Don’t buy this: VCR 2 PC

I have a couple of hundred VHS tapes in the attic, like so many other people do. During a lightning storm last summer, my VCR died, and I have been putting off getting a new one.

Then I came across the VCR 2 PC product from ION Audio. It looks like a cute VCR player to attach to your PC to get those old tapes onto a hard drive in a user friendly and smart way.

It isn’t.

I unpacked the player and hooked it up to the PC. The companion CD went into the PC and the software was installed. The instructions and the user interface of the included software was clearly meant for someone who likes to watch TV, if you know what I mean. Droolproofed instructions, and big friendly buttons. A minimum of settings. I was suprised to find that the program didn’t control the player through the USB interface. I inserted a tape, pressed PLAY on the front of the machine and RECORD in the software window. I left the max time setting at the default 4 hours, thinking that the thing would stop by itself. Wrong! When I got back to the machine, I had 1 hour 51 minutes of video at almost the beginning and 2 hours 9 minutes of empty video at the and. No big deal to cut out the unwanted parts. Except that it takes a bit of time to rewrite the multigigabyte file.

Then I found the real problem. The audio is awful. It has been automagically adjusted so that silence is amplified to the point where a roaring pink noise is captured, the when the next actor speaks, there is a mechanical burp while the sound volume is lowered to the point of almost no distortion. If anyone get’s shot – God forbid – in a movie, you’ll hear a click, and the everybody whispers afterwards.

I used to have this function on a VCR during the late 1980s. I tried it exactly once. ION Audio must have added this to protect fools from themselves, thinking that noone wants to rerecord a VHS with an adjusted volume.

So, can you turn it off? No.

But this is not the worst part. This automatic volume adjustment system is not in the hardware it’s a piece of software. That’s actually good, because it should make it easier to improve the product. The very real problem is that it installs itself somewhere deep in the bowels of the multimedia system in Windows, adjusting volume for everything you play through the soundcard.

I though my soundcard, or my speakers, or my MP3′s were broken. Then I started thinking and did a system restore back to the day before I installed VCR 2 PC. Now I can listen to music again without it being distorted.

So the included software is seriously broken, is it possible to use the device without the software. Yes and no. You can use it as a pure VCR and hook it up to a frame grabbing device from Hauppage or Pinnacle. You can not use it with the USB cable, because the audio part of the built-in frame grabber does not install as an audio device that other softwares can recognise.

At a price of 249US$, it is not a really cheap VCR. It does only one standard, I have the PAL version, so it will not help me with my NTSC or SECAM tapes. It does not work with long play recordings. (8 hours on a 4 hour tape.) It does not have a remote control. It does not have automatic tracking.

You could probably get a better VCR and a better TV-card for less than the price of VCR 2 PC from most dealers. You would get smarter capture from Microsofts freebie Movie Maker, and your PC sound wouldn’t be ruined.

Don’t buy this.