Customer Reviews

Instant Video To-go

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought this product to convert video for an iPod Touch and an iPod Nano. I expected it to rip DVDs out of the box, and also do the promised 5x conversions (compared to software transcoding).

I was very disappointed to find out this uses an old (2 years old) version of Arcsoft Media's MediaConverter (2.0). There is a 2.5 version available for this, as a paid upgrade ($15) but *do not upgrade* if you own the InstantVideo To Go - version 2.5 of MediaConverter does NOT work with this product - the included version (2.0) is specially programmed to work with the hardware encoder.

And this is why this product is so bad. Yes, it will convert faster than typical software encoder / transcoders (my limited tests show it to be about 2-3x faster, not 5x), but the only software that apparently works with it is 2 years old, only has limited support for "iPod Video" (which won't work with AppleTV, and is lousy for the new iPod Touch and Phone screen reqs) and DOES NOT RIP DVDs out of the box.

Version 2.5 of MediaConverter apparently does most of the above, and also apparently has much more product support (claims 50 devices in the output field, vs 5 in the 2.0 software). It's a shame that you can't upgrade to 2.5 and have it use the InstantVideo To Go - if you do, MediaConverter will do a software-based conversion, taking about 3x longer than 2.0 does.

The Arcsoft software is best described as "janky" poorly designed, poorly documented, and very limited in your encoding options. They seriously need to update this software and I wouldn't recommend anyone buying this hardware encoder until ADS does a major software overhaul for the device.

Also, ADS's website is a bit of a joke. I tried to submit a support ticket to ask about iPod Touch / Apple TV support, and you go through several pages trying to submit a question, only to get to the last page, where it stalls, and never submits the question.

Bottom line: doesn't offer encoding options for newest iPods; doesn't rip DVDs natively; has severely limited encoding options (and half of them are for obscure products), doesn't work with AppleTV, and ADSTech's website support is non-existent. Don't buy, until they update the software.

1. The product is great but hampered by bad software
2. Incompatible with Vista

The product under windows Xp was marginal at best. It created better than average videos. The reason I say it is hampered by bad software is that ElGato Systems uses the same hardware for the Macintosh platform (Turbo 264) but writes it's own software for it and THAT one is flexible and encodes great video (I have both). The software that ADS Tech bundles with the Instant Video To-Go, ArcSoft MediaConverter 2 has not been updated -for this unit- since release (except for 2 drivers that were finicky).

The drivers are now incompatible with Vista. I've been hearing of problems with ADSTech dropping old hardware compatibility with Vista. Their website sites EVENTUAL compatibility but does not give a timetable... and their track record is not so good in this regard.

While no manufacturer is under obligation to support a product after an extended length of time, they have not released a successor to this unit and thus cannot claim to just "developing for a newer product".

This is the first thing I purchased from this company. It will be the last and I will be spreading the word.

This product isn't worth the time saved.

Aspect ratio is not preserved. So, maybe on a 2 inch iPod screen it looks OK, but anything bigger and wide-screen video looks messed up.

Despite advertisements, it's not AppleTV compatible. Simply doesn't work.

Can't handle DVDs properly.

Total waste of money. Don't buy it.

This product does produce H.264 many times faster than normal software based encoding. I would like to see a Windows Vista version of the software and drivers since all new computers run Vista. I would like to see a Mac OS X version of the software and drivers since the Mac is a primary video platform. One major problem was that I took unprotected VOBs and MPEG2 video and encoded under the InstantVideo. I transfered the video to Apple TV and the picture was unsynchronized. Lastly, the Media Converter v2 software has a later version 2.5. This version crashes under Windows XP with the InstantVideo tongle attached to the USB port.

Could not successfully stream the MP4's created by this device to my appleTV. I adjusted parameters without success. It does speed up encoding however.

I had a chance to do some head to head comparisons versus the software encoder I usually use for my iPod videos and this device was nearly 2.5X faster! It encoded a 2 hour 12 minute movie in just over 31 minutes! Easy, flawless and quick. What more could you ask for?

We bought an Instant Video-to-go accelerator and are extremely disappointed. Conversion on our Lenovo T60 dual-core processors is real-time only (2 hours encoding for a 2 hour video). This is the same time it takes using other software-only encoders. Attempts to inquire on the manufacturer's website result in website errors only.

This product's ad says 5X faster but it's totally exaggeration. May be 20% faster than 3GP Converter (Freeware), but picture quality is less than that. furthermore conversion process is unstable for MPEG2, can not convert DivX. Does it worth for $75? DON'T BUY IT!

I'd recently purchased an Intel MacBook Pro C2D 2.33 and I figured I'd take advantage of this product to take my existing .avi and DivX files and convert them to .mp4 format for use with my 5G iPod w/Video. After seeing the claims by the manufacturer of the speed of this product, I had to try it. Normally using software to compress A/V files takes a long time on even the fastest computers. My MacBook Pro is relatively fast but using BootCamp 1.1.2, WinXP Pro and Instant Video To Go to convert video is much, much faster. This USB dongle compresses files so quickly without taxing the computer at all. The dongle doesn't even get hot. On the standard compression settings IVTG really does compress an hour of video in about 20 minutes. So if left overnight in batch mode, you could convert a whole season's worth of shows by the time you get up in the morning. The supplied software is easy to use and understand. There are various quality settings available. Just drag a video(s) in and press the Convert Button. A bar shows the progress in percentage and it moves relatively fast.

The only drawback of using this product is that if you use custom settings it doesn't convert as fast. Maybe only half as fast. I took a star away due to this drawback. I also wish you could convert to other formats other than .mp4. There definitely is a need for a card or adapter that can do all A/V conversions in hardware.

Anyway, this product works as advertised as far as speed and video quality is concerned. I tried using this product in Parallels (3106) but it didn't work at all. Worse, it locked Parallels and MacOS which required a hard power-button restart. Parallels is a work in progress, so maybe IVTG will work in later versions.

I'd recommend this product to anyone with a computer that can run WinXP and needs to convert A/V files to standard .mp4 format for use in a portable video player.

This thing is great and works as advertised! Supports a lot of different video formats, including VOB, WMV, QT, and MPEG plus more. Definitely works, easy to use, worth the money!