ADS Tech DVDXpress DX2

Down to basics. My Mom wanted to transfer a TON of old VHS tapes to DVD/VCD but her computer is pretty weak for that kind of processor power. After looking around for external Hardware encoders I found this one and bought two of them (One for myself).

Before this box I was using a Conexant PCI device, along with the Optical Dolby capture through my sound card: It took everything a 3.2G Extreme 4GB mem could do in order to capture the video (MPG2/Joint Stereo). I captured to pure MPG2/joint stereo and edited in Ulead Pro.

Hardware encoding is NICE, although updates in codec (technology) can leave you behind. I have noticed that this setup does not tend to crash the machine like the old setup did.

DivX is a small disappointment, but not surprising either. The DivX uses a single pass (on the fly) encoding and that cannot be changed as you are recording live, But; the codec for the capture and edit utilities are tied to the DivX Community (free) Codec, so editing is only through the 4 basic profiles for that codec. I changed and started capturing to the hard drive with MPG4 (4K) and then edited with ULead (and the DivX Pro Codec) to get my professional features back.

Bundled Software:
The CaptureWiz is ok, it has everything you need to do the job; Picture Control (Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation, Sharpness), Audio Control (although a touch limited), PAL / NTSC, Capture size, and codec type. It is a disappointment that the drivers are not compliant with other DV type software to capture directly to better editing software; but that is not so bad to cause problems, just an irritation.
Editing: your best bet is to buy a good editing program; I bought the latest DivX Author (at a discount) and was surprised in how well it works; it is not as good as Ulead Professional but it is more than enough for what most need and a WHOLE lot cheaper by far. The bundled editor is just simply not up to doing any real editing.

Overall: This is a very good setup for someone who wants an easy way to capture video (Old VHS's and the like) to CD or DVD format and it is HIGHLY recommended -- if my mom can run it, anyone can!