Video-Capture Reviews

Really good video. The installation was easy, but the settings took me a long to do it right. The only reason I gave 4 is because the manual, which you have to download from the Internet, is a little confusing. You really have do dig in to find how to make the video do what you want. I still have to read more in order to understand more about the video board. However, I am really satisfied with the performance of the board. Maya runs smoth and clean. The great news is that it works on Linux too.
Great product.

I have used this product in about 10 presentations since I bought it. I couldn't be more satisfied.

The major difference between this remote and (most) others is that this is NOT a mouse, it is a keyboard emulation. The advantage is that you can actually go back (reverse your presentation), which is something that is very cumbersome with a mouse (right-click, then choose Previous menu option).

The most used buttons are obviously forward and reverse, but I certainly do appreciate the "Hide slide" button. The hide slide effectively blanks out the screen, which is good if you want your audience not to see your slide when they walk in the room, or for an intermission, or when you draw something on a board, etc. Unfortunately, I have experienced some minor problems with the Hide slide button in PowerPoint 2003. No problems in earlier versions.

The only downside I have experienced is some interference from computer speakers. If your computer speakers are positioned between the remote and your receiver in the USB port, you may have to click twice to actually get the signal through. (NOTE: no, this is not infrared and doesn't require line-of-sight; it is RF).

No infrared pointer on this model, but Interlink has another model that does have a pointer.

Overall, this is probably one of the most useful peripherals I have ever bought!

If your comp is getting to the point where you are getting over 100 degrees, then you should do something about it.

Special graphics card coolers are out there.

Althought I have not bought this card, I am sure it kicks the 5600XT that I have now, and am still in the market to wait for prices to go down a bit.

I upgraded from a Gainward Ti4200. First thing I noticed: this 9800pro is so much quieter! It no longer sounds like I have a Huey in my PC.
The catalysts work great with all games out in the past several years, every blue moon a game comes out that has a few issues, but ATi releases a new driver to take care of it in a week or so, and the problems are always minor. A lot of people complain about the drivers because they incorrectly set their bios(on older VIA AMD boards you need to turn off FastWrites).
Compared to my Ti4200 this card is as I said is quieter, the 2d is leaps and bounds better, and of course 3d is much better.
By far my favorite card ever, and I started out with Voodoo cards.

This card is very close to the 9800 XT, and not very noticably different from the X800, which was just released. Both of these cards are much more money, and only increase video quality by very little and unnoticable amounts. The 9800 Pro is half the price of all its competitors and just as good in my mind. This card is top shelf now and will be for years to come. It is compatible with every game coming out, and every game that is out now. I now turn up all my quality on all my games to as high as it can go, and I experience no lag. I dont recommend for people who wont be using high end applications and gaming, because those are these cards main purpose. Excellent quality, very reliable.

I purchased the PVR-250 to edit home videos, record TV shows and watch TV.

I've found the PVR to be good for recording home videos, okay for recording TV and insufficient for watching TV.

I have a 1.2GHz Celeron CPU and 192MB of RAM. The hardware encoding does fine, but the software decoding takes up 100% of my CPU. When I watch TV, the picture is jumpy because the CPU can't keep up. Also, when watching TV, it can 60 seconds to click on other windows since the CPU is completely occupied. For this reason, the pausing Live TV feature is not useful on my machine. It takes too long to open the live TV controls and click the pause button. In addition, the jumpiness of the picture makes my head hurt. I don't watch TV on this card. The box says 733MHz minimum for watching TV, but my 1.2GHz just dies. I recommend at least 1.7GHz to handle live and pause TV.

Recording TV is okay, although by default, the TV watching window is on when recording. I had to get a registry editor script from Hauppage to turn off the window. I'm not sure why you can't click a button to turn off the window and the computationally intensive software decoding. (In general the software for this product is not user friendly, it's poorly thought out. I haven't found any bugs though.) With the window and decoding off, I can record programs in the background on my computer, using only 30% of the CPU. Watching those programs later is fine, the picture problems are only with live TV.

Recording home videos works great. They stream to the computer and can be stored in a variety of formats from 12MB/sec down to .6MB/sec. There are a couple cute built-in programs to cut and past mpegs and add-in background audio to a video. Also there's a simple program to burn files to a DVD or VCD. There isn't much software for serious audio or video editing. There's no changing colors or distorting the picture or filtering the audio, just cut and splice.

Overall, the product is good for my main use of storing VHS on my computer. The live TV is poor, but I shouldn't watch TV much anyway. = ) Software is hard-to-use, but it does what I need it to do for recording shows and burning VCDs.

The included software has issues.

The versions on the CD that comes with the package will NOT work with Windows 2000. You have to get the latest versions off of their website to get this to work.

The included TV sofware caches 1-2 seconds to the hard drive and plays back from that. This renders it nearly impossible to play console video games on it and also causes severe playback issues if you have a slow hard drive, like I do.

My biggest issue is that the audio and video get out of sink very easily. If I watch TV in full screen mode, then the audio and video will get out of sink within a couple of minutes. This should not happen, no matter how slow my hard drive is.

It is easy to use to record programs, and the recording is excelent, but that just doesn't make up for software that doesn't even play the TV right.

I have had the PVR-250 on my computer (2.7GhZ, 1GB RAM) for about 3 months and have recorded numerous products on my hard drive that, after editing, I have burned to DVD. Very good quality DVD's with very little in the way of dropped frames (it does happen from time to time). I plan to try to hook up a VCR to the card and capture some old VCR footage to see how it compares to my current capture card. The TV quality is very good and the TV Scheduler is very reliable. The TV Titan website is tied to the scheduler, so you just have to go to the website, click on the program name and the scheduler sets itself up for you. Very nice. I don't like that the TV doesn't close out once recording is done, so I have to make sure my speakers are off if I record something in the middle of the night. All in all, this is a great product.

This card is good for an occasional gamer, buissines person, or an aoler. It is definetly NOT good for a serious gamer. Ill list its flaws.

It uses old, slow, SDRAM, Nvidia has a version of the MX420 that uses DDR memory, but this one uses SD. It wont be a long time bfore this card is obsolete. It doesnt use technology in the Radeon 8500, Geforce 3's, or the Geforce 4 TI. This technology is called vertex and pixel shaders. Translation: New games are using these, and before long this video card wont beable to support them. Right now, game developers are using an engine that supports the shaders, and one that doesnt, so the game is runable on every computer made in the past, say, 3 years. But sometime, the time will come when they stop making the engine that doesnt use the shaders. Many gamers may get burned by not understanding this flaw. When someone sees "BRAND NEW --- GEFROCE 4 mx!!!" most will think that its superior to the geforce 3's. Not so. Like i said, thay dont use the shaders that radeon 8500, Geforce 4 TI, and geforce3's use. sure, the core clock (graphics proccesor) is faster than a geforce3's, but overall, any geforce 3 will have better frame rates than a geforce 4 MX. (note i said MX not TI. a TI geforce 4 will kick the [stuffing] out of any geforce 3). This card uses technology that was used on a geforce 2 (all the Major computer companies mostly use these geforce 2s that are old obsolete cards(in my opinion)). In other words, its a souped-up geforce 2.

On the other hand, its great for any kind of 2d windows preformance, and has dual monitor support. For a gamer, I reccomend an Radeon 8500, geforce 3, or a geforce4 TI card. The geforce 4 TI 4200 will be coming out very soon, that is ten fold better than this card, that, if you look very hard, you can get for a little more than this card. The gefroce 4 TI 4200 has about the same preformance as the 4400 ans 4600, but costs about 1-2hundred less.

This card will run your games good for now, just not for a long time.

Very fast. Great graphics. Makes my games come to life. Highly recommended.

Forget those stupid 1 star reviews. I have 6 years of pc games exerpience and I can tell you that this is a GREAT CARD. It rocks!

I bought this card based on these reviews.
After installing the card and driver, the card
could not recognize the driver. I have called
and emailed tech support many times and get
no response.

$43 dollars for a video capture card. What else you can ask for? This product is very good for home made video. I emphasized again, the quality is for home made video, not for industrial usage. I am very happy with this product, so I gave 5 stars. Now is the time to review this product. If you are looking for something can convert your old VHS to DVD or VCD, this is the best product with the lowest price. I read so many reviews about the external and internal PCI video capture card. I decided to try the avermedia EZmake DVD PCI card. Because the price is low and reviews are good. If it didn't work, I almost got nothing to lose. Well, my decision was right! It is a big surprise that this card really works. It converted my wedding VHS to high resolution VCD with no problem. The vcd is better than other MTV vcd. The following are some important information that you guys need to know in order to make your VCD and DVD sucessfully with this card.
1. Make sure you have a at least Pentinum 4 class machine. I don't care it is P4 1.0 ghz or P4 3.2 ghz. Just P4 minimum. Otherwise your system will crash. If you have PIII class, forget about any conversion or video capture project. Upgrade your machine first. I can tell you none of the video capture product can work in the market in the PIII class cpu.
2. You need at least 512MB Ram. Beleive me, although it is not the minimum requirement but it will save you a lot of time and make the conversion more smooth.
3. Get Nero6.0 burn or 5.0 ****DO NOT USE THE BUNDLE SOFTWARE TO BURN YOUR CAPTURE VIDEO IN THE HARD DRIVE****.
4. USE THE BUNDLE NEODVD SOFTWARE TO CAPTURE VIDEO ONLY. Convert your VHS to either VCD or DVD with the bundle software then use the Nero5.0 or 6.0 to burn on disc from the hard drive.
I made a perfect copy in 30 mins by using this method. I have P4 1.6G with 512MB Ram. The card cost me $ 43 with free shipping in Amazon, Video audio cable cost $ 8 total $ 51 to finish my project. Store charge me $ 60 to $ 80 to convert my wedding VHS to VCD. Now I spent only $ 51 and I have the card to do other project in the future. It worth ! I suggest any person have the same situation as me. Go ahead to buy this card.
Good luck !

This card is great! After reading a LOT of info online, I decided to go with the Avermedia DVD EZMaker PCI card. I read a lot of complaints regarding this product, but most of it appeared to be directed more towards the NeoDVD software that came packaged with the card.

Although I'm no stranger to PC's, this is my first time doing video capture. I tried the Dazzle 80 and ATI's TV Wonder card (both over $70) only to be disappointed with horrible audio and video quality, but this card has exceeded my expectations. I wanted a card that would let me capture my favorite shows from my digital video recorder and transfer them to DVD, and so far this product has done a superb job.

The most important thing to remember is to throw away the NeoDVD software right away and go with iuVCR or Arcsoft's Showbiz software. Right now I'm tinkering with Showbiz to get all of the settings perfect, and the results have been amazing. Using an S-video cable and the supplied audio adaptor I've been able to make flawless copies of my favorite shows! The neat thing about Arcsoft Showbiz is that it recognized everything beforehand for me, I only bothered to tinker with the settings in order to get the best possible quality. I'm able to record at the card's max resolution(720x480) in MPEG2 format without a single dropped frame!

This card is a steal at $50(I got mine at OfficeDepot), especially if you've tried any of the competition(don't get me started on Dazzle, or the ATI TV Wonder!). The only thing that's keeping this product from utterly DESTROYING it's competitors is the terrible NeoDVD software.

In closing, BUY THIS CARD, you won't regret it! Don't listen to whiners that only used NeoDVD and gave up too early, or picky videophiles that are looking for $300 performance in a $50 card. The fact of the matter is that this is the best product out there for 90% of the video capture community, and it's quality is only surpassed by products twice as expensive.

the chipset in this card is 3 years old, It will not run any of the newest computer games even on the lowest settings. For 45 bucks you could probably buy an old GeforceMX or a Radeon 7000, or pay a little more for a 7500. This is not worth it at all

Let me start by saying that I love computer games. From the new Return to Castle Wolfenstein to playing Age of Empires II online. With this in mind, I always thought when I decide to buy a new video card I would go with the Geforce chipset on a card manufactured by Hercules. I mean come on, every computer gaming magazine tells me that they're the best. Well they may be, but they are also one of the most expensive. I have a Pentium III 500 with 512 MB of RAM and no AGP port. The one thing it lacked was a good video card. I went to the local computer store fully thinking I was buying some Geforce card when I stumbled upon this at $69.99. Well I must say that I am not disappointed with the PNY Verto TNT2-M64 32MB SDRAM PCI. I played Return to Castle Wolfenstein and it didn't miss a beat. The video rendering was perfect. I highly recommend this card to anyone who need a great PCI video card and are on a budget. Also I just want everyone out there to know that Geforce isn't the only chipset out there.

Pro: Excellent video card for the money.

Con: No TV out and PCI only

If you already have another graphics card for regular gameplay, but you want just a little more desktop room when youre doing research for that big term paper, then this is the card for you. As long as you reserve the high graphics games to your primary display, then this card should give you all the functionality you need for business and low-graphics applications.

I was not at all impressed with this product. And I can't believe that anyone would write a review with a heading "super fast." Obviously just a paid shill who has never even used the product.

I don't own this particular PNY card but read this anyway:

Don't buy any PNY product in the US without reading the full warranty. "Lifetime Replacement Warranty" is not what you would think. It is not the usual graphics card life and not the lifetime of the original purchaser. Go to PNY's website and read the fine print. The warranty MIGHT last a year as they define it.

My PNY Verto TI4200 AGP 64 card lasted only 14 months. It was the shortest lived graphics card I ever owned. You MUST have an RMA number to return it. And just try to get Tech Support. Hours on the phone get you only perpetual hold and no relief for your woes. Their email is just as bad.

First of all, let me say, I have a PNY Geforce 3 Ti, and I couldn't be more pleased with the product itself. As for the customer support, I haven't had any issues, so I can't comment there.

Computer: P4, 700MB RAM, Geforce 3 Ti, Turtle Beach Sound Card, 19 inch Trintron Monitor, and Pro-Media 5.1 Surround System.
(I've also written reviews on a few of these)

Now on to the Geforce 4 Ti-4600. My friend bought a new computer a couple weeks ago, and got the PNY G4 Ti-4600 as an option. I had to go over and see what it looked like. Very impressive. However, not much different than the Geforce 3 Ti that I'm running. You will get better frame rates because of the speed of the card, and the extra RAM, but when it comes down to what you see on the screen, there isn't much difference.

If you have a Geforce 2 or less, or buying a new computer, I'd definetly recommend this card. If your on a Geforce 3 Ti, I'd wait for the G5. There just isn't enough of a difference, especially if you download the new Detonator XP drivers from the Nvidia website.

Then theres the people who just want to have the BEST out there, just to have it. I'm one of those people, but for once I'm going to stick with what I've got, and wait for the next big advance in graphics before I spend the big money.

Good luck and take care.

***UPDATE***

I recently purchased a new Dell 8200, 2.8ghz, 512MB RD RAM, and this Geforce 4 Ti 4600 card. As I suspected, my games dont look much better at ALL from the Geforce 3 Ti 500. Sure, better frame rates, but I just wanted to affirm that you wont see a difference on screen, unless you crank up the AA settings and the resolution. If your a HARDCORE gamer you may want to grab this, but the Radeon 9700 PRO currently beats the heck out of it for the same price. Decision is yours.

There are a _lot_ of issues with this card, its software, and its documentation. However, it was still worth buying, at least for me.

Tech support calls are toll calls to Canada, but most of the tech people are quite friendly and helpful. However, they do acknowledge certain bugs and limitations in the product. Other problems I found they hadn't heard of.

Among the issues I encountered: 1) The installer for the DVD software doesn't accept the code number on the disc nor a replacement code number supplied by the techs. A new CD is being sent to me (for free). 2) On my system, there is no usable video going to the monitor when booting with VGA mode enabled (XP). This may be an incompatibility with my large LCD monitor, but a prior competing card worked OK. 3) I tried the feature that allowed flipping the image 180 degrees; the software allowed the initial flip but then didn't realize so and disallowed flipping back -- I had to reinstall drivers (using upside-down display and backwards-working mouse!). 4) If you download the various drivers and software apps (5 total) from the ATI site and install them from a directory not on C:, some of the installs may fail until you move them to a directory on C:. Others install fine from anywhere. 5) To get tech support, you first have register, which involves supplying a TON of info about yourself, your usage, your buying habits, and the card's incredibly long product code (and normal-length SN). If you've already installed the card, you probably need to physically remove it to get these numbers because they are NOT on the box or anywhere else except in tiny print on the bottom-facing part of the card. 6) The installer for the remote control software in part ignores the directory you chose for installation and puts some components in the default (apparently hard-coded) location anyway. To move it so all the remote software is together, you have to edit the registry. 7) The system-testing software incorrectly says you don't have DirectX installed, even if you DO have DirectX 9 installed. This bug was acknowledged by several techs. 8) There's no feature-by-feature install choice (it's only all or none) on the CD. 9) When I booted with a VCR connected to the outputs but not having configured TV out, the monitor image rolled violently like an old TV with its vertical hold broken, making it totally unusable. ATI almost had me send the card back as a result, but I figured out the issue myself (disconnect the VCR and reboot). 10) I've had recurring issues where the sound comes out of the left channel only -- system beeps etc. are still in stereo but TV is left-channel-only. 11) Sometimes the window showing the TV picture goes blank and you must move it or resize it or change the channel to get it to display again. 12) The feature to show the TV in Internet Explorer causes IE and the TV app both to crash. The techs acknowledged that this feature is unstable.

A couple of the above issues may be unique to my setup, but some definitely are not. Also, reviews I've read say that if you hook up a TV (I haven't) as a "second" display (e.g., to watch movies played thru your PC, using the RF remote to control them), you must a) reboot and b) use the TV as the FIRST display and your monitor as the second one! That could be a major issue if you intend to use this feature (which I may in the future). And of course you'd have to reboot again to use the monitor as your main display again.

But, as I said, the card is still worthwhile at today's lower prices (down from twice as high). The remote is very nice, the capture is good, the TV watching/recording features are many and powerful, and it's a decent 2D/3D video card to boot. Even if you don't have use for the FireWire ports (I already had FireWire on my PC), the price/performance of this card is very good -- even considering the likely toll calls to tech support in Canada.

I uprgraded to this in order to play No One Lives Forever 2 because my old RivaTNT wasn't supported. The reviews recommended either GeForce4 Ti or the ATI 8500. A comparison of models and prices led me to the All-in-Wonder 8500DV. I liked the idea of the TV tuner, as I had one years ago, but it didn't survive the upgrade to Win98 (but that's another story).
The original install on my Win2K machine went almost as smooth as expected. It wouldn't let me run the driver install before installing the card, and then when I did install the card, it popped up a dozen or so "found new hardware" dialogs. It finally stopped that, and I was able to run the installer. Everything seemed to be OK, but I went directly to the ATI website and got the latest drivers. 5 out of the 6 download options were newer than the ones on the CD, so I tried doing the updates. BIG MISTAKE. The upgrade instructions were confusing (ok, so I didn't look at them too closely, I DON'T NEED TO READ INSTRUCTIONS!) about when to reboot and when to say no to the prompts. I went ahead and let it reboot at the wrong time, and I got a dozen or so "found new hardware" messages, this time no amount of pointing at the CD, the downloaded files, the windows directory, etc would recognize these devices as having ANY valid drivers. Bummer. Re-install from the CD. Redo the updates without rebooting at the wrong times. Bingo! Everything works except two drivers. I had to go to control panel and "update driver" manually. This time it found the correct driver in the Windows directory. Finally it worked.
(Now, back to playing NOLF2. It was happy with the video card, but the intro video was choppy. The game plays pretty smooth, not great, but good. Reading through the tech support stuff, I find I need more system RAM to fix that. We'll see if that helps.)
As for the features of the 8500DV, the TV tuner is great. I really like the pause TV, especially with a second window open of the live video, it works better than picture-in-picture. The RF remote control works fine, but the mouse movement seems sluggish and I can't find a speed setting for it. I intend to route some cables from the computer to the living room TV and see how good that looks. Svideo length limit is supposed to be 35', I think it should reach.

I was surprised to read a lot of the bad reviews (after I bought the card)! I had absolutely NO problems installing this card on a W2K box w/ SP4. I've converted almost all of my (deathly-boring-home) VHS tapes to DV, edited them, and burned DVD's with only a few "reboots" and those were mostly Explorer related (right-clicking on 3+ Gb files too quickly w/ preview on can make Windows a bit unhappy!). The TV also worked great with no problems. The drivers that came packed with the card worked fine, but I quickly upgraded them anyway (out of habit) from the ATI site. I'm not sure why my install went so smooth compared to others - my machine is a dual-850Mhz HP Kayak w/ 512Mb RDRAM and it's usually pretty picky about what I install.

I just got the camera after shiping it to one of my friends in US and he sent it back to me to Cairo. I am really shocked of the poor quality of images. I keep asking my self how can they sell a product like this. I tried it for few minutes then relized that the normal place to put it in is the trash. I paid $80 and got nothing. It is too slow for preview, quality is poor, and never think about taking outdoor photos because you won't see anything. I have TT2 palm with high resolution screen and 24 bit color. When you move the photos to the PC, they are extermly bad and unacceptable. If I were in the US I am sure I would return it back.

I have had one of these for about a week and I'm impressed. I use it with my Treo 90 pda and it takes good picutures. At first I was worried--having read the other reviews, as all my pictures were turning out blurry. After I spent some time learning how to focus, the pictures became clear. I have a $700 digital camera that takes FANTASTIC pics. My son and daughter have $200 cameras that take really good pics. This pda attachment, costing roughly 60-70 dollars takes good pics. I really like the way the camera swivels so I can aim the camera at myself, at someone standing in front of me or at someone standing to the side of me. It's also very easy to use. I plugged it into my pda and within an hour I was hotsynching the pics to my desktop computer and playing with them. It's a great product. I'm very satisfied with the purchase. For the price, it's a good and fun pda attachment.

This completes my 515. No software to download. You just plug it in and it automatically adds the software to the Palm. The pictures are very sharp and presentable when they are uploaded to your pc.