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

I just bought this so I can watch and record tv on my laptop like tivo. I haven't had a chance to test the recording features but I was able to get pretty good live tv pictures using USB 2.0.

One problem I had with tv tuners (not just with this particular one) for computers was that there was no way of changing channels on cable boxes. This makes their tivo-like functionality to drop considerably for those of us that use cable boxes/satellite descramblers. One workaround I found was to use a 3rd party software from Snapstream called Personal Video Station (I found version 3.2 to work well with this particular card). Personal Video Station allows you to use an IR emitter (also known as an IR blaster) that, when connected to your computer, allows you to program your computer to change channels automatically like a remote control. The IR blaster is also available from Snapstream. I have not yet gotten my IR blaster yet so I cannot comment on how well it works. I will update this review after I have everything set up.

Personal Video Station also offers lots of other cool features that I will not go into here. Another side note though is that I can get slightly better picture quality using personal video station if I tweak some settings.

I've since found that the IR blaster found on the snapstream website did not work with my cable box. I've since bought a different one, myBlaster (do a google search to find it) that performs flawlessly once you configure it to work with snapstream.

I sometimes get crashes or bad recordings using this tuner with snapstream (very rarely now, I don't know if its because of the free updates to the latest version of snapstream or tweaking of windows xp but hey it doesn't matter as long as it works right?). Actually, I left my computer on for about 3 weeks while I was away during the holidays and it didn't crash at all during that time and recorded all the shows I scheduled. I'm very satisfied with my setup. It changed completely the way I watch TV.

I bought the PAL version from Amazon UK some time back and thought it was a good product initially. subsequently i realised adaptec released this product just to show there presence in A/V market as the support for this product is pathetic, price in unreasonable and most of all apart from bundled crappy software no third party software vendors support it. you cannot even upgrade the bundled windvr to the new retail version. I use to think adaptec products are good but not anymore. so buyers beware of this.

When I started shopping around for a video capture card/device I was pretty overwhelmed with the myriad of nearly endless (yet no-two identical) choices. I finally decided I needed a USB device as opposed to a PCI card, with a TV tuner and an on-board, hardware encoder (I found that most claim to have "real-time MPEG encoding" as if that actually meant something...but few are equipped with actual hardware encoders.) I got the Adaptec VideOH! DVD Media-Center USB device over Memorial Day weekend, have used it constantly over the last three months and I've got to say that I'm pretty happy with it.

Installation of the hardware and updated drivers as well as the two primary software programs took only a few minutes...I had no headaches, no issues, no conflicts...everything immediately worked. I've used the device to convert material on approximately 40 VHS tapes to DVD and the results have really exceeded my expectations. After reading a lot of articles on tape-to-DVD transfer, I wasn't expecting very satisfying results, but I've been VERY surprised at the quality of the DVDs I've made out of old VHS videotape. Of course they're not "DVD quality" but the results look at least as good as the old tapes (in a much tidier package).

As with most hardware/software bundles, a lot of people gripe (myself included). I'm "famous" for my disatisfaction with included software and am never happy until I've tested every possible program and selected the "best". That being said, I've found that the software from Sonic and Intervideo seem pretty adequate. Sonic's MyDVD 5.2 works fine for capturing signal from analog video devices (like a VCR), but I don't use it for editing or authoring due to its limitations and bizarre need to re-encode everything it touches. Intervideo's WinDVR 3 seems perfectly capable of handling TV functions and recording, although I haven't used it much. I've just started playing around with a trial of Snapstream's Beyond TV (both BeyondTV and Frey's SageTV support the Adaptec device).

So, overall, very pleased with Adaptec, except for the usual complaints: more robust software would be better and if they could work with a few more software companies to broaden our choices it would be very nice.

Having recently bought adaptec's "Media-Center", I have found it somewhat difficult to work with and disapointing. Several problems are evident when trying to record from TV feed as mentioned in some of the reviews for this product.

As if that wasn't enough of a problem , I also found out after contacting customer service that one can ONLY use the device w/ the two provided applications that come bundled with the package. Indeed very limited in my opinion especially for such an expensive device.

For all parties interested: I suggest just using a firewire/i.link cable if camcorder/camera supports it. Windows automatically and usually detects your device. Also, there are cheaper capture devices if all you need is to capture from a device except TV. As far as software, I've found that windows movie maker is a lot easier to work with and it worked best for my case. Good luck to all of you on your purchase!

I recently bought the Adaptec videoh media center and right from the start I had problems. When trying to install the drivers I would get an error saying that this hard-ware cannot be installed. I called the tech support. They sent me an email on how to install the drivers which didn't work, so I called tech support again. They had never heard of this problem, but told me that the problem was with my computer. So I reformatted my hard-drive. When I tried installed the drivers the computer would freeze up and my mouse would not work. I called tech support one last time. Their response was something is wrong with my computer and they could not help me. I tried this on another pc and I ran into the same problems. I sent this back to Amazon with a note explaining all the problems I was having asking for a full refund.
Don't buy this product! I am a computer tech at a university and this was the first time I had any problems like this or ever heard someone say sorry we can't help you.
If I could I would give this product no stars, but I can't