Customer Reviews

SanDisk SDMV1-R V-Mate Video Memory Card Recorder

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

This idea is a long time coming. I am using this daily for video on my Pocket PC using a 4GB SD card. It accepts almost all other cards, although sadly not Compact Flash for some reason. Consider San Disk makes CF cards, its a shame it doesn't support them.

The recording quality is about what one would expect. On the small screen, it is beautiful, plays smoothly, and is easy to configure for your device. (It will automatically set itself to your device by simply choosing it from a list, or you can set it manually in about 5 minutes). Your options include size/resolution; format (mp4, 3gp, etc); and FPS (15 or 30). I use MP4, 320x240, and 15 FPS. This records about 500+MB per 1 hour of recording. This allows almost 8 hours of recorded video on my one card.

One tip: I use TCPMP on my device installed to a different SD card. However, by putting a copy of the TCPMP folder on both cards, I can swap them out and still see the video recorder to the card without hassle. Works great!

Back to the video quality, this is NOT a device for recording video files that look great on your TV. Even at the highest resolution and 30 FPS, the video on the TV is quite fuzzy. This is only slightly dissapointing, however, as you don't buy it for your TV - you buy it for your portable. (If you want something like this for your TV, get a TiVo already! =)

So in the end, I love this product so far! It installs in minutes (just a couple of cables to route in your system). From there it has a rudimentary yet simple system for either recording on the fly, or setting a schedule to record things later. My 'best practice' is simply to check the 'satellite' for interesting shows/movies over night, schedule them, and then in the morning I have a full card. Simply put the card in the PDA and start watching!

Finally, it is worth noting that the San Disk site has already posted a firmware update. It is nice to see they will support and fix things as the need arises.

I agree with everyone else that this item is easy to set up and schedule recordings. However, my complaints, and some seem obvious, follow:
1. Resolution is OK - good for playback on a portable device - but not your computer.
2. The channels on the SanDisk menu only go up to 199 - my digital cable goes up to 899 - there's a lot that I can't record.
3. The included remote is tiny, all black (easy to misplace) and isn't labeled very well.
4. The menu blocks out the entire screen and doesn't go away - kind of annoying if you want to schedule a recording and watch something else.
5. Different quality for different channels. Not sure why this is as most of my analog channels look the same.
6. The included IR emitter totally whacked out my remote for the cable box - can't seem to figure out how to fix it.

If you have a small TV in a bedroom or office and want a cheap alternative, or if you are looking to copy programs and make them even smaller for your iPod, iRiver, etc., it's a good CHEAP alternative. But if you are looking for quality recordings to save in a collection or play back on a bigger TV, buy something else.

I tested this along with the Neuros MPEG4 and must say hands down the winner in picture quality is the Neuros. The picture with the SanDisk is very pixelated, especially with fast action sports like football and basketball.

The SanDisk does have a better interface, and is easier to understand and set up quickly, but in the end the picture and sound quality are poor.

FYI - I'm using a PSP as my viewer.

I notice that in the negative reviews people are using the V-Mate for transfer to cell phones and PSP devices. Needing reading glasses at my age, I don't want to watch movies on a 2" screen that often. However, when transferring video from VHS to MP4 for watching on a computer or TV, this recorder is GREAT!

The first thing you should do after you purchase it is to go to Sandisk's site and download the new firmware (I wonder how many critics did that before they complained), install it and check the settings. By using the MP4 setting with the highest resolution, the video produced is as clear and smooth as the original. (Remember the video is only as good as its weakest link. Jumpy or low quality VHS doesn't miraculously get better.) This does fill the flash memory card faster, but if you are preserving family videos or obscure tapes this allows for high quality videos for DVD transfer or just to show from the V-Mate itself. What is high quality? I just showed a video from VHS on a 60" television a few days ago with excellent reproduction.

To me, the concept of having hours of video on a memory card half the size of a postage stamp is still hard to comprehend. This device, or something similar, will be the future of video storage and transfer.

This is nearly the best thing since pre-sliced bagels. I bought this after I purchased another unit from Yahoo before I came upon this little jewel.

What this has over the other model is that there is on screen programming and video recording options.

I purchased this to supplement my PSP and new Sony-Ericsson w850i phone. It works like a charm...

Not only was it a snap to integrate with my set top box but the recoring options ie. bitrate, protocol etc. give you the opportunity to record for any phone that you may own or your PSP or whatever will play a list of A/V formats.

What I love about the unit is that you can record off of your TV or DVD player in the exact format that fits your playback device. My Sony phone works well with 3GPP so that's what I just recorded '8 Below' in and WOW, there's no stuttering or pixelation...it's great...what can I say. I found another gem in my quest for entertainment freedom. Any questions, please eMail me....

I haven't verified it, but I believe at this time (Aug. 2009) this little gizmo has been discontinued. I bought a new one for $30, which is so cheap I figure people must be selling off the left over inventory. So, if you want a decent little video recorder that uses a memory card for storage, now is the time to jump.

Previously I was using a GoVideo DVD/VCR combo recorder, but I've had nothing but problems with it. When it finally quit I decided to buy a Neuros OSD, which I use at work. However, when I stumbled across this small recorder, which basically does the same thing as the Neuros box, for only $30, I had to give it a try. I'm glad I did.

Hooking it up was very simple. Plug in the video in and video out, hook up the power adapter and make sure the battery in the tiny remote is fresh and you are all set. Using it is just as easy.

Turn it on, set your television output to use an Aux (just click through the various video out choices until you see the V-mate screen) output and set the time on the V-mate. You can skip this, I think, but it uses the time and date for file names.

Before you can start recording with it, you absolutely need to download and install the firmware upgrade from the Sandisk site. Here's another reason I think this baby has been discontinued - it was quite difficult to find the firmware update. It isn't listed anywhere on the Sandisk site and even searching for V-mate didn't turn up anything. I finally found it by just searching on Google which took me to a page on the Sandisk site I could not find any other way. Weird. Unzip the firmware upgrade onto an empty memory card and then plug in the V-mate. It will see the firmware file and ask if you want to install it. After it does you can start recording.

I've read that a few folks have had problems with it not recognizing their memory cards. So I made sure to only buy Sandisk. I started with a 2 gb SD card and later upgraded to an 8 gb Micro SDHC. Never had a lick of trouble with either.

Recording is pretty straightforward, except for one major glitch. You can pick the size of your video file, depending on what you're going to use to view it. For all the formats like cell phone or portable game player or portable video player, everything works just fine. But, if you chose to record in 640 x 480 for TV or PC, you will find the glitch. Which is this: the preview screen goes blank. For all other formats you can watch the video while it is recording. For TV or PC it is just a black screen. There is sound, but no picture. This actually doesn't bother me at all, because I can easily switch my video output on my TV. It still records from my input source and I can see it normally.

I had about 20 half hour shows and a couple of one hour shows to record. I mention that because this is a "real time" recorder. If the original source was a one hour show, it will take you one hour to transfer it to the V-mate. So you can see it took me a while to get all my saved shows transferred to the V-mate.

Now, if I had a portable mp5 player, I could just plug the SDHC card into it and watch my videos. I haven't quite decided on which player to buy yet, so for now I watch my videos with Windows Media Player on my computer. Works pretty well, as long as I copy the files onto the computer hard disk first. Since a half hour show consumes between 300 and 600 mb, it can take a while to copy the files across. Just so you know.

BTW, the V-Mate is also a memory card reader that handles just about all memory card types, except Compact Flash. You can stick in a Sony Memory Stick or Memory Stick Duo Pro, an SD card, a Micro SD card and also High Capacity SD cards. To transfer my files, I unplug the V-mate from the TV, plug it into the USB cable that came with it and my computer recognizes it as a removable drive.

All in all, I'm very happy with the purchase of the V-mate. It does what I wanted - saves my shows in digital format so I can write them onto CD or DVD and free up space on my main DVR. Aside from the inconvenience of real time recording, I like the V-mate very much.

I had been going nuts trying to find a way to utilize the video features on my psp and sandisk sansa without becoming an IT engineer or a getting involved in BitTorrent and risking a raid or a subpoena for illicit file-sharing. This was the perfect solution as it is incredibly easy to use and the results are immediate. If you have a similar product, it is well worth it as you do not have to mess with trying to figure out which content providers can provide video content---that you actually want---without paying fees or worrying if the licensing software will allow you transfers. I have no interest in file-sharing, etc., I just wanted content I liked. The ability to copy my DVD's for my own use on my portable electronics is a big big big plus!

It does what it says on the tin. However, there are large caveats. (These are all from the point of view of someone like me, using it as a replacement for a VCR -- always recording in top quality and resolution, and wanting long recordings, not short clips. Also, I flashed it to the newest firmware immediately, as should you if you buy one.)

1. The remote control reception is poor. You must point directly at the receiving sensor (which is at the right end of the unit), and being off-axis or more than 6 feet away will hinder you as well.

2. The remote control has some strange sending method which even learning remotes can't emulate, so you'll be stuck using the supplied remote.

3. While recording in highest resolution (640x480), you can't see what you're recording -- you can only hear it. Seems unnecessarily restrictive to me, since the unit is computationally beefy enough to handle real-time resizing and compression of video. You'd think passing video straight through would be a no-brainer.

4. The recording format is fragile. Ending a recording apparently requires some sort of nontrivial closure of the file. If the power is interrupted during recording, or the card runs out of free space, the recorded data is apparently useless, and you have to repair the file system to even get the free space back.

5. In fact, due to the fact that the FAT32 file system has a file-size limit of 4GB, the same will happen if your recording gets that big -- the designers made no allowance for this limit (say, closing the file and starting a new one automatically). Once a file hits 4GB, you effectively lose the whole thing. Not only that, but when this happens, the unit locks up hard, requiring a power cycle to recover. Booo.

Now, having said that, I'm putting up with it. The alternatives are still less attractive at the moment. (Buy a new dead-technology VCR? No way. Shell out for a real DVR? Not at the moment.) I just wish the designers had made it more robust, all around.

This product is functional but there are certain deficiencies that potential buyers should know. 1) When you are recording a show, you may only see a small window of the show as the recording is going on if the low resolution mode is selected, or you may see a blank screen when high resolution mode is selected. 2) When you are not recording, the user interface as displayed on your TV would not allow you to view the video input. The lack of this feature results in the inability to view in advance the channel what you are recording or to select the channels you want to record.

Bought this product as a way getting video for my Microsoft Zune. Unfortunately, the Zune would not recognize the Mpeg-4 codecs the device records in. I was relegated to recording with this device then going through a seperate conversion process using a seperate piece of software so my Zune would recognize the video. I searched on the Sandisk site and found a firmware update for the device. After installing it, low and behold, my Zune software recognized the recorded files. Now, I have a quick and easy way to get all sorts of programming onto my Zune and my Google G1 Phone. The firware update also fixes many of the issues reported by other reviewers. The fixes are listed on the Sandisk site. I think the video quality is great, even on my 32" LCD. Sure it's not DVD quality but it's decent. As far as viewing it on a smaller screen, it's perfect. My only real gripe is the crappy little remote. You literally have to be right in front of the unit for the remote to work effectively. I programmed my Logitec Harmony remote with all the commands from the crappy remote and now I'm good to go. There are other options out there but in my opinion for the money, this device can't be beat. Here is link to the firmware update for those of you that end up purchasing this device or ended up stumbling across my review while searching for resolution to your v-mate issues.
[....]disk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=1451