VHS to DVD 7.0 Deluxe (PC)

The item was delivered promptly. I had a bit of problem with it initially as my old JVC VHS Camcorder only have a SCART output. I had an old SCART to Component Adaptor but it has the wrong end. I managed to get it working with an old one-to-many SCART adaptor by switch the adaptor from OUT to IN. The capture quality was really bad. In the end, I have to purchase an Nikkai SCART to Component Adaptor (gold platted) and a Nikkai Connect SCART Coupler from Maplin. I was able to capture some good quality video. So far, I have captured about 10 videos. The picture quality is reasonably good except for a line of interference at the bottom of the picture as some people has already mentioned. Sometimes, the captured picture was twisted at the top half of the picture in the middle of the video and I have to re-captured part of the video again. That is no big deal as the Editing Software allow you to cut and merge the video. It is just time consuming. My conclusion is that this is a reasonably good product but you have to make sure you have a good input source (i.e. get a good connection between your camcorder and the Honestech device.).

For years I have been trying to find a way of converting my old Hi8 camcorder tapes (21 in total) of my 3 children from 0 to adulthood to DVD, and finally found this. It's absolutely brilliant. No bigger than a cigarette packet but with so much technology inside. It's exactly what I wanted. It was important to me that I could edit the tapes to eliminate any messups or footage that's not particularly good or interesting, and with this you can do just that. After downloading and printing off the manual, it was incredibly straightforward. I use my camcorder to transfer the footage to my laptop, and if you convert a whole tape to file (when using Advanced Mode), it will tell you that it's too large and would you like to split it. If you say 'yes' it will split it in any random place and so I prefer to previously split the footage myself into separate events, and then convert them individually, which you can then burn the files to DVD, or keep as files on your laptop. You can then fit them onto a DVD as you wish, and no event has been split. I love it! Since writing this review I have noticed that Keith Lawson is not too happy, as he has to buy DVD's, when he would prefer to have the footage converted to digital and not necessarily to DVD. If you use 'Advanced Mode', it is perfectly NORMAL that you will first of all save this footage as a file on your laptop. You can then transfer it to a memory stick to view directly on your TV/DVD player if you wish, or you can burn it to DVD. It's your choice. I have bought a hard drive to keep all of my memories as files on there, so that should anything happen to the DVD's which I have burned for all my children and family members, we can easily burn another copy. Simples!

At last I got round to dumping my VHS deck but first I wanted to convert my film tapes and also ones I made on a camcorder. The outcome is OK but not to the picture standard of the original. At least I have still have all the recordings of the many holidays. I was thinking that I need not purchase a digital recording if I wanted to start take videos again (for several years I have gone back to a DSLR and prefer it) but no, I would need to buy a digital recorder. There is one annoying 'feature' in the software when using the full edit mode. When cutting during the play back the recorded picture does not align itself back in the frame but gradually moves down to the bottom right of the full screen. This can be overcome by moving the app window to the top right of your screen, minimising the app and then restoring it and hey presto it is all aligned again. There is also a colour band at top and side of the converted film. Did anyone bother to test this? Seems a rushed job which was not finished. Overall view is that is OK but have a looking at other products where the picture quality has a higher rating.

I'm very happy with the device and have now successfully captured hours of VHS. But even in advanced mode the software doesn't support large file editing and is geared more to making DVDs than other file formats. Even accepting the product name I'd have thought editing a project and building to other formats would have made this much more relevant.

I selected this product because I wanted to capture video from sources like set-top boxes so I could turn them into DVDs using Nero. I already have a solution that uses a Dazzle DVC100 device and Ulead Video Studio 4 on XP to do this and it works a treat, very good quality video (even though it's ony SD, and even when displayed in 16:9 aspect ratio). Because this won't work on Windows 7, I chose the Honestech solution to replace it. Although it's billed as a VHS to DVD converter, Honestech's blurb also talks about capture from other video sources that can output video using composite interfaces; the Amazon blurb mentions set-top/satellite boxes (this was from the US site, and I have to assume that Honestech are OK with this). From this, it looked like I was all set. Installing the product was pretty easy but there was no picture from any source when I got it hooked up. Because I'd already downloaded Honestech's latest drivers from their site, I installed those and got a picture. I also installed the latest update to the Honestech capture software proper. The different capture options offered in the product's "advanced" mode are a bit unneccessary IMO; you get a choice to indicate what the eventual medium the video will be written to (DVD, DVD-DL, MPEG file etc), but there's no indication if quality will be adjusted based on this, so it's a bit hard to tell what's going on in the background. I chose the option to write to an MPEG-2 file, and got some captures done. Problem was, the video wasn't very good quality (although the audio was fine, and was synch'd), certainly no where near what I'd expect from my old Dazzle device. I fiddled with all the quality options but wasn't able to up the quality. I tried the same cables that I use with the Dazzle and could rule them out, so opted to contact Honestech's support line to ask them what I could do. To be fair, they came back quite quickly, but the guy seemed to think I was viewing the captured video on a DVD, despite me telling him I'd put the capture on a memory stick to view on my TV. He traded me some stuff about 16:9 aspect ratio not being really supported by PAL and their product (from this type of non-HD source), but didn't offer any advice on how to improve the picture quality above setting the aspect ratio to 4:3 on the TV because it was his belief that my widescreen TV was stretching the picture and producing the quality problem. Perhaps he was talking from the 1990s... As a test, I did indeed try recording and viewing in 4:3... the result : poor quality video, captured and viewed in 4:3 aspect ratio (I could even see the poorer quality in the PC preview window). At that point, I gave it up as a bad job and returned it to Amazon. So, unless it's VHS you want to capture, and it's 4:3 aspect ratio, and you don't mind getting quality that's probably not as good as other products could give you, then go ahead and get this. If you want it to use it with HD camera footage (another of Honestech's claims for the product), then consider popping the SD card or mini-DVD from your camera directly in your PC (or attach it via USB) and use a dedicated video package like Nero to do the authoring, and avoid this product. UPDATE 5th July 2013 After Honestech had basically told me that what I wanted to do (record 16:9 from a set-top box) wasn't supported and I'd sent this item back to Amazon, they got back to me again (after some "manager" intervention I was told) to ask if I'd upload some sample video for them to look at (even though I'd already offered this previously and they hadn't taken it up), and a PC report. My PC was clean, and they told me that their product produced better video than my old Dazzle sample. I shook my head. It so doesn't, and the still pics they used as evidence also showed that to all the other impartial folk I showed them to. They suggested that I produce a DVD and watch that, but that just confirmed what I thought. I've offered to upload the DVD for them, but they've not taken me up on that yet. Meantime, I received the (cheaper - half the price) replacement from Amazon - the Hauppauge USB Live2 which uses (the included) WinTV to watch and record video and, to my relief, that works great in Windows 7 and produces captures of slightly better quality than my old Dazzle (which was pretty good itself), in 16:9 aspect ratio. Needless to say, it's way better than the Honestech capture and I'm just wondering what I was thinking buying their solution in the first place (actually, it was recommended in Computer Active now that I do think about it). That all means that I can escape from my old XP setup, and improve what I'm capturing at the same time ! I haven't tried it with VHS to be fair to Honestech (since their solution is all about VHS capture), but it shouldn't matter what source the video is coming from, as long as it's coming down a composite/S-Video cable, so I'm confident the Hauppauge will be fine if I have to do any of that in future. As a final irony, and just before I deinstalled the Honestech software from my PC, I tried a capture using it tied to the new Hauppauge kit and... it produced as good a capture as the WinTV software. To me, then, it's the Honestech capture device that's the problem and, if their tech support get back to me again, I'll fill them in on this because I think it's a constructive build for them, and I think it lets my PC and overall set up off the hook (I'm assuming I didn't unluckily get a dodgy capture device, but we'll never know now - and it never occurred to the Honestech tech folk at any point). They may well have read this (UK) review of their product (they're in Austin, Texas I believe), and may have cut me off considering I've already sent their kit back (which I didn't tell them). But perhaps it'd be in their interest to look at what I've captured since it'd be to their advantage to get this feedback rather than mine !

This is a useful up to a point. I have transferred my vhs films to dvd using this item quite successfully until last week when I encountered a monumental problem. All my films have so far been about 20 minutes long. These transferred fine. Then I had to transfer a video which contained 80 edits and had a final running time of 70 minutes. With this one video I have encountered four runtime errors so the program stops completely and loses eveything you have done - usually after I had been working on the video for five hours or so. On other occasions the program screen showing the editing page completely disappeared and left me with the desktop screen and, no, it wasn't minimized. So, after a week of trying to get this one video transferred, I am no further forward. I just don't understand how the smaller videos were ok but this particular one is such a pain. I've given up now but I will continue using this software for the smaller films as it is easy to use. It seems if you have an 'edit heavy' video which is over an hour long you may encounter problems.

I bought this as I have lots of video family films I took and am no longer able to see. It has been great to get them converted to disc and the children have enjoyed seeing themselves when they were small. Well worth the money. It was a slow process but once done is a good job completed.

a more that acceptable and very compact piece of gear to preserve memories. very simple to use with good results