Home > Consumer Reviews > Adaptec ADAPTC VIDEOH DVD MEDIA-CENTER 2310 USB KIT ( 2042900 )

VideOh! DVD -- USB 2 / MPEG 1 & 2 Video capture device.[]

Bottom line, this product is NOT worth it.

The software supplied (ArcSoft Showbiz) would not even recognize the unit, despite the fact that the XP op system could see it (though not use it). Adaptec admits that this is the case, and their only option is to use the included (and very simplistic) DVD-recording software for capturing, but that is so limited that you can't even edit your video. I had to find and use third party software (MovieMill & VideoVegas) before I could even get the unit to perform.

No driver or software updates have yet been made available for Windows XP. When using XP, unless you have the unit plugged into the USB port and on at all times, you may have to re-install the drivers when you want to use it (I have had to do this at least a dozen times so far). For an external unit, this is highly unusual, and needless to say, rather inconvenient... especially for a laptop user such as myself.

After 3 months of use so far, the unit has stopped working correctly. It sporatically loses or fails to recognize video input, and will no longer accept video from analog tape sources (vhs, vhs-c, camcorder 8MM). Only DVD and sat/cable come through as stable video. All tape input is shaky/wavering, despite using several different tapes and tape decks, and the unit's alternate S-video input. I bought this product to transfer older home movies to DVD-R, and now cannot even continue.

Support is nearly non-existent... Drivers aren't updated and the support department has not responded to emails. The software is not supported at all. The manufacturer's web site has a question and answer forum, but it is hardly helpful. As is typical with most tech products these days, you have to hope another customer has solved the problems the manufacturer won't.

Avoid this product!

I can't tell you the frustration I have had using this product. After a few months, it stopped working with any consistency. In the middle of burning dvds, it freezes up and just stops burning, with no explanation. I have wasted about 50 dvds trying tho burn them unsuccessfully. ADAPTEC support is horrible...after three months, they charge $45.00 plus per hour to give any help. This is the worst product I have ever bought, from the most greedy, unhelpful company. I called customer service to complain, and they didn't seem to care at all if their customers are dissatisfied. A real shame.
I hesitated to give it 1 star, as it deserves 0.
A real rip-off.

For reference, this product is only different from Videoh!DVD by the presense of TV Tuner, the rest is identical (and seems to be identical on the hardware level). So it's all applicable to that product too.

I really did not got so far as to try the TV tuner, I was completely set off by this product when trying video capture. My computer is three times faster and has four times more memory than the minimum declared as necessary for this product, and, of course, I use USB 2.0, and still less than a minute of capturing video with minimal settings resulted in blinking orange LED meaning ERROR. In fact, I even did not had to capture video, just gettign to capture screen without actual capturing (no copying to disk) resulted in the same problem.

As I understand from my observations, this piece of hardware just was not able to really encode video stream in real time. Granted, I used somewhat noisy tape which is a challenge for compressing/encoding, but is not that what you'd like to have video capture for -- to archive old family videos?

And for TV, well, may be you will have some functionality, but with getting accustomed with it and usingwidely, you'll quickly get the same level of frustration, that I had. Don't waste your money on this junk.

I have a laptop and I'll be using my new Adaptec VideOH most to watch TV and schedule recordings.
I was 90% satisfied with this card when I first installed. The CD that came with the card was bad. Couldn't read well on my laptop. I had to copy the files from the CD using another computer, in which the CD also didn't read well but after a while it copied all the files. From there on it installed everything perfectly well. It comes with WinDVR 3, which was, at that point, amazing. It does have amazing features. You can press PAUSE on the TV, go out to eat, then come back and continue watching, even skipping the comercials. Very nice! Works all the time. The recording quality is amazing. I couldn't tell the difference from the original. The picture quality of the card is out of this world. No USB problems at all, on my XP. The Program Guide is also very nice, despite the fact it is just a webpage. But it works. You can use the webpage as part of the program. They talk to each other, so you can schedule a recording of a show, schedule a reminder, and so on from that page.
Now the bad, VERY BAD things:
Your first record scheduling experiences might be very frustrating! You will see that the WinDVR schedule DOES NOT WORK AT ALL! Go ahead and schedule as much as you want. Waste your time. That unless you're part of the few who does not use the "automatically adjust clock for daylight saving" in the Windows clock setup menu, with which selected the schedule do not work. The worst part is that Intervideo's support page does not even mention a problem on the scheduling of WinDVR. In a matter of fact, their support page does not mention anything useful at all! Going to Adaptec's webpage, just a quick search on their knowledge base is enough to find the solution for that.
Another problem: I keep losing my channel setup everytime I restart my PC. I almost never restart, only standby or hybernate, and its also possible to save and load the channel setup, but that's another annoying little thing WinDVR has.
Now a bad thing about the Adaptec card itself: changing channels takes about a second to take place. So if you want to go from CNN to Cartoon Network, you better remember the channel number.

Honestly, computer troubleshooting is not for me. Intervideo made a software with clear, aparent bugs, didn't published them on the support page, and Adaptec shipped that software along with their card without any advise about those problems either inside or outside the box. I did a little research and found out that those bugs exists since at least October/03. No fixes at all as of today Dec 24/03! How come lots of people including myself found those bugs in the first day as I've seen in many foruns, and Adaptec/Intervideo, specially Intervideo, didn't find 'em? Or didn't fix 'em? Neither advised about 'em? Now, why should it be me to enjoy my holiday finding a solution for those bugs? Both of those companies get my 1 STAR review. Because I bought one of the most expensive TV cards out there, and still it gave me headaches. And because they could have just printed on the manual: turn off the daylight savings until we fix the problem. But I'm now very satisfied with both the hardware and software. It's out of this world all the features and options, specially the image quality. And I will give it the best of my recommendations, in the future.

I purchased this yesterday for converting old home camcorder tapes to DVD and it's working as advertised with good quality.

I haven't bothered reading any of the instructions and it's working fine. No hassle installation.

The digital output is good quality.

Can't give five stars though as I havent tried to record anything from TV yet and the software does seem a little limited in editing options (although haven't read any help or tutorials).