Dazzle DVC-80 USB... what's the secret?

[RKM]

Okay, I bought a Dazzle DVC-80 USB capture device to transfer my Hi-8 tapes to VCD and I have successfully done so on three seperate vcds. The big problem is that the quality is very poor... worse than regular vhs looks and I wasn't expecting miracles but I was told that vcds should equal vhs in quality.
The biggest reason I wanted to go this route is that I have relatives in Europe and I want to send them vcds (PAL format, of course) but after viewing what I have done so far I think they'll wonder why I bothered. Does anyone have any tips on how to optimize the capture process to get rid of the extreme blockiness? I have been using the included "MovieMaker 5" software as VirtualDub can't get audio from the DVC-80 on my machine no matter what I do. I have had very little trouble with MovieMaker and it works well but as I stated before the quality of the VCD is very poor.
TIA

[kitty]

If you read the capture card list, the comments on this device are not very favorable:
http://www.vcdhelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCard=Dazzle+DVC-80&Search=Search

You may consider a different capture device.

[RKM]

Uggghhh! I was hoping for better but I guess I'll just use this thing for web streaming captures... there's no way I could dupe someone into buying it from me and I've owned it too long to return it. Should have looked and asked here earlier... oh well. Can someone point me in the direction of a decent capture card/device that will meet my needs? I won't be owning a dvd burner in the foreseeable future and I would like to transfer existing Hi-8 tapes to vcd for viewing by relatives both in Europe and Canada. I would like the final product (ie: quality of vcd) to look as good as a transfer to vhs. The main reason for all this is the ability to create PAL format vcd's for viewing by the European relatives. My system consists a 1.2GHz. T'bird and 256Mb. SDRam and a smallish HD 30gig. of which 15 is useable for capturing... I will be looking at adding another HD in the near future.
TIA,
Robin