Video-Capture Reviews

Stay away from the new powerVR drivers - they crash the XP and it's hard to recover. Even the original Hercules driver is not so great, but better. It still restarts itself when pushed to work too hard, like watching a DVD or something. Otherwise it's okay. Use ATI or Gforce.

Good card with a lot of features. However they do not show up until you either do a clean boot (see msconfig.exe) or disable your internet connection and its attendant firewalls etc. as well as any other programs you may have running that do not pertain to the gaming enterprise. Otherwise, the display is jerky and there is no adjustment to improve this. The driver situation is confusing. The latest driver crashes the computer big time. I had to roll back to the driver included with the installation disk.

I am running a Compaq Presario w/512MB Celeron 1.4 GHz processor and a MS Force Feedback 2 joystick with a 21" monitor. Not the most potent combination but somewhat competent for the state of technology.

Combat Flight Simulator 2 runs great as does Flight Sim 2002 Professional. CFS 3 will not run as yet, although it looks as though this may be a matter skill with the settings on my part. Other sims such as Falcon 4.0, Fly 2K, Janes WWII fighters and USAF require individual setups and none will run smoothly unless you shutdown some onboard services or just do a clean boot. But, the price wasn't bad when I bought it. It may be even cheaper now.

I got this card to replace my Voodoo 3 card, and it's a really good card. With my voodoo 3 i was running Counter-Strike (my fav' game) on an average of 20 fps and now it's aout 60 fps. Really worth the low price. However, the card has a few problems with it's OpenGL functions, so it cant run games based on the Quake 3:Arena engine. Stick to Direct 3D until Hercules fix this out.

I have one of these lifeview tuners. I bought it because I travel quite extensively and wanted to watch TV occasionally while I worked. I have never been able to tune in to any television station with it. Even in areas with excellent television broadcast power. the picture is always full of static and the device is basicly useless.

If you want to buy a product that offers good customer service, then move on to another product. Every e-mail I've sent to Lifeview goes unanswered. The only response I've ever received is the confirmation when I placed my order online. The product and/or the driver is buggy, even the latest download from their website. For reference, I use Win 98 SE. The video locks up fairly regularly on my computer, and I have to shut down LifeView and restart it. About the 3rd restart will give you a BlueScreen error. And the kicker - if you capture video, it saves it as a huge AVI file, which almost every video-edit utility I've downloaded doesn't support their AVI format. I've tried all of their available formats & sample rates with the same results. This unit may be fine if all you want to do is tune in the occasional ballgame if it doesn't lock up on you. ...But being a computer professional, I feel I've tried everything reasonable to remedy these problems, and ended wasting a lot of time doing so.

first it's picture quality is good.Also it has power backup from ps2 port.Easy to install software and hardware.But the antenna isn't powerful.

Despite following the tutorial and walk through and reading the skimpy little "manual" countless times I simply cannot get this program to do anything!!! I have all the cabling and connections needed it just will not record, much less clean up anything. Total frustration and waste of money. I'd give it no stars if possible.

While the software appears to be pretty good, the cable is completely wrong. The available jacks on it are not compatible with my new computer or my old one. In fact, I can't remember ever having RCA jacks on any of my computers. Since I bought this mostly becuase it promised to have the correct cable, obviously I was very dissapointed. I will have to find the correct cable on my own elsewhere.

I don't own this product.

However, I do find it odd that a ONE STAR rating is allowed to be given to the product for the customer's dissatisfaction with the shipping time. That is something that should be reported in the SELLER'S ratings.

Maybe ratings should be screened a little closer to prevent morons like this from erroneously rating products poorly.

I tried to install this device in win98. It just disabled other USB devices and yet it did not work. It waisted lots of my time and efforts but no result.
Next I tried to install it with my P4 laptop with winxp.
This time the problem was greater and the result was NO HOPe
I think this device is not worh to buy at all.

The software doesn't appear to work with WinXP. The vendor website does not contain an update for WinXP. The vendor does not respond to e-mail requests sent via their web site.

I'd recommend avioding this product.

Well, I was doubtful about getting it after reading some of the reviews here, but in the end, I decided to bite the bullet and buy it anyway because a store locally was selling it cheap (RM145/~US$39).

I started to set it up. That's when I discovered the first shortcoming of the device (and one that's of my laptop).

Firstly, there was no audio in socket on the device. The manual tells me to plug the audio in of the TV into the line-in jack of the laptop, and it turns out that my Compaq laptop doesn't have a line-in jack (Shame on you, HP!) either. So, I forked out more cash (~RM500/US$132) on an Sound Blaster Extigy USB sound device.

After I had everything up, I downloaded the latest drivers from the internet (as my tech-saavy mind told me to), and installed them. Fired the capture program up. It didn't work.

So, I did some troubleshooting, and it turns out that I had the connection on the TV end wrong. Swapped it around, and presto!

After the initial fun stage, I started to discover more flaws.

It couldn't take full motion capture. The framerates were jumpy and wouldn't get close to the 30fps at 352x284 advertised on the box. In fact, you'll be lucky if you could get it to capture frames at 15fps at 172x144.

It wouldn't work with Windows Movie Maker or any other video capture programs properly if you're not logged in as a power user. Pictures will become clipped in Windows Movie Maker or other programs if the resolution is changed from within the program. Changing the settings in Windows Movie Maker or other programs will crash the programs in question. Also, one has to run the provided capture program first, close the provided capture program, and then run the desired program (i.e. virtualdub or Windows Movie Maker) to get it to work. Otherwise, the desired program will hang. Sound and Video loses sync after a while. And more.

So far, I've e-mailed Lifeview, and they told me that they're working on a solution. But that was over 3 months ago and I still do not see any updates on their website today.

In a nutshell, unless you're under a ultra-tight budget and you need a USB video capture device to make stills of TV broadcasts, go for it. Otherwise you should avoid this unit and go for better ones. This one's more of a toy than a tool.

This product is aweful. It just absolutly refused to work in any of my cars. I tried it in a 2003 dodge van and it wouldn't even load correctly. i tried it in a 92 carolla... silence. i tried it my friends cars and it didn't work in any of theirs either. don't buy this. i wish i could give it zero stars.

This is horrible. The first one I bought has a very loud whirring and clicking when connecting an iPod in a Honda CRV. It was impossible to listen to the music. I returned it and swapped it for another, and the performance was identical. For an iPod in my car it is completely unusable.

So far, this has been working really well. I know people that have used others that have begun to fray and do not have very good sound. I suggest this one over the others most definitely!

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.

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.

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.

This product is terrible as are most screen protectors for the Toshiba Pocket PC e405. I tried several times and could not fix the problem, which was that the overlay kept trapping in many air bubbles. Your best best is to buy a aluminum case for it. I purchased one and it's working great (InnoPocket sells them for about $30).

Belkin lists the Toshiba e750/755 as PDA's that these overlays will fit. It is a very poor fit for this model. It's about 3/16" too narrow and too short.

Tha actual dimensions of the overlays should be published in the ads and on the packaging.

The bubbles will disappear over time (osmosis?). All you have to do is get as much of it out as you can.

If you want to install/uninstall several times (even the uninstall is incomplete because pinnacle recommends download a regdelete.exe file from their site to complete the uninstall) and undergo repeated crashings and cryptic messages like "software problem, please restart windows" and "hardware problem" (which hardware). Then, if you get it working, deal with audio that doesnt sync up with the video and lost frames then this is the product for you. I did get it to work a couple of times and it captured my video then crashed 10 minutes into my editing it (it hasnt worked again since). I've since returned it for a refund. I had tried their Studio 400 product and it worked fine (except for audio problems at scene transitions)but this MP10 has been a nightmare.

IMPORTANT*** Don't believe me? Check out Pinnacle's own home page. All the problems are documented there in the MP10 forum. You have MSCE's and system administrators emailing Pinnacle with their problems stating that they are unable to get it to work.

First off, I bought this cuz it said that it could make Video-Cds. So I thought I could play them on my DVD player. Wrong, its just a stupid pop-up menu, just stupid. The capture times are TERRIBLE! I left it capturing for 10 mintues and got 4 secs of captured video. The worst product ever. This product does TO MUCH! Remember simple is better.

I just received one for this Xmas.The video it captured are so bad that you even don't want to look at them twice!Maybe it's not a good idea to use the parallel port for this kind of data transfer.

I purchased this product thinking at the very least i would be able to watch tv when i started the program. It won't even do that. It was all scrambled. When I went to their site, i saw that this was a common problem. Basically it occurs because i use a Nvidia video card and this is a Ati product. This malfunction must have been intentional because there are many free progams that can do this and this won't do and you pay for it. The softwae that comes with it crashes the computer regularly and prevents many other programs from running. After wasting my time looking for a fix on their site, i decided to look at some other sites. After many hours of searching, i found a fix (it was not made by ati) and after that the program worked. However this is something that ws intentional and should never have been released. I am never going to make the mistake of purchasing an ati product again.

I bought this product on sale, but it's not even worth the sale price. It ships with an old version of software, (MMC 7.6) and ATI expects you to pay for the latest version (drivers are free). Installation is a nightmare. Even though I followed their instructions carefully, I must have spent 5 hours trying to install it.

The Guide Plus software that it comes with which allows it to function as a VCR is not supported by ATI or the company that creates it, Gemstar. I noticed the Bravo network is not included in the list of stations. There's no way to add it and no place to get support to find out how to add the listings, or to get Gemstar to add it.

This puppy is going back.

This tuner card works well.....if you have one of the video cards that support it such as any ATI video card, Nivida Riva 128, or TNT, 3Dfx Banshee,S3 Savage 3D. In other words you must have a Video card that supports overlays, as most of the better card do.
It supports TV guide (free) and I use it to do timer recordings hooked to my VCR, without the complicated VCR setup.
The actual TV image is good at the sized rate recommended, but drops off as the picture is enlarged.

ATI does not call out that fact you MUST have an ATI Radeon graphics chip on your computer until you run the diagnostics and it happily informs you that you should buy one of their graphics cards. This is NOT in any specification I have seen beyond the diagnostic message. I returned the ATI TV Wonder Pro card at that point. Then I noticed Kathy (see other reviews)had the same problem. ATI is doing themselves a disservice with this as I am not buying any of their products in the future. Also, I am going to first read ALL the Amazon reviews on a product in the future! I would make this a MINUS 5 star rating if I could.

This card seemed like the perfect solution to my desire to play VHS movies on my computer monitor. Unfortunately, my (new) computer's video card is not compatible with the ATI TV Wonder Pro. After contacting ATI and fiddling around with software drivers, etc. I found that I need an ATI or compatible video board. Of course, they fail to mention this in their advertising or on the packaging. It would sure have saved me a lot of time had they published this in their specifications. The card seems like it does everything except wash windows, but check out your hardware before buying.

It works pretty well.

On the other hand the setup was a mess (I'm using Windows XP).

a) The CD that came with the hardware didn't have the same folder/directory structure as described in the manual. Had to browse and locate the XP drivers myself.
b) TV viewing and recording worked pretty well the first time, but the captured images had a totally green tint (red objects appeared black, so somehow "R" was missing from RGB signals). At first I thought the hardware was defective. Really freaked me out.
c) ATI.com had downloads for a newer version 8.8. I forgot to uninstall the CD's 8.2 first, and 8.8 didn't recognize 8.2 and got everything mixed up. Eventually had to uninstall both 8.2 and 8.8 and reinstall 8.8 (Urgh).

Anyway, after all this, it started working pretty well. Picture quality is decent. Video encoding works well on my humble P3 machine.

The software is not great but okay with me (I just want to watch TV and occasionally record and capture stuff so what do I care). The user interface is not very pleasing to the eyes by the way.

For $65 it's a pretty good bang for the buck. I would give it 5 stars if it weren't for the trouble I had. I'm gonna burn a CD myself and keep it for downloaded 8.8 stuff instead of that sorry CD.