Rating: 
Summary: Problems with drivers and Syncing - Don't Buy
Review: Drivers for XP gave trouble. Had fewer problems with Win ME.However, this baby has problems syncing sound and video. Check all forums on the web, this is a problem everyone has. Doesn't look like ADS is about to fix it any time soon. A definite DON'T BUY.
Rating: 
Summary: USB Instant DVD is fantastic!!!
Review: I am extremely happy with this product. It is extremely easy to use and comes with all the software you need to capture, edit, and burn your videos to DVD. This external device captures and compresses your videos to MPEG-2 (DVD-quality) so it takes up less disk space on your computer because the video already comes in compressed. And, it does not drop any frames. You can then edit and save your videos with no loss of quality whatsoever. Well worth it considering its low price!
Rating:
Summary: Find a different solution
Review: I bought the ADS Tech Instant DVD +DV after reading some great professional reviews in some of the online magazines. I was really excited to get this product. I now wish I'd paid more attention to the actual user reviews, as near as I can tell the people writing the magazine reviews must have never actually tried to use this product. Put simply... it doesn't work. Believe the user reviews, this is a bad product. I wanted to transfer some old VHS videotapes to DVD, and I also got the +DV option thinking that it would be a nice way to add Firewire capabilities to my USB 2.0 based system for use with my new Digital camcorder. The Instant DVD box failed miserably to deliver on either of these goals. Using the DV input with my digital camera I had strange artifacts start to appear on the screen. There were weird blotchy sections that started out small, but then grew as the capture progressed until half the screen was covered. While transferring my old analog VHS tapes, certain sections of the tapes would cause the box to completely lock up. When I could get a capture that didn't freeze, I couldn't get a capture where the audio and video would stay in sync. I tried multiple tapes, multiple DVD mastering programs, even multiple computer systems, nothing worked. This was simply making DVD's straight from the captured footage, I wasn't transcoding anything. The only thing that worked for me was taking a nice clean analog signal from my digital camera (since the digital DV capture didn't work.) That was the only thing that stayed in sync, any input that was less than perfect, like 10 or 15 year old VHS tapes, forget about it. I sent several email queries to the ADS Tech support, after giving up on their telephone support after waiting forever on hold. Other than the automated "Well get right back to you as soon as possible" responses, I've heard nothing else from them. That was six weeks ago... and I'm not holding my breath. If you buy this product, you're definitely on your own. I've long since returned my box, and chalked it up to a learning experience. Here are a few things to think about, first of all, do you really want a box that converts straight to MPEG2 format? If you want to change *anything*... clip out a few scenes, add a title screen, join several clips together... you have to reencode the file anyway. By uncompressing then recompressing you're sacrificing quality, and not gaining anything from the built in compression. Also, I didn't realize at the time, but you can get a Firewire card with a cable for almost the same price as just a cable... it's cheap, and much better than spending all the extra money for the +DV option. I now own a Canopus ADVC-100, it's more expensive but worth every penny. More importantly... it actually works! That's much more than I can say about the ADS Tech Instant DVD.
Rating:
Summary: Find a different solution
Review: I bought the ADS Tech Instant DVD +DV after reading some great professional reviews in some of the online magazines. I was really excited to get this product. I now wish I'd paid more attention to the actual user reviews, as near as I can tell the people writing the magazine reviews must have never actually tried to use this product. Put simply... it doesn't work. Believe the user reviews, this is a bad product. I wanted to transfer some old VHS videotapes to DVD, and I also got the +DV option thinking that it would be a nice way to add Firewire capabilities to my USB 2.0 based system for use with my new Digital camcorder. The Instant DVD box failed miserably to deliver on either of these goals. Using the DV input with my digital camera I had strange artifacts start to appear on the screen. There were weird blotchy sections that started out small, but then grew as the capture progressed until half the screen was covered. While transferring my old analog VHS tapes, certain sections of the tapes would cause the box to completely lock up. When I could get a capture that didn't freeze, I couldn't get a capture where the audio and video would stay in sync. I tried multiple tapes, multiple DVD mastering programs, even multiple computer systems, nothing worked. This was simply making DVD's straight from the captured footage, I wasn't transcoding anything. The only thing that worked for me was taking a nice clean analog signal from my digital camera (since the digital DV capture didn't work.) That was the only thing that stayed in sync, any input that was less than perfect, like 10 or 15 year old VHS tapes, forget about it. I sent several email queries to the ADS Tech support, after giving up on their telephone support after waiting forever on hold. Other than the automated "Well get right back to you as soon as possible" responses, I've heard nothing else from them. That was six weeks ago... and I'm not holding my breath. If you buy this product, you're definitely on your own. I've long since returned my box, and chalked it up to a learning experience. Here are a few things to think about, first of all, do you really want a box that converts straight to MPEG2 format? If you want to change *anything*... clip out a few scenes, add a title screen, join several clips together... you have to reencode the file anyway. By uncompressing then recompressing you're sacrificing quality, and not gaining anything from the built in compression. Also, I didn't realize at the time, but you can get a Firewire card with a cable for almost the same price as just a cable... it's cheap, and much better than spending all the extra money for the +DV option. I now own a Canopus ADVC-100, it's more expensive but worth every penny. More importantly... it actually works! That's much more than I can say about the ADS Tech Instant DVD.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Product
Review: I bought this product about a year ago and it has worked great for me! Installation was easy, no problems. It captures great video in Windows 98 and Windows Me. However, in Windows XP, I was not able to capture video at 5 mb/s, only at 3 mb/s and 4 mb/s. I was able to convert my entire analog video collection with outstanding quality to DVD with this product. The only thing that annoyed me is that it captures video at 704 x 480 instead of 720 x 480, requiring a conversion of some type before it is able to be burned on to a DVD.
Rating:
Summary: ADS works fine...1st time
Review: I had few problems installing these units on two different PC's. The CAPWIZ is somewhat flakey (V2.0) at times
and requires exiting and reentering the CAPWIZ program. I found this utility to work the best with the unit inplace of
the Video Studio. Unit does a fine job in the capture process and
creates a presentable MPEG1 (SVCD,MPEG1,MPEG2)..I Found VCD resolution encoding to be less than ideal,
Rating:
Summary: Not for XP
Review: I have a 1.7gig P4 running XP and found this product to be very unstable which is a nice way to say it doesn't work. The hardware would always hang my computer no matter which software I used with it. Also a note to their clueless tech support, my Maxtor hard drive was the cause for the sound and video being out of sync, when I reinstalled XP using a Western Digital drive the sync problem went away but not the instability. Believe Microsoft when they say use of an unsigned driver may make your system unstable.
Rating:
Summary: Piece of grabage - STAY AWAY!
Review: I have about 20 hours invested in this thing. It DOES NOT WORK!
I am running a new install of XP on a new Pentium 4.
The only good thing about this package is the third party Ulead software that is included. As for the ADS software, I continue to get errors when I try to playback video:
ADSTech CapWiz Application has encountered a problem and needs
to close... This is the second PC I have tried to install this on, and it is the same story. I have followed the instructions over and over again. What a waste of time and money!
Rating: 
Summary: Sharkfin is incorrect
Review: I rated this in the middle because I don't yet own it. After much research though, I've ordered this item. Reports indicate it works quite well as an MPEG2 hardware encoder. I may update again after I've used it. In all fairness to this product, Sharkfin's review includes a reference to the lines at the bottom of the screen. Those lines are glitches from the heads switching on and off between page 1 and 2 of the video input signal coming from his/her player/camera (aka "paging"). The heads are positioned 180 degrees apart on a drum, so as 1 head leaves the tape, the other is arriving. The leaving head gets switched off and the arriving head gets switched on. That way, there is (should be) little or no static seen when the heads aren't on the tape reading video. Normally, these signal glitches can't be seen on a TV as they appear below the bottom of most screens. On a computer monitor, they can be seen because monitors display more video information. Supply any video tape composite signal to a computer monitor and you'll see these. Depending on the condition of the vcr (physical head alignment and electrical switching alignment), the glitch may be big or small. As to my purchase, I hope s/he's as wrong about the rest of this product as s/he is about this. I don't want to waste my money on another product trying to convert video tapes to DVD.
Rating:
Summary: Instant Piece of [junk] is more like it
Review: I was unable to get the driver for Win XP Pro to work. When I had problems I went back, erased my drive and did a clean install of Win XP, twice. The second time I was very careful about the order in which I loaded the driver, but to no avail. The applications that came with it kept hanging and never worked. Instant DVD is a total piece of [junk]. I regret wasting this much time on a product that does not seem to have been tested with Win XP. I contract this with Pinnace's product. I installed Pimmance PCTV Pro and it was easy to install and works like a charm.
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