Rating: 
Summary: Works fine for me
Review: Bought this and had it running in an hour. Am able to successfully capture signal from the cable box video/audio outputs. Successfully recorded several TV programs. The key to using a device like this is to have some experience in media capture/conversion and be ready for some test runs. Try configuring different options to get optimal results. Use the "Best Quality" option while capturing the signal.I used the DIVX codecs while converting to AVIs. Was surprised to see that it even captured HD channel outputs from my HD capable dish box via the A/V outputs. Have successfully imported the resultant AVI into my portable iRiver video player. Works perfectly. Had to reconvert using iRiver media conversion software. Pinnacle QuickStart studio is quite impressive. You will need a USB 2.0 and fast hard disk to get optimal results. With this + iRiver portable video player, I have my own portable TIVO like DVR player. The only problem I have with this product is the absence of required AV cables. Pinnacle (the owner company) should not resort to penny pinching like this.
Rating: 
Summary: W. Slater
Review: Don't waste your money on this product. I purchased it hoping to finally transfer my VHS tapes to DVD. After a lot of effort and more good money after bad, all I can get is video and no audio. The manufacturer's website is of no help. I couldn't find an email address to get some help with this product. It doesn't surprise me, if I sold a product like this I'd avoid customer contact too.
Rating:
Summary: the worst
Review: First of all I bought it about a year ago. And I tried to burn the cds on my system which is a dell PIII 700 MHz, with 512 MB ram and win2000 OS. For some reason it used to get stuck when I am trying to created the VCD after rendering the movie and creating the mpeg file. I thought may be something wrong with my system. So I upgraded to dell P4 2.4 GHz, with 768 MB ram and Windows XP home. Now when I try to install the hardware, I get the windows blue screen. The error is some kind of problem with security and authorization. I go on to the dazzle website and try to download any patches. In this process I am asked to register, and rightly so I try to register. Guess what! the site throws invalid number error, so cannot register. So going with the only choice I have, I override everything on XP and install the hardware. Now capture the movie from my VCR again. This time I dint get any audio and the movie is in snaps as opposed to a smooth roll of the scenes. I am still trying to convert this cassette to a VCD. Apart from this burning a movie takes about 8 hrs. To top it off did I forget to mention that I am trying to convert one casette to a VCD for the past one year with this equpmment... :-).
Rating:
Summary: Avoid it
Review: I brought this home and had it up and running pretty quickly. I didn't experience problems transferring video from a VCR to my computer.
So why one star?
Well, I feel the box and their ads are misleading. The DVC 80 can only capture video in AVI format, with dimensions of 360 x 240, about half the size of of a TV screen. There is no mention of this anywhere in the minimal documentation that comes with the item. I thought I was doing something wrong, and tried to get in touch with customer service, but the wait on the phone was too long. I finally got an email to them, and their only response was that if I wanted MPEG-2, or a resolution of 720 x 480, I should have bought the DVC 150. It would have been nice to know that before I put out my money.
Rating:
Summary: Do Not Waste Your Money
Review: I installed this software as instructed and then connected USB cable. My new XP computer started to perpetually reboot every few minutes. Finally I realized I could stop this by disconnecting USB Cable. I checked website and found several references to the problem by frustrated buyers. These buyers had tried a patch download which did not fix problem. Same story with me. It appeared author was not doing anything to resolve. I finally tracked down a support phone number and received a recorded message that typical wait time was 40 minutes. The video tutorial looked great but while browsing website it looked as if this software was loaded with problems. After several hours of dealing with this mess I packed everything up and hope I can get a refund.
Rating:
Summary: Useful Paperweight
Review: I never could get this thing to work, mainly thanks to the poor trouble-shooting guide and the virtually non-existent customer support. To add insult to injury, uninstalling it removed MY video drivers and messed up my Microsoft Movie Maker (which now crashes when I try to use it).
Key words : "50-foot pole" and "don't touch".
Rating:
Summary: It Works Just Fine.
Review: I normally don't bother commenting on products, but after reading the previous postings I thought I needed to. This card is not at all bad for the price. I have used it on several systems with no problems. As with most USB devices, plug it in after you boot your system and you won't have a problem like one of the previous reviewers.
I have used it on both Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems with no problems. I plugged it in, the OS wanted a driver, I put in the CD that it came with. It worked fine. I have captured home movies and commercial movies from my VHS player without incident. I have used it many times with my camcorder with no problems. I even plugged it into my laptop and captured movies off my TIVO system -worked great!
Another writer complained about it not working with Micro$oft MovieMaker. For the love of anything decent; don't use Moviemaker; it is trash. Don't blame the Dazzle capture device on that. The Dazzle card comes with Pinnacle Studio express which works fine; use it.
Another reviewer was having problems with the sound, most likely just needed to check the connections. I work as an IT specialist for a unit in the U.S. army with 750 workstations and I see some of the silliest things. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if he/she simply didn't have the RCA cables plugged in correctly -or at all for that matter.
I do have one complaint with this device. Pinnacle has made no drivers for Linux -which, in my experience, is a far superior OS compared to Windows - and it doesn't appear they will ever put much effort towards it. Fortunately, others have developed Linux drivers for most of the other Pinnacle devices.
BOTTOM LINE, this card is well worth the money if you want an inexpensive video capture card with a USB connector. If you are using a desktop and have an open PCI slot I would recommend the Hauppauge WinTV PCI video capture card (~$43.00) If you have $199.00 to spend on a USB capture card I would recommend the Hauppauge WintTV-PVR-USB2 capture card.
Rating:
Summary: Keep looking elsewhere
Review: I purchased this product to transfer Hi8 to DVD, and was completely disappointed.
Video quality is poor at best. Color is particularly bad - washed out, rainbows soaring thru the video, strange artifacts, and bursts of dropped frames (even though Pinnacle's software always reported zero dropped frames). I don't expect Hollywood DVD quality video, but I know what my source video looks like and this product didn't even look as good as streamed Internet video.
I might have tolerated the product with its video problems if it weren't for the audio. Others have reported 'no audio capture'. I didn't experience this but my captures consistently had 10 to 30 seconds of lag between the video and the audio. This made the product completely useless. I can believe that other reviewers didn't just have wiring problems.
The user interface is better than most other products, if not outright brilliant. The feature set looks great but I didn't waste the time to try most of it since the core functionality just isn't there.
I am running a 2.8GHz P4 with 512M RAM and 80G drive, so I was well above min specs. I used XP Pro w/SP2. In fairness, others have reported install problems on XP and I had no such problems. I did have multiple lockups while the software was running, and even Task Manager couldn't always kill it.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many problems setting up.
Review: I tried to install on a Windows ME system with USB 2.0. Analog video worked but I could not get S-Video connection to work which was the main reason I bought it. Also, the software or its installation process did something to Windows that it started requiring a password on boot-up. I uninstalled the software and used System Restore to go back to the settings before trying to install this gadget.If you buy it, make sure you set a restore point prior to starting installation.
Rating:
Summary: Too many problems setting up.
Review: I tried to install on a Windows ME system with USB 2.0. Analog video worked but I could not get S-Video connection to work which was the main reason I bought it. Also, the software or its installation process did something to Windows that it started requiring a password on boot-up. I uninstalled the software and used System Restore to go back to the settings before trying to install this gadget. If you buy it, make sure you set a restore point prior to starting installation.
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