Rating: 
Summary: Poor software, abominable customer service
Review: I rarely award a product just one star, but for this disappointing offering from the Dazzle company I'll make an exception. In fact, I think they're getting one star more than they deserve.First, the positives: The hardware itself works OK on my Windows XP machine. The signal comes through the USB port rather than a dedicated video card, so don't expect sharp, brilliant images. It's adequate, nothing more, nothing less. The price is definitely right. Now, the negatives: The editing software that ships with it (MovieStar 5) is very poor. On the surface, it offers lots of nice features and filters and transitions. But it is slow and erratic. Clips disappear from the storyline, transitions get "lost" without warning, and the labels/captions feature is so poorly designed as to be virtually unusable. (In fairness, this is intended to be basic, inexpensive editing software, not MediaStudio Pro. Still, I don't think it's asking too much for the software to implement its limited set of features properly.) More software woes: The install program forgot the online help file. I finally found it on Dazzle's web site onloy to learn I wasn't missing much -- it's virtually useless. The AVI codec is just plain awful; I could *draw* better images than the blurs it puts out. Aspect ratios are not preserved in several of the output formats (for example, when saving in MPG format, my teenage daughter's cheerleading squad came out looking like an malnourished basketball team.) And, the S-VCD burning feature stinks -- only the first half of the finished video plays on every DVD player I tried it on. You'd better like MovieStar, because I was unable to get the DVC80 to record video and audio using XP's Windows Movie Maker. This in turn led me into the unparalleled disaster that is Dazzle tech support. Their phone hotline is a long-distance toll call, and it takes forever to get through to a technician. I spent 20 minutes in the queue one morning and gave up ... After 30 days there is a $15 per-incident fee unless you purchase a support package...ugh! As for online support, forget it. I submitted a question about the Windows Movie Maker audio recording problem. Their responses took anywhere from three days to two weeks (!), and they were just useless non-sequitors. It seemed as though they just picked a solution at random from their knowledge base each time and mailed it to me. Honestly folks, the only reason to buy this product is price. If you can afford more, go out and buy a more robust package with a video input card and more usable software.
Rating:
Summary: Don't bother
Review: I was looking for a shortcut around buying and installing firewire. I had heard good things about Dazzle's interface and it's software. The picture quality sucked (on the rare times it captured the full scene). I would highly recommend buying yourself firewire and using it to capture video from you DV camcorder, since they both cost about the same. Maybe if you were using this with an analog source, the capture would be smoother, but not for the digital stuff. This product seems too good to be true....because it is.
Rating: 
Summary: Could be great... but lacks in key areas.
Review: I was looking for an inexpensive way to get video from my analog camcorder to my computer. So when I saw this product for a measly $70 bucks I thought, hey why not? I'll tell you why. The product was very easy to install on windows 2000, and the included software (MGI videowave) is pretty descent for a beginner as well. But the DV80 would drop crazy amounts of frames whenever there was any type of movement in the video. This made for very choppy playback on my computer. I originally thought this could be because of my computer or maybe cause of windows 2000, so I upgraded my computer to 512 megs of RAM and a 1.2 ghz processor and then I installed Windows XP. Afterwards I couldnt get the DV80 to work at all. I downloaded the latest patches that supposably made it work on XP, but to no avail. This product is a really bad product, and even though it says "Windows XP ready" on the outside of the box, I couldn't get it to work on two seperate computers that had XP on them. Hopefully Dazzle will come out with a patch to fix is, but even so, the dropped frames should be enough to steer anyone away from this product. Go for the ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon. Even though it is 130 dollars more, it is worth it because it is a MUCH better product.
Rating:
Summary: no customer support
Review: I wasn't too disappointed at first. I had some problems with the video feed being choppy, but I think that may have been a processor problem. It comes with a DVD which contains additional content which you can access only after you register (send them your personal information). If you don't have a DVD drive, then you can order the content on CDs. When the URL for ordering the CDs turned out to be dead, I tried to contact customer support. Alas, you can't email them and can't call them on the phone. If your question isn't in their Q&A list, then don't expect and answer. This product is going back to the store.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Little Capturing Device
Review: I've had this product for six months and had no problems. Dazzle 80 works great as a small capturing device. The only drawback I have found it does not capture in anything larger than 350 by 288. So if you expect this product to render quality DVD's it does not. The software included has some drawbacks but I have used the text animator, capturing though, there are other products out there such as Virtual Dub or Unlead Movie Studio that are free or work better.
Rating:
Summary: Great Little Capturing Device
Review: I've had this product for six months and had no problems. Dazzle 80 works great as a small capturing device. The only drawback I have found it does not capture in anything larger than 350 by 288. So if you expect this product to render quality DVD's it does not. The software included has some drawbacks but I have used the text animator, capturing though, there are other products out there such as Virtual Dub or Unlead Movie Studio that are free or work better.
Rating: 
Summary: TV-out Solution
Review: In response to An electronics fan's review. You can try to hook your VCR up to your main cable line. The VCR has output pluggs so you wont have a problem recording your favorite shows onto your computer. Atleast in theory...I do nothave one yet but I plan to buy one!
Rating:
Summary: no support
Review: Ok, so how are you supposed to enter a 10digit SN when the one that they provide for you has 11?
Couldn't install the software so couldn't use the product at all. Multiple posts on the Pinnacle user forum on the company's website also went unanswered with this same problem. Bye Bye, back to the store.
If you're not going to let me install your product and you're not going to help me to figure out how to get around the problem you've created then you clearly shouldn't be in business.
Rating:
Summary: Dazzle video creator 80
Review: Sir
The software that came with the capture device is not any good for recording anything over 16 min. You cannot capture a full lenghth movie with this product. My hard drive has about 94 hours of storage space on it. The reason that I bought this product, was to be able to convert my vhs movies to cd/dvds, but this product can't record that long of a movie. The soft ware program that came with it is MGI VIDEO WAVE 4 THIS IS NO GOOD FOR ANY THING. IT STOPS AT 16 MIN AND GIVES AN ERROR MESSAGE THAT THERE IS NOT ENOUGH DISK SPACE. I'AM USING A 60 GIG HARD DRIVE.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to install
Review: The capture card is easy to install and use. The problem is the software (Movie Star 5) does not come with an owners manual. You have to go on line to figure out how to use the software. In general it is a good capture card for the price.
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