Rating: 
Summary: absolutely reliable
Review: After dealing with Pinnacle's moviebox dv for the last six months, I only wish I'd have discovered this device 1st. Both devices capture digital with no problem but your firewire should do that by itself anyway. The difference is in capturing analog video. Whereas pinnacle would freeze up constantly, especially with flawed VHS tapes, the canopus box captures analog without failure. (Even old tapes) Save yourself some headaches and look no further. So impressed with canopus' technology I had to go get their software for animating still life photos, "Imaginate." Another great product.
Rating:
Summary: Right Choice for More Functions
Review: After extensively reviewing all of the products available for analog/digital conversion, my reading assessment quickly determined that Canopus is the clear choice.
There are numerous reviews which provide the basic information on this product. Here are a few details which are less obvious in the specs and reviews.
It is a great product. I also looked very seriously at the ADVC 1394 which is a card rather than an external box. It is a little less expensive but does not provide as many input options. Specifically, there is not an ability to do stereo analog input on the 1394 card using RCA connections. The ADVC 100 is more flexible and provides a wide range of inputs and outputs. The Canopus.com web site is very helpful for reviewing product specs.
I had fantastic results right out of the box - which frankly suprised me, I expected to have to do at least some amount of fiddeling around with it to get it to work. The setting of the dip switches is not dificult, despite the comments of other reviewers. Pricegrabber.com also has a number of helpful reviews.
Rating:
Summary: Not as troublesome as some seem to think
Review: Following my order of the ADVC-100 I found many disturbing things on the internet. Most users had difficulties capturing analog to MPEG2 for burning onto DVD. Don't let yourself be scared off. Fear mongers stating that the converter captures DV files which then have to be converted to MPEG2 aren't using the right interface software. The ADVC-100 is a stand alone external unit without a software suite of its own and relies on whatever captures software you choose. I could just be lucky but both My WinProducer and my Nero Burning software detect the device instantly and allow choices of AVI, DV or MPEG2 format for file capture. Granted, having an external device may not be as convenient as a VIVO internal card, but compared to other external capture boxes the ADVC-100 is tiny and unobtrusive. Better yet, it's IEEE Firewire compliant as opposed to the 1.0 and 2.0 USB connections that for the most part fall short with frame droppings and miss-synced audio during capture. If you're looking for a straight forward plug and play unit this is it. Just make sure that you have a capture card with Firewire input capabilities such as the Sound Blaster Audigy series before purchasing this product.
Rating:
Summary: excellent, the frustrations are over
Review: I bought a new computer recently. A primary reason for doing so was because I learned that I could transfer VHS to DVD with current technology. I purchased an ADS USB Instant DVD, which had all sorts of issues and never captured a second of video. I did my homework, and read all the positive reviews here and on dvdrhelp, and decided to fork over an extra $100 for something that works. And work it does! Minutes after setting the device up, I was capturing video onto my computer. The capture quality is excellent, and usually there are no dropped frames. I'm giving this device 5 stars for doing what it says it does, which is not a guarantee when trying out these devices. But there are some drawbacks: 1) As someone previously stated, this device captures in DV format. This is probably best if you want to edit your videos, but if you want to only transfer straight to DVD, try to find something that captures straight to MPEG. The conversion process to MPEG is very slow (usually takes longer than the running time of the movie). 2) This device advertises a video-audio lock that keeps the video and audio synched during long playbacks. Having this in the ON position with my VCR caused a distortion of the audio. The manual says when that happens, to turn this feature off. So I'm unable to make use of one of the device's selling points. But so far, the video and audio have stayed in sync anyways. 3) This item does not come with any software. If you can live with these drawbacks, then this is the video capture device for you.
Rating:
Summary: The only reliable external video capture device. Period.
Review: I did some research into external video capture devices, and everything seemed to point to the Canopus. I wasn't disappointed - it does an excellent job of capturing video, even on a 2-year old laptop.
I have used it to capture about 4 hours of video tapes for transfer to DVDs. The video and audio quality was true to the originals, and I never had audio/video sync problems that apparently are common with non-Canopus equipment. I captured video in MPEG-2 format using the capture feature of Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 / Video Wave. (Software side-bar: FYI, I found all Roxio's other video editing tools to be overly simplistic and not suited to my needs. But the video capture was great - it's the only capture I found that directly encodes video in real-time to the space-saving MPEG-2 format. After capturing the video, Sony Vegas and Sony DVD Architect were the best tools for my needs of editing video/audio, and burning to DVD).
All the more impressive is that the Canopus worked on my relatively old laptop system. I don't remember the recommended specs exactly, but I think I was borderline: 1.5 mhz Pentium 4 laptop with 512 mb of RAM running on Windows XP.
While the Canopus performed its core video capture function perfectly, it does have some minor issues with user-friendliness - but really, these aren't very important in the big picture. Stickers warn you to shut the Canopus and your computer down before connecting to or disconnecting it from your computer. Changing the device's settings, which I did once at set-up, involves small switches on the hardware itself. And the device is recognized by my computer as a digital video camera. But if it's the only external hardware that consistently does a great job of video capture - who cares about minor issues like these?
The wrap-up: Amazon should do us all a favor: get rid of all the other, less reliable external video capture devices and only sell the Canopus. It's tempting to get less expensive equipment, but there seems to be only a small chance it'll actually do the job. The Canopus is really the only option to consider if you are looking for an external video capture device that works reliably.
Rating:
Summary: Plug And Play, Serious!!
Review: I must say this product is exactly as it says. I simply took it out of the package(Which I recieved in less than 24 hours with free shipping from Amazon.com) and plugged in the cables and went with it. It connected to Movie Maker 2 and I was off.
I definitely recomend this to ayone looking to put old vhs movies onto DVD's for safe storage.
Rating:
Summary: Plug And Play, Serious!!
Review: I must say this product is exactly as it says. I simply took it out of the package(Which I recieved in less than 24 hours with free shipping from Amazon.com) and plugged in the cables and went with it. It connected to Movie Maker 2 and I was off.
I definitely recomend this to ayone looking to put old vhs movies onto DVD's for safe storage.
Rating:
Summary: Works with iMovie 4.0 / TiVo
Review: I purchased this little box, the size of a medium sized book, recently and have had a very smooth experience with it. I wanted to import a TV show (Jeopardy!) on which I appeared, so I researched various hardware solutions (almost bought the Formac offering) and decided that this box was the best regarded. I connected my TiVo to the box using the s-Video and RCA audio connectors, and I connected the Canopus to my Powerbook G4 12" via the Firewire connection. iMovie 4 saw the connection immediately and I was importing video seconds later; making clips for each of the 4 sections of the show. Then it was a simple matter to edit my clips together, add some still frames and titles and export to iDVD 4.0.1 with which I burnt a very nice DVD. People actually complimented the quality of the video, which of course was limited by it's NTSC original source, but at least it was a accurate replica of the original with no dropped frames or loss of audio sync.
Rating: 
Summary: Does a great job -- but beware of limitations
Review: I think this is an exceptional solution to the problem many of us have with analog video tapes to convert. I originally bought this to use with my older, slower PC -- but I replaced my PC with a screamer (and USB 2.0 and Firewire) before I really got a chance to use this. So I can't tell you how well this box does in compensating for older, slower hard drives and a slower CPU. However, with the new system, this box appears to my video editing software (Ulead VideoStudio 7) as a DV camera, so it's simple to edit. The bad news is that all of my video cpature software ASSUMES this is a DV camera, so you get all sorts of spurious information onscreen -- like DV controls, or DV timecodes, etc. If you are aware of the fact that those controls won't work, or that the timecode is meaningless, this unit works like a charm to capture your analog video, package it as DV and deliver it to your PC with little or no dropped frames and generally rock solid video/audio synch (BTW -- if the audio gets unsynched, the only guaranteed solution I've had is to restart the capture from a clean spot on the videotape -- no snow, no tracking errors).
Rating: 
Summary: This is not an Mpeg2 encoder
Review: Some may be mislead. This device captures analog data in DV format. You will need a lengthy conversion to MPEG2 to burn to DVD.
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