Creative Labs - GOOD DVR but not perfect
Written: Aug 01 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Works just like a computer-TiVo, cheap, real time MPEG-2 encoding, S-video/RCA video-in, pause live TV
Cons: time-shifted video-in, picture quality a little grainy at times full screen, can't record and watch
The Bottom Line: Great recorder, pause live TV, video in, watch TV while multi-tasking in background. Records in MPEG2 format and in good quality. Buy for $50, anything more, think twice.
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| nxs4ever's Full Review: Creative Technology Video Blaster Digital VCR (700... |
This was $100 with a $50 MIR at CompUSA on black friday, 2002. For ~$50, this digital video recorder is well worth it. Granted, it's not TiVo and you have to watch the recorded shows on your computer monitor, there are ways to get around this. First, if you have a video-out compatible video card, you can hook up your computer to your TV. Second, you can convert the shows into .mpg files and watch them on your DVD player. This second option comes with a dilemma. If you have a dvd-burner, one disc will probably hold a two hour movie at 'best' recorded quality. However, if you don't, you can either choose to record your show/movie at poorer quality to fit it onto 4 CDs. That's a lot of CDs! As you can see, it's easier to hook up your computer to a TV to watch your recorded shows.
This video recorder also functions as a TV-in/capture card. There's a TV-in port that allows you to hook up any S-video or regular RCA video jack signal. However, if you want to do things like play PS2/Xbox/GameCube games, you can't. You see, another double-edged feature of this card is that it has time-shifting. In case you don't know what this is, it's a feature that allows you to pause live TV. The card can allow you to pause live TV by recording segments that appear after you have paused onto your hard disk. By being able to do this, the card has an onboard buffer that buffers about 1 second of live TV at all times. Whatever you watch on your computer with this card is delayed 1 second. If you play games, pressing a button will only result in a delayed reaction. However, you can still capture DVD clips and other video sources with the card. Even audio is captured in stereo. The playback of your recorded show is of course, also in stereo (which for many other TV cards, isn't true).
The box came with many wires. One is a converter to convert stereo audio jacks into one audio line-in digital signal. Another is a RCA video - S-video converter. And finally, a remote control. Don't expect too much from the remote control though, you can't really do anything on your computer with it, only operate the Digital VCR menus. However, it is quite useful. It has all the buttons a real VCR control has. Fast forward/rewind can be up to 300X. Now that's fast!
The software is a little buggy. Sometimes, when I FF too fast and rewind immediately, the software crashes. Other times, the recorded format (which is just segmented MPEG2 files) converter can't even load up. So this thing is no where near perfection.
I'm running this on an AMD K6-III 400mhz machine with 256 megs of RAM and WIN98se. There would be VERY little skips in the video, most times the video would run smoothly but if you're doing too many other things, you can expect 10 frames or so lost. Tiny blips in the video are not often but occur quite often.
Overall, this is a great product for multi-tasking. When I had to write a golf report for my golf course, I taped the Masters Tournament and watched it in 640x480 windowed resolution while writing my report at the same time in the background. It's also cool to record live TV and be able to rewind when you misheard or didn't hear a character's dialogue correctly. For $50, this thing is well worth the money. For $100, think twice and consider if you really need what this card has to offer from what you've read here.
Good luck!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
nxs4ever
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Reviews written: 33
Trusted by: 12 members
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