[Alex Ethridge]

I purchesed a conversion box a few years ago for about $200 and never used it even once before I was fool enough to loan it to someone who moved hundreds of miles away who also says now he doesn't have it. It was an ADS Tech box; I don't remember the model.

Now I'm up against the task of buying another and I want some advice on what to choose, how/why to choose and what features/specifications to look for.

I'll be converting some old VHS and Hi8 to a digital format and I understand there are devices that have different rates (megs per minute, I guess), FPS and color depth.

I've seen some cheapies on e-bay for under 20 dollars; but, it seems too cheap to do the job. Surely there are plenty of gotcha's in one that cheap.

I saw this one at ADSTech.com ($50).
http://www.adstech.com/products/USBA...d=USBAV-192-EF

Would it be as good for my limited needs as this one ($90):
http://www.adstechnologies.com/index...&products_id=2

Then there are these, one with and one without software ($180 and $200):
http://www.adstech.com/products/API-...id=API-558-EFS
https://www.adstechnologies.com/inde...&products_id=3

Advice and technical understanding will be appreciated.

[fairnooks]

Since its VHS and Hi8 you don't need anything too expensive for more than 720x480 (or 576) capture. Because Hi8 is good quality, I would probably go with the $90 device since it looks like it does harware conversion as a stand-alone, whereas the cheaper option relies on the computer's transport and processing power. That's an important consideration when using USB 2.0 as the transport protocol in both cases. With hardware conversion outside of the computer, it can be fed down the USB cable as a digital file at leisure, but if the raw video is just converted and fed down the USB cable, there's a chance either quality will suffer or frames will get dropped if the USB transport speed is not consistently fast enough to handle all the data.

To utilize the power of the computer its usually best to get a PCI capture card, thereby bypassing the bottleneck that USB 2.0 can impose.

[Alex Ethridge]

Thanks, those are good concepts to understand--and things I had no knowledge of.

When one knows so little about it as I do . . .

[johnebadbak]

www.leadtek.com have pci card digital/analogue