Diamond VC500 USB 2.0 One Touch VHS to DVD Video Capture Device with for Win7, Win8 & Win10

Works fine and is easy to use. Latest version requires Windows 10, and once you install the drivers, you can install Cyberlink PowerDirector and capture there with ease. You need to select quality of recording (MPEG2 is best for interlaced material and can be set to be near lossless at 15000kbps, plus AC3 at max bitrate) and the source (play around with the few choices until you see and hear the signal, defaults rarely work). Button on product is useless. PowerDirector is a bad program for this however because every time there is a non-recorded part in a video, it complains of copyright abuse and deletes the video recorded thus far. This is the same for all commercial programs, since the snow effect of a blank VHS has been used for copyright protection at some point. Work around that (check the end of videos and be sure to program the end of recording at that mark or manually interrupt recording), and it is a simple way to save your videos. It is not worth going for free programs, as they complicate other matters. Just know that the hardware and drivers of the current version are for Windows 10, and you need a previous version for older Windows. The VCR needs also a TBC no matter what version of the product you use (either integrated or separate). SVHS PAL to MPEG2/AC3 on Windows 10 x64 works fine here. Quality is excellent (I used a DVDR previously), but not comparable to old TV or DVD quality. The finest of my SVHS has 450 lines of definition, VHS 250 lines on PAL (576 full SD resolution), and it is not even NTSC (480). But that is not the fault of the product. Don't use MPEG4/H264 as it works poorly with interlaced materials, and don't increase resolution above SD (no 720/1080).

Do not buy this product. The whole thing is based on old technology and is extremely unreliable and I could not get it to output anything.

It works well. Only downside is the included Powerdirector software comes with a tiny cd disc that got lost in my laptop standard size CD-RW slot (not a tray unfortunately). Looked high and low for support and it took hours before I found the same version online to download. Powerdirector 12. It's very old so if you need to add text over video you'll need to purchase newer software. Otherwise it works ok converting pal or NTSC to mpg. I needed a free software to convert this to MP4 or mkv which is a much more widely compatible format to play on phones and other devices.

This is now the 3rd capture device I have purchased. The first one was from Aldi some years ago and to be fair it kind of worked but it had limitations, the quality was poor and the capture time was limited but the main reason why I wanted to upgrade was it only worked on Windows 7. The next capture device was purchased from amazon for £12 and it claimed to work on Windows 10, It didn't, waste of money. I spent a day researching on the internet and trying alternative drivers etc, no good, it went back. Consequently, I was a little nervous about paying almost 3 times the price for something that had a slightly lower rating. When I received the Diamond VC500, it looked similar to the last one although it was packaged better and came with a RCA cable to connect to my Camcorder. I followed the instructions to connect it to the PC but only loaded the driver from the disc. From my previous attempts I had come across some free software which works very well. I found a video on Youtube which guided me how to download, deinterlace and compress my VHS using Virtualdub software. The video on Youtube is called "How to convert VHS videotape to 60p digital video (NTSC)" (Because I am in the UK I used PAL b, 25 fps rather than 29.97 and 50 fps instead of 59.94.). I have since connected the device to a VHS player and again had really good results. My PC is a desktop with a Intel Core i5 CPU 750 @ 2.67GHz 2.66 GHz running Windows 10 Pro 64 bit.

I bought this device to convert some old VHS tapes to digital video. It comes with two pieces of software, EZ Grabber and Showbiz, both useless, at least with Windows 7. The EZ Grabber didn't let me see what I was recording, because as soon as I clicked Record, the program's monitor filled with horizontal lines, so I could only hear the audio. Another problem, of which the cause I located after much head-scratching, was that if I had simultaneously open a professional subtitling software I use for my work, then the image of the recorded video was choppy, not synchronized with the audio. So, in order to record in EZ Grabber, I would have to not do work at the same time on my computer, and spend all my time waiting for the videos to be recorded. Then I tried the Showbiz. It seemed to work perfectly, none of the above problems, but: after a few minutes, it stopped and declared that "You can't record this video because it is copyright-protected". Which of course was not true, because these are home videos. Searching the Internet I found out that this is a setting which can be changed by registry editing, not in the regular setting of Options, so I didn't look any further into this. I had started thinking that my money had gone down the drain, but then I tried my old and trusted Nero, which I haven't even updated for many years. I chose the "Capture video from capturing device" and it worked like magic. So, this is a useful device, but their software doesn't work. Still, one can use any dvd-making software with "Capture" option.

I chose this product as it had more positive reviews than other similar capture devices. After a few days use, I think that this is an excellent product. Connect to vcr, plug in to PC, install capture software, install dvd authoring software, away you go. It took me about 15 minutes with Windows XP (SP3). Capture is very easy, either via the EZ Grabber software, or the one-touch button on the dongle, however this button doesn't stop the recording. The video is captured as MPEG or AVI or WMV directly, no conversion needed. I haven't tried the dvd authoring yet as it offers many options, I need more time to asess it. I agree that there is a lack of a proper instruction manual, however it is so easy that it won't take long to familiarise yourself with this great little piece of kit. The capture software has contrast/brightness controls WHICH AFFECT THE OUTPUT - so this is useful for tweaking videos where necessary to improve quality. Highly recommended.

The driver is for Windows 7 or 8. It will not work in Windows 10 or11. It is not compatible. They tell you to turn core isolation off in Windows Security so that your computer doesn't see the incompatible software as a threat. This puts your computer at risk because it then doesn't see anything as a threat. I tried this anyway because my curiosity got the better of me and it did download but because it is for Windows 7, the installed driver doesn't work and corrupts your Computer. I had to restore my computer back to an earlier time. I will be sending the piece of rubbish back to Amazon. If you want to keep your laptop running smoothly and working properly then don't buy this product

Reviews were mixed but I took the plunge. No problems loading software, but using the composite of the player, it would not work. I had to use the scart socket with an adaptor, as shown in suggested buys, so probably worth getting it. No problems after that. Also suggest you make a separate file rather than use default, it's easier to find. I saved all mine as MPEG4, it's quicker. Also purchased a flash drive to save the files to, as a 180 minute tape is about 6GB.