Average customer rating: 3.0
  • I love this hardware!
  • $71.00 @newegg.com
  • Plextor DIGITAL VIDEO CONVERTER ( PX-M401U/SW
  • nice capture but problematic software/drivers
 Plextor DIGITAL VIDEO CONVERTER ( PX-M401U/SW )

Manufacturer: Plextor
Product Group: CE
Binding: Electronics
ASIN: B00009V3MH

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Product Description

ConvertX offers the unique choice of three encoding formats: MPEG-1, for recording one hour of premier quality video on a VCD; MPEG-2, for up to two hours of high quality video on a DVD; and, for exceptional hard disc space-savings, MPEG-4. Capable of creating highly compressed video archives, MPEG-4 can be used to store 100 minutes of video on a standard CD or 10 hours on a DVD. A Hi-Speed USB 2.0 connection maximizes data throughput to the host computer, enabling high bit rate video capture using MPEG-2 compression.

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars I love this hardware!.......2007-03-09

This capture card can be used for anything capture! Capture and record video from cameras, VCRs, TVs, video game consoles, etc! As long as it has AV-inputs, or S Video inputs, you can capture from it!

I purchased this product so that I could capture video game play from my Xbox 360. People looking to do this should be aware that one needs more than this capture card in order to successfully capture game play for editing/creating montages! If you were to only have a capture card, and you plugged your console directly into the capture card, you would not be able to see what you are doing on your TV. You'll be able to see on your computer, but there is about a 1 second delay in movements... What you'll need to solve this is to buy splitters. If you have AV-inputs, you'll need AV (or audio video) splitters so that you could connect the AV to the capture card AND your TV! You should have a total of 3 splitters for Audio(YELLOW), Left(WHITE), and Right(RED) in-puts. For S Video users, just get two audio splitters, and an S Video splitter. [...]

The only negative thing about this product (that made me give it a 4 instead of 5 stars) is the capture/editing program that comes with this product really stinks! It's called WinDVD Creator. Not only does the program crash A LOT when your editing video, but there aren't many video effects to add to your video at all, AND all of the video captured with this program can only be edited by that program only. You can't capture with this program and use something like Windows Movie Maker (WMM) and edit it there, which is much better. You can't even use WMM to capture video with this capture card!
The program that IS good, on the other hand, is Sony Vegas. Not only can you use this capture card to record with it, but the video effects are pretty much endless, and the program does not crash!!! It does cost quite a bit though.

3 out of 5 stars $71.00 @newegg.com.......2004-05-31

I found this same item at Newegg.com for $71.00.

3 out of 5 stars Plextor DIGITAL VIDEO CONVERTER ( PX-M401U/SW.......2004-01-13

THIS MACHINE MIGHT WORK OK IF PLEXTOR WOULD GET THE RIGHT SOFTWARE FOR IT BECAUSE IT STINKS. I COULD NEVER GET IT TO WORK RIGHT AND THIS IS AFTER I WAS ON THE PHONE WITH PLEXTOR FOR AROUND 10 TO 15 HOURS FOR THREE DAY PLUS MANY EMAIL BACK AND FORWARD TO THEM. STAY AWAY AND GET A GOOD TV CARD.

2 out of 5 stars nice capture but problematic software/drivers.......2003-12-27

As with a lot of computer peripherals the hardware is fine but the software is not. The drivers installed fine on XP but didn't work properly. I downloaded and updated the drivers (a bit of a tedious process) and it worked better but there are major problems.

The software hangs a lot. It seems to have a hard time communicating with the device. Once I got it to actually record something the quality was good. You CANNOT use this device to backup your videos or DVDs that you OWN, because it shuts off if it detects the Macrovision copy protection signal. This is the biggest minus in my opinion. I'm not trying to pirate movies here, I just want to back them up (as is provisioned by law). Shame on you, Plextor. (You can buy a filter that strips out the Macrovision signal so what is the point of this inconvenience?)

In summary: The hardware is good. The drivers are horrible. It is really only useful for recording your home movies or maybe live broadcast (didn't try that).

Buy or don't buy? Pass on this product unless you don't mind hassle and inconvenience.

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