good usb 2.0 video capture device?

[trt]

I was wondering whether anyone on here might have a suggestion as to a decent USB 2.0 video capture device to use on a new laptop.

The laptop is fast enough, however I think compression is still a good idea since it's got a laptop hard drive (and an external one would be connected to USB as well -- although perhaps if it's a different physical USB port that would not be an issue? -- separate question there I guess).

I looked at the fairly new Dazzle Platinum, which does MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, and DIVX. That would be good enough I think as long as the drivers and software are pretty painless. Ideally I would be able to do uncompressed, or nearly so, if really necessary. There is a similar product by ADSTech that offers similar compression options and may also have DV; it's hard to tell all the specs on these things.

I do know that the Turtle Beach product, while it seems to be decent, does take up a LOT of disk space (and doesn't have the option for real-time compression I don't think, either in software or hardware).

In a perfect world, I wouldn't mind getting one of these things that also has a TV and/or FM tuner. I've seen a few (like the Hauppauge?), but they lack MPEG4 and DIVX, which seems like would be handy.

Any suggestions on this are welcome. I have never used one of these capture devices so I may not even be looking for the right features. Maybe MPEG2 is really all I need. A hardware encoder makes some sense to me even with a new system just because it's more elegant, but maybe that's not necessary either.

Thanks for any suggestions.


Links to what I THINK I was looking at before, more or less --

ADSTech DVD Xpress DX2

Dazzle Platinum

Hauppauge WinTV-USB2

Leadtek WinFast TV USB II

Turtle Beach Video Advantage USB


(It looks like some of these companies have other similar products too.)


p.s. I should probably mention that I will be editing some, but not most, of these transferred videos. The main goal right now is to transfer VHS tapes to DVD, with some basic menus.

[rsquirell]

I got a Dazzle DVC-150 years ago and love it. Never felt the need to upgrade, so have no idea re Dazzle Platinum. Best thing to do with hardware devices is to buy them locally for a store that will let you bring em back or exchange if you aren't happy...and test them out. Circuit City used to do this. You don't want to capture DV on the USB port (even though you can) because it's designed to be fed directly from the camera into the firewire. USB capture devices convert the DV from the camera to analog before feeding to the PC (or at least they used to.) These devices are designed to feed analog VHS tapes in.

[trt]

Thanks for the reply. I'm still looking into this but I may just run down to a local store and get one of the Dazzles. That would probably do the trick. Overkill, i.e. adding a TV and FM tuner, might just make the whole process more troublesome and annoying.

If it matters to anyone, I think some of the newer USB 2.0 capture devices can take the DV video and leave it as is without converting it to analog. But you would have to make sure you get that exact feature. I was more looking for the option to store my incoming (analog) video in a very high quality or uncompressed format if I needed to import something more important than the run of the mill stuff I will import. That's an option that most of the devices that have built-in hardware compression chips seem to lack. It's another case of, "If I was the engineer, I would have..." But that's usually the case with a lot of products I guess. (Looking briefly at standalone DVD recorders and things, I found features to be all over the map. For instance, $800 might get you a hard drive, but might NOT get you double layer compatibility or the ability to play something like DIVX. For $50 you can get the latter but not the former.)

Thanks for the help. Any other suggestions welcome. If I have anything else to contribute after I get whatever I get, I'll try to come back and do that. Seems like a useful forum.