Great TV/PVR card, with one major drawback
Written: Sep 16 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Hardware easily installed, software easily set up, everything works smoothly and looks great.
Cons: Weird file system makes it impossible to play with videos outside of the provided software.
The Bottom Line: Buy this product, as long as you don't need to edit your videos in other programs, or make DVDs with them.
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| rasi2290's Full Review: Creative Technology Video Blaster Digital VCR (700... |
I purchased the Creative Labs Video Blaster in early 2002, to serve two functions:
1) To watch TV on my computer.
2) To pause, FF and RW, and record TV shows, as a Tivo or ReplayTV lets you do.
In both respects, this product is a winner. I'll go through the key points one by one.
Hardware
The product ships with a TV card, remote, remote IR sensor, and S-video adapter. The card has inputs for coaxial and S-video, using the provided adapter. With the onboard MPEG encoder, video is recorded smoothly and clearly for immediate or time-delayed playback on the computer screen. Most of the work is done by the card itself, allowing the computer to function normally for whatever other tasks you'd be using it for.
The remote works dandily. It's made for this product, so there's no messing with 3rd party software trying to remap the buttons or anything like that. You just plug the IR sensor cable into the back of the Video Blaster card, and sit the IR sensor somewhere convenient on your desktop.
Software
What really drives this product is the application and interface. And I give it a thumbs up. Its very, very streamlined and efficient. Absolutely no more clutter than is neccesary, so you spend more time looking at a television picture and less time looking at a pretty(but useless) GUI. There's a small timeline bar at the bottom which informs you - with brilliantly sparse graphics - where you are on the timeline of what you're watching, as well as whether it's recorded, time-shifted, or live.
Because the software is so clean, everything runs smoothly and with absolutely no lag. This is a common problem in PVR applications, which I have taken for granted because I used this one first. It works so well you forget its there. There is a small delay when changing channels, but this is true of any card, with any software in existence. Otherwise, it's quick, efficient and smooth.
The setup wizard is painless, and settings are easily changed once in the application. It's a simple matter to change your recording quality, color settings, alloted storage space, etc. Same with retreving previously recorded video files. It's simple and it works well.
If that were all I needed to use this product for, the review would be over and I'd give it 5 stars. Unfortunately, there's one huge flaw that must be addressed: you can't burn your video files to DVD. For that matter, you really can't do anything with them except watch them using the provided software. You can't use any 3rd party software with the videos you'll record with this product. That's because Creative Labs chose to use propietary technology to save the video files. They can be imported to MPEG2 files, yes. But not the same kind of MPEG2 files you find on a DVD. It's a strange, propietary MPEG2 that will usually crash any program you try to load them into, except the Creative software you're given. As I mentioned above, that software is excellent. In fact, I believe it's the tight unision of the propietary software and special video encoding that allows everything to work so smoothly.
So as long as you don't need to do anything with your video files except watch them later on your computer, or save them as DATA to a dvd/cd, I can recommend this product with five stars. Otherwise, I'd give it three stars. Hence, I'm giving it a 4 star rating.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
rasi2290
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Member: Josh
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Reviews written: 24
Trusted by: 14 members
About Me:
I know and love gadgets, computers, and home theater. And cats. But not bionic cats.
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