A lot of the ones on amazon have mixed reviews. Anyone here have experience with this? I have so many old VHS I'd like to convert to DVD. Anyone know of any good ones? One I found that looks good is called DVD Xpress DX2, I'll have to look more into it,I dont think its on amazon
[Full disclosure: I am not associated in any way with ADS Tech or any other video, computer or software company.]
I own the original DVD Xpress from
ADS Tech, and I use it
a lot. When it works, it works great and is just about the simplest video recording hardware there is. Notice I said "when it works".
The first unit I bought didn't work
at all. I returned it and got a replacement unit which works great when you first turn it on. Some days it will work for hours on end with no problems; other days it will only work about 1/2 hour before screwing up. However, you know right away when it does screw up (it stops recording, which you can see right on the monitor). Unplugging it and letting it sit for a few minutes is all it usually takes to get it going again. I assume it's some sort of overheating problem, but even blowing a fan across it doesn't seem to affect when it screws up.
A friend of mine bought the same model, and he also experiences problems with his unit, but not nearly as much as do I.
Assuming they've fixed the problem with the DX2 model, I would highly recommend it. Even with the problems I have, I would
still recommend the original model. One more thing; my unit came with a stripped down version of
Ulead DVD Movie Factory, which I do not use so I really can't say anything about it. I use
Ulead VideoStudio for video editing and
Ulead DVD Workshop for DVD mastering and burning.
I do highly recommend both of those programs.
How much do I use it? I have roughly 1500GB of video files (spread out over 8 hard drives) that I personally captured with either the DVD Xpress or the video capture card in my old computer. Most of that is in VCD (352x240 MPEG-1) resolution, which consumes about 10MB/minute.