Editorial Review:

Item Description:
Dazzle DVD Recorder provides a simple, affordable way to make high-quality home video. Let your friends and family enjoy movies on professional-looking DVDs, complete with menus and chapters. This plug-and-play USB 2.0 device captures video to DVD, directly from VCRs, camcorders or other video equipment. Add your own menu and chapter functions for simple navigation. Burn your video to a DVD without first copying files to the PC hard drive, saving valuable time and space. Combined with the unique wizard-based, friendly interface of the Dazzle Instant DVD Recorder software, the powerful Dazzle video capture device allows you to quickly and affordably back up personal video collections.

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Rating: - * Great if you don't mind spending some time figuring it out. ...
I bought this to transfer the hours and hours of VHS and camcorder tape to DVD. I installed the 3 discs, pluged in my camcorder and the program did not read the device. I uninstalled and then reinstalled. This time I could capture the video and edit. The Dazzle USB capture worked great. I spent no time doing this. The difficult part was burning. I have burned hundreds of DVD copied using other progams and my computer is new and bigger than necessary. It would never finish burning. It would freeze. After saving to my hard drive using various setting and trying to burn using various settings, nothing. I used the online support, which gave me some other ideas. After spending 6 hours trying to burn I gave up and went to bed. I got up this morining after restarting the computer and everything worked perfectly. Sometimes you have to save what you are doing and get out and restart the program. The online manual is vague, but I am not a dummy and after a day messing with the program, I feel like I know what I am doing.

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Rating: - * Not Vista friendly ...
Although the box had a Vista sticker on it, unable to get it to run on my new Vista machine. I downloaded several programs claiming to get it to work, but still quirky. In one word - Disappointing.

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Rating: - * Great product ...
This product functioned as advertised. It was easy to setup and run. I converted many hours of VCR tapes to digital video. I definitely recommmend this product.

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Rating: - * Great, better than i expected!!! ...
Wow, thought it wouldn't be good, and man was i wrong. Setup was easy and only took a few minutes. No problems. After everything was installed I took it for a testrun. Turns out you can record full quality (the quality your actually watching on the television.) It's perfect. Also few for people with not much hard drive space. Don't worry about it. The editing software that comes with it will make all the space taking movies turn very small after youedit them. This product is perfect. BUYERS - DON'T BEWARE!

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Rating: - * Do Your Homework ...
I walked past this product several times at the at Staple where I work. I had long wanted to get a product to transfer all of my old VCR tapes over to DVD. I then finally decided to take the leap. I purchased the device; however, before opening the package, I did some reading and research. Since I am currently dual-booting XP and Vista I wanted to ensure I had the current drivers for both OSes. I went to Pinnical's web site and what do you know -- they had updated drivers. I downloaded them. I wanted to see if there was updated software. Well what do you know again? They had updated software that I again downloaded. Next I looked around to see what the ratings and customer reviews I could find on this product. I read every review I came acrossed (the good and the bad; paying particular attention to the fanbois and the ranting freaks on the fringes). The average rating (discounting the extemes at both ends) came out to be about be 2 out of 3 stars on the 3 star scales, 3.5 stars on the 5 star scales, 65% to 70% on the 0%-100% scales -- not the best ratings on a product, but definately not the worst and well within what I'd call acceptable for my needs. The harshest critizims came from users who expected more from the DVD authoring software or installation problems (that have mostly been addressed with the aforementioned updates).

I installed the updated drivers and PADDOW! It installed with no problem in both XP and in Vista. I installed the software and BUHBANG! It too installed with not a single hiccup. Then I plugged in the device and fired up my VCR then ran a test recording. It work without a hitch. From software install to making a recording all took about 5 minutes. The darn thing is foolproof.

I will say that the included software IS NOT the most robust you'll find on the consumer level. It is overly simplied and gives you little in the way of control or options. It is simple software for simple users. But I am not interested in the software in the least. I have other software for my DVD authoring. My only concern was to get my VCR tapes into digital format and the device does that with aplomb.

If you are looking for the "best" hardware and software combination and state-of-the-art technology, perhaps you should look elsewhere to spend your $15,000 to $25,000 for such equipment. However, if you are looking for a consumer-level product that performs adequately and as advertised for a good price, this is the device for you and WELL worth every penny.