Dazzle Bridge

[morse]

Does anybody have any experience with a Dazzle Bridge?

http://www.dazzle.com/products/hw_bridge.html

[Brian Ellis]

No! It has not fared well in mag reviews, especially comparative ones. The Canopus ADVC-100 has always come out best. I've been using one now for nearly a year and it's good.

[Kris1]

Absolutly ! I had terrible experiences with the Dazzle : the worst part beeing a kind of "ghost line" appearing every couple of minutes. BAD. (PAL use, don't know if it was a typical PAL problem though).

I'm currently investigating 2 alternatives to the Canopus, which I think are a bit cheaper. One's from Terratec, the other one is a ADS device. The ADS has a RGB output, which the Terratec misses. I'll report on this thread once I finished my tests, sometime next week.

[wkulecz]

Real piece of crap! I can't believe the damn thing is still on the market!
I'd tried and returned three over an ~ 6 month period after hearing about various "fixes" in the hardware/firmware. None worked right.

Gray blocks on output back to tape, dark captures, random dropping off the 1394 bus while capturing or outputting.

I got a Canopus advc-100 and its just plain worked as advertised, no problems whatsoever!

--wally.

[IM_Riktar]

Have any of you used the Sony Digital8 camcorders for this purpose? My model (TRV-320) does have the ability to read old Hi8/regular8 tapes and the pass through feature seems to work ok for other stuff.

My old Hi8 camcorder broke, leaving me with a stack of Hi8 tapes that hadn't been edited yet (Yah, yah, I know. It's a spare time issue.) so when I looked for a replacement I came across a deal on the Digital 8 model. I didn't realize about the "Pass-Through" feature until after I started reading (What a concept, eh?) the manual that came with it.

Are the standalone converters better at conversion of analog signals?

[miya]

Kris,

Keep us posted on what you find out about the ADS box, it seems like a good deal for the price (if it works.) Component input (it seems to have component input, not output) at this price point is very nice indeed.

[wkulecz]

Before getting the ADVC-100 I was using my TRV-120 A/DV "pass-thru.

It works fine, I just got tired of pluging and unplugging the cables and futzing with the menus to switch from input to output or vice-versa.

--wally.

[IM_Riktar]

Hi Wally,

Thanks for the reply. The need for a converter is minimal since all my video is now pretty much all Digital. Once I am done converting some old tapes to digital for SVCD/DVD I probably won't bother with ever using the pass through feature unless I get approached by someone with an old analog tape they want converted.

Did you notice any glaring differences in quality? I am just curious if I should look into getting one of these standalone converters.

Then again, after I am done with the few (about 7 VHS) tapes I have that will use this feature I will probably only look into this if I decide to tape something off the air. And in that matter I could just load a Digital8 tape in to accomodate that.

[wkulecz]

I started recording cable TV direct to DV, so I became motivated to not have to tie up my DV camcorder. I wouldn't want to argue if TRV-120 or ADVC-100 had "better" quality, both are very good.

--wally.