having read the positive review here and hundreds others on another website, I will be trying out the Canopus ADVC-100 (do a search for "Canopus" only if looking on Amazon). If after reading this, you are still considering buying this product, do yourself a favor and shoot yourself in the foot instead. It will more fun and less painful.