Transfer your videos to DVD easily with the Dazzle DVD Recorder.
Works great for me!
Pros: Durable, Easy to Use, Compact, Reliable, Fast
Best Uses: Home or Business, Travel, Anywhere
Describe Yourself: Quality Oriented
Primary use: Personal
To note: this is a personal review for this item and I am in no way saying this will work for everyone the way it did for me. So why did I type this little bit? The fact is that most people read reviews like this to see how well the product works or not and most times when people write reviews they write on how it worked for them with their specific machines and settings, which in my opinion is not an accurate way to rate a product but then again that is the point of this so....
I find that this device does exactly what the name implies, records anything hooked up to it. I like how you have the option to record it to your computer as a file or DVD because most of the time similar devices are tricky as they tend to do file only stuff in formats that are hard to put on DVD without further conversions.
Initially I was a little concerned because it's MPEG4 compression, I mean MPEG 4 is okay but there are better methods. Despite that the quality is rather amazing to me, Dazzle does an incredible job....now if only they could find a better name for the product... For the few people that wondered how I recorded the games, I say "Oh I used a Dazzle" and the response "Isn't that the thing that girls use to jewel stuff?" ....Dazzle....Be-Dazzler ....yep it happens.
The best thing I like is that it's portable, not that I have my gaming consoles on me all the time but it's good if I go over to a friends house and we can record our sessions. I did buy this mostly for game-recording purposes but it's great to be able to hook up my camera and other devices to it in order to record some home movies and projects. Now I do have a DVD recorder so technically I don't need this but it was a pain to have to record stuff, then rip it to my computer. Most of the time the file sizes were huge and it would take me more time for editing than you can imagine.
Here I record what I want and then it's only up to fine editing. I like the USB cord being as long as it is so I don't have to keep everything on my desk all the time (Not that big of a desk to begin with, it's built into the wall, so I can't just move it or make it bigger.) I was more than thrilled to have S-Video on this as it gives me a chance to actually USE my S-Video cable lol.
The only downside to the built in app is that the view window for recording is way too small, it's hard to see what your doing in the game unless your really looking at the screen. Then again that could be due to the fact I'm using my laptop also I haven't looked into if you can alter the window or not as of yet. I am very satisfied with the Dazzler as it does work for what I want. Now, would I say I'm keeping this thing forever...well I do want to get the Mac version but since that's $99 I kind of figure "get the PC one and then eventually get the Mac one." but for now I'll have my fun with what I have. "Why not wait and save up for the Mac one instead?" well because I'm in no rush to get it as I'm using Windows XP on my Macbook via Bootcamp so technically I can use either device but for the price, also since it was on sale where I am, it was worth it.
I would heavily suggest this item to anyone looking for an easy way to record devices straight to your computer for gaming records or just storing those home videos. Also thanks to gnrfan5000, I didn't talk to him personally but I did hear he uses a Dazzle to make his Youtube LP's (LP = Let's Play)
