Customer Reviews

Instant Video to-Go RDX-160-EF

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I'm converting all my VHS movies to DVD, plus classic movies off of TV to DVD. On top of this, I'm making high resolution MP4 videos of all of my movies for streaming around the house. At one movie a night, I'd never catch up. Enter the Instant Video To-Go.

There are only two of these USB H.264 codec devices that I know of, El Gato's Turbo H.264/Turbo H.264HD for the Mac and the ADS Instant Video To-Go for the Windows systems. The hardware appears to be the same but with firmware differences. Since my Windows machine sits idle most of the time I chose the Instant Video To-Go rather than the Mac solution.

Installation: I'm spoiled by OS X on my Mac, but even for Windows, installation was far from intuitive. Normally with Windows, you install the software which installs the application and the drivers. Then you plug in your USB device, Windows finds the drivers and you're good to go.

With the Instant Video To-Go, you install the hardware FIRST, like we used to do in the the days of MS-DOS. Then I had to unplug my external USB drives to get Windows to recognize the new device. Next I had to tell Windows to look in the root of the included CD-ROM disc to find the drivers. THEN I could install the software. The CD-ROM disc comes up with a menu with numbered steps, but the buttons don't do anything.

Usage: Here's what you're all waiting to hear. It works fine.

You run the Arcamax Media Converter 2 that is included. Drop your videos into the queue, choose the conversion format and output folder, then click convert.

On my 3 Ghz hyper-threaded P4, with 2GB of memory and Windows XP Professional, a full length movie is converted from MPEG2 to a 740x480, 29.97 FPS H.264 MP4 file in real time. I.E. a 2 hour movie will take 2 hours. In other words, about as long as it takes me to make an xVid MP4 file of the same quality using a software only encoder.

"But wait!", you ask. "The ad says that it converts in 1/5th of real time!"

Yes grasshopper... but only if you chose the absolute lowest quality conversion you can do which is iPod Low which is 320x240 and 15 frames per second. Even then, on my hardware I only get it done in 1/4 of real time. If you want to use iPod High, it'll take even longer. A full length feature that is 4 or 5 gigabytes as an MPEG-2 (DVD basically) converts and compresses down to about 170 megabytes using iPod Low. At the other extreme, the higher resolution I work with still gets down to about a gigabyte or so.

Which brings us to the formats you can use and create. They ARE rather limited, but cover what was the most used at the time of release. That is, three levels of old video iPod quality, a few variations on that for other portable players and two generic larger formats. Never fear, you can create your own "profiles" within the range of the software's capabilities. That isn't for the novice though.

As for the files you can convert, the packaging states "Import ANY Video File..." but it is wrong. The first file I tried to drop on the application was one recorded by Windows Media Center 2005. A DVR-MS file. Nope. Doesn't qualify as part of the "ANY Video File". Luckily, I have and use DVRMSToMPEGGUI which very quickly converts the DVR-MS files to MPEG2. THOSE the Arcamax program accepts with no problems.

For someone running Windows who just wants to convert movies to their iPod Video with a minimum of fuss, this little device is a time saver, especially if you care more about file space than quality. The only software in the world that will use this device is the specific custom version of Arcamax Media Convert 2 provided by ADS Tech, Arcamax provided upgrades won't use the hardware.

If you have a Mac AND a Windows machine, the choice is up to you, though since the El Gato Mac version supports ANY application that uses QuickTime, if I had to do it again, I'd have gone with the Mac version. The El Gato software is regularly being updated, so it now natively supports Apple TV, newer iPods and more.