Creative Technology Video Blaster Digital VCR (7000583103000) Video Capture

Pros: Cable on computer! Full-screen. Pause/Rewind live TV, remote control. Video input. Nice quality. Good Price.
Cons: Is it the best quality? Poor/no documentation. Odd line in full screen. Poor on-screen display.

I thought it would be really neat for my new computer if I could watch TV on it. I will soon go off to college, and I wanted to utilize my computer monitor as a TV, just to save space. I was already impressed with other Creative products, and counted...

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.

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 ...

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

This was $100 with a $50 MIR at CompUSA on black friday, 2002. For ~$50, this digital video recorder ...

Pros: Worked right out of the box
Cons: Lacks support and software

Overall I am not satisfied due to one very critical shortcoming. The encoding to MPEG-2 does not match the standards for either VCD or SVCD, and it seems that through trial and error that very, very few encoding programs can encode it to be compliant. It...