Canopus ADVC-100 vs. HV - 350 TV card

[stanross]

Ok, I'm going to buy a product for capturing television and video signals. I hear good things about both products although they are dissimilar in many ways.

Why would you buy one versus the other ?

They both use hardware encoding to achieve capture although, the tv card has a tuner and is self-sufficient; whereas the canopus requires standalone to profer signal.

Does the canopus have video-out ? Is the software that ships with each provide a clear comparative advantage. Is it purely a matter of personal choice ?

Thanks,
Stan

[kosekjm]

Hi there,

Let me start off by saying that I don't own either of these items, but I have been looking at them very hard. I'm looking at a capture device to transfer a few vhs tapes (wedding, kids birthday etc) to DVD and possibly start playing with PVR capabilities. That being said, I'm probably going to get a PVR-350 (Which I'm guessing was what your title really meant if not I apologize and wonder what is a HV-350)

From a recently perusal at the Canopus website, the ADVC-100 does have video out. It is located on the back of the card. It has the following on the back (From left to right):

DV I/O
S-Video In
A In (No idea what that is)
S-Video Out
Compsite Video Out
R Audio Out
L Audio Out
Power in
Power button

Here's their web if you want:
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/advc-100/pm_advc-100.asp

If you read the page closely, it appears that there is no software that comes with the ADVC-100

As I said at the start, I don't own any of these, but am looking at getting the 350 (Or quite possibly the 250 and save $50). The biggest reason for this over the ADVC-100 is the tv tuner built into the card. I would like to possibly use this to replace my VCR and use Tivo like functions (program scheduling and what not), and if I had the 100, I would still need a tuner of some type to plug into the 100. Since the 100 is just a capture device, it isn't going to do what I want it to do.

From what I have read, the ADVC-100 does capturing phenomenally, but I want the other functions as well.

I have a friend who has a PVR-250 and the captures he has shown me (Only vcd/SVCD since he doesn't have a DVD burner yet) look absolutely incredible. With the 350 (and 250 as well) you get software for the dvd authoring, basic MPEG editing and the TV capture functions (although a lot of people don't seem to like the tv capture software when compared to other options.

I did open a post asking for people's input on the 350. Here's that link:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=214159&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

Ultimately, if all I wanted was to transfer videos (and discounting the difference in the prices of these two products), I would probably choose the ADVC 100 based on what I have read here and at other sites. For what I want to do with the card involves more than simply capturing, I'm going with the 350.

kosekjm

[skateni]

I on the other hand have both and what the previous poster said is true. I have no problems whatsoever with the ADVC-100. Think of it as a analog-digital bridge. It converts your analog video to digital ( and it's in AVI format, 1 hour of video takes up about 13 Gb of hard disk space ) and it doesn't come with any software, no in built tv tuner and you need a firewire card in your PC for it to work but because it is AVI, you can use any software out there to capture or encode the files with no problems. So far i have not encountered any audio/video sync problems with the unit and love it.

As for the 350, it is a different animal all together. it has a built-in tuner and also comes with a hardware MPEG2 encoder/decoder. It captures in MPEG2 ( 1 hour roughly 2 Gb depending on the bitrate you capturing ) and there are some softwares that doesn't like the MPEG2. It comes with softwares that can make your computer into a glorified VCR. On occassions I get audio/sync problems ( but due to me trying to capture to a networked drive , due to the MPEG file being corrupt before data packets are written to the hard disk )

If you need to TV tuner and don't plan to do a lot of editing with your capture, go for the 350. If you plan to do major editing to your captured video, go for the ADVC-100.