What's your favorite USB video capture device?

What's your favorite USB video capture device?

I have an old ADS Tech thing here that isn't compatible with Win7 and I can't even get it to work in XP anymore because the manufacturers website doesn't have drivers for it. It's horrible anyway so I'd rater find a new one that doesn't stop whenever you're trying to capture an old VHS and it hits a bad spot on the tape.

In my robotics lab, we just use Pinnacle Dazzle DVC 100 - it's good enough for what we need (getting video from old-school cameras that output S-Video or Composite) - at £50 it's reasonable and compact, the design is quite eye-catching. The latency isn't too bad either. It presents itself to Windows as a standard DirectShow video source, so you can easily build applications around it (assuming you don't fall over backwards with DirectShow's steep learning curve).

There are dedicated VHS digitizer devices that have a digital signal path as soon as possible (i.e. without the modulation to composite video) - and don't forget S-VHS VCRs that provide S-Video output. However high-end VHS readers are horrendously expensive, and even S-VHS VCRs cost upwards of £100, even when bought second-hand (as a recent personal experience with eBay has shown).

If you're just digitizing your old tapes might it be more cost-effective to outsource it to another company - that's what I ended up doing and I'm happy with the results.

@W3bbo:Well, the newest version does look pretty good.
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Dazzle/Dazzle+Video+Archiving/Dazzle+DVD+Recorder+Plus.htm

I use a Hauppauge WinTV hvr 980/950

It is compatible with Windows 7, 64 bit and 32 bit.

I keep seeing Hauppauge stuff allot. I think I like the software that comes with the Dazzle stuff better though.

2 days ago, Proton2 wrote

I use a Hauppauge WinTV hvr 980/950

It is compatible with Windows 7, 64 bit and 32 bit.

2 days ago, Proton2 wrote

I use a Hauppauge WinTV hvr 980/950

It is compatible with Windows 7, 64 bit and 32 bit.

Hauppauge was good, right up until the turn of the millenium - when they had a near monopoly on PC TV software that wasn't absolutely awful. With WMC, TV tuner hardware has been comoditised and quality from Hauppauge has suffered as they try to compete with everyone else who can undercut them on both price and quality (and Hauppauge still ships their tuners with separate and unnecessary GUI applications that are growing increasingly awful in their execution).

I note that it's almost 2012 and Hauppauge does not make any dual-DVB-T2 tuners - I got an internal tuner from Blackgold Tech (bonus: it also does S-Video-in and Composite-in) and I'm very happy with it.