Hello. I because interested in creating my own vcds because I wanted to convert my old vhs collection before the tapes corrupt. I quickly discovered that this is a task best done on a DESKTOP pc. Unfortunately My computer is a notebook... This instantly limits my selection of device to a usb (1.1) device.

My computer is a toshiba sattelite 1800-s254 pentium III 1ghz 256mb of ram 20 gig hard drive. I have an external cd burner. My confusion comes in selecting a capture device. I could use a usb tv tuner... however my research indicates using a device with composite video inputs will produce better results... so I have come up with the following ideas:

Dazzle dvc 80
pinnacle linx video input cable
belkin usb videobusII
Adaptec VideOh! cd
ADS instant videocd

My further reading tells me that all of the above devices are pretty much the same in their capture resolutions except the adaptec videoh! which seems to refuse to list their capture resolution anywhere on their website or even on the box! I went to compusa and found it on the shelf and they simply will not list the capture resolution anywhere...

When reading reviews for thebelkin videobus II on this site I read an article in which somebody states that the reason the captured video quality the videobus produces is so bad is the chip it uses inside... it's made by zoran and supposedly uses a crappy compression algorithim so no matter which program you use... your vcds will look horrible. He suggests that readers go to www.zoran.com and look at the list of products that use this chip.

So I did that and zoran's site said that all of the products I listed above (except for ads tech instant vcd and adaptec videoh cd) use their chip. This made me decide not to use any of those devices especially since dazzle and pinnacle got such terrible reviews anyway. It also listed some usb tuners (ati and happauge) that used their chip so I stopped considering them too. This Leaves me with the ads tech conversion device and te adaptec videoh cd.

First off I don't want want to buy the adaptec videoh because I can't find out the capture resolution... and I figure that if it was any good the manufacturer would make that figure well known... also the next model up (videoh dvd) got terrible reviews, and it's supposed to be better! so I reasoned that it probably is junk.

So that leaves me with the ads tech... With only one review that I an find I'm cautious, especially since that person reported that it dropped 30% of the frames... But I really don't want to buy anything with the zoran chip if it's really no good... so what do I do? I could buy a usb 2.0 device, spend lots more money because it has better capture resolution, buy why? I don't care about mpeg2 or svcd. My goal is simple I just want to create mpeg1 files from vhs tapes and archive my old movies to vcd so obviously I don't need enormous resolution.

Also today I found the avermedia usb tv tuner with composite video inputs... But buying a device that does more than I need it to deems to be a waste of rescources... plus it hade a very wide spectrum of satisfaction among the reviewers which leads me to question it's quality.

Can somebody please help point me in the right direction for selecting a device that's right for me? all advice is greatly appreciated... Thanks in Advance

-E