This product is a “bridge” between analog video and digital video in the DV format.
I have some nice Sony Hi8 equipment but I wanted to make the jump to digital video for editing capability. I was previously using the Pinnacle Studio DC10+ analog capture card with limited success. When I made the upgrade to Windows XP that option disappeared, they are just now starting to update their older capture cards to XP.
I looked into getting a Digital 8 camcorder (which I could then use to transfer my Hi8 tapes to DV format) but even the low-end model that can do analog-digital (TRV240) costs about $600 and didn’t have all the features of my Hi8 system.
I stumbled across this DV bridge at my local Best Buy. After doing some research I found that Sony also makes a similar device (DVMC-DA2) but they are discontinuing it. You can find it on the web for about the same price as the Dazzle product. Having the ability to return it to my local Best Buy was the clincher for me.
I have Pinnacle Studio 7 on my home machine so I can’t comment on the Dazzle editing software that came with the Hollywood bridge. From what I can get from the web, the included editing software leaves a lot to be desired.
Once I plugged everything in, XP chimed and “found” new hardware (DV device) and Pinnacle believed a DV camcorder was installed. I set my Hi8 camera to play and captured a few minutes with zero dropped frames and it was editable on my computer. Exactly what I wanted. I haven’t done any super long captures yet so I can’t comment on extended capture capability. I would suggest breaking your raw video into manageable chunks anyway.
Be ready for some HUGE files, DV format takes about 200MB per minute. With your editing software you can render the raw DV stuff down in MPEG format and lower the resolution to get much smaller files to share.
This product did exactly what I wanted it to do. Realize with your older analog video that you don’t have “true” DV resolution; the bridge is expanding your video to meet the DV spec. The Hi8 equipment I have records in XR mode which is supposed to give over 400 lines of resolution, pretty close to DV. If your source material is VHS then you are working with only about 220 lines and the video will look pretty bad. Do some research before you buy, but for me this box does what I want.

(Update) Been using this bridge some more. Have run into a problem that others have seen. Sometimes the bridge fails to "see" the video signal and then doesn't start to translate. I haven't figured out the exact causes, the workaround is to press play on your camcorder and look for the green light on the bridge (means it is translating)before you run the capture part of your software. If you don't get the light then it "missed" the signal and you won't get anything. I will dig more into this later. When it works, it works great.

Bradman

Recommended: Yes