Customer Reviews

ADS DVD Xpress + TV

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've had this unit for a couple weeks and although it's not too bad for the price, I wished I'd spent a little more and got at least the next model up. I bought this for one simple task - converting VHS tapes to digital format and also burn them to DVD, with scenes.

I did *not* use the TV portion of it at all. I just wanted the ability to capture VHS tapes, and this was cheap and just happened to come with the ability to capture TV/cable. From what I could see, the TV capture software seemed like it would be good - it will allow you to look up the scheduling of your cable TV provider and schedule your show recordings.

But my review is based on just capturing tapes through the RCA jacks on the back and then to PC through USB cable.

Setting it up was easy for me, and should be easy for just about everyone with intermediate computer skills. The documentation for the process is OK but could be better - wasn't a problem for me, but could be a little sketchy for a novice user.

PROS:
- Fairly easy / quick installation on PC
- Easy to connect to external device, like a VCR or CamCorder
- Definitely captures video right to your PC through USB port

CONS:

- CapWiz software seems a bit buggy, and you can't use most other (better) third-party captrure software with it.

- CapWiz software is not very intuitive if you plan on marking your movie into "scenes" or "chapters", and you can easily lose your progress if you're not careful

- Biggest disappointment for me was that out of nowhere it suddenly stopped being recognized by my PC. Unfortunately the fix is not as simple as just popping the install CD into your PC. No, I had to completely un-install the software/drivers from my system and then re-install everything from scratch to get it to recognize the device again.

Overall I think this is a decent *cheap* solution for someone who just wants to capture straight video and not do much else with it. For the most part it works, but the software is of questionable quality, as is the video quality even on the best setting.

Still, I would purchase another product from ADS. I have several friends who've been using the ADS capture products for a long time and have been very happy with them.

I would recommend spending a bit more money and getting the next higher model or even one higher model than that.

But is absolutely not compatable with Vista, contrary to what it says. Also while you can use it on a USB 1 port it skips quite a bit. The enclosed software works fine and is fairly easy to use. Overall a great product for any version except Vista