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Pinnacle Video Transfer
Price: £99.99

Features
Performance
Ease of use
Value for money
Overall

Reviewed By: Andy Shaw

This review updated: 31/05/2008
Featured in magazine:
Issue 186
Manufacturer Contacts:
Supplier: Pinnacle
Tel: 01753 655999
Web Address: www.pinnaclesys.co.uk


Video has become an important part of our digital lives. The internet is now the perfect host for our home movies, making it easy to share memories with others without having to sit them down in front of a TV. And if you want to carry video around with you, devices as varied as iPods, mobile phones and portable games consoles can keep you entertained on the move. However, the problem still remains how to get the video from your video camera, TV or so on, to your computer or portable device.

Features
This incredibly simple device is literally a pocket-sized black box that hooks up to a video source (it could be your video camera, TV, set-top box, DVD player or games console) and converts the analogue input to digital video. It'll then pipe it out via a USB port. You can plug almost anything into this – an iPod, a Sony PSP (PlayStation Portable), a USB hard disk or a USB memory drive. The Video Transfer unit will then save the video to your USB device on the fly.

Performance
The device records at a choice of three quality settings, which lets you make a basic decision about the resolution and compression level you want from the final video. At 320 x 240 pixels you can expect an hour of video to take up around 0.4GB; at 640 x 480 pixels an hour will use up around 0.8GB; while at the highest setting of 720 x 576 pixels you're looking at around 1.3GB/hour. We tried recording off a widescreen source and the aspect ratio was maintained perfectly.

The main downside is its analogue nature – you have to literally play the video you want to record. So if you want to transfer an hour of video on your iPod to watch on the bus, you'll need to have already spent an hour recording it from your video source to the device. The plus side is that this makes it compatible with any format. If you have an archive of old video footage on VHS tapes or analogue video cameras, this device is just perfect for digitising it.

Ease of use
The simplicity of the device is one of its key factors. Setting it up is as easy as connecting the cables on a standard video recorder. The device only has two buttons – one to start recording and one to change the resolution, which also functions as the off switch if you keep it pressed down for long enough. Lights above each of the ports tell you whether an input or method of output has been detected, and they glow blue when in standby mode, or red when recording.

Unfortunately for recent purchasers of an iPhone or iTouch, you will have to record the video to a USB memory drive and then transfer it to your iPod via iTunes. The device only supports older iPod models for direct recording.

Value for money
Whether this device is good value for money or not rests on how much use you're likely to get out of it. Considering its versatility, we think it's well priced. The downside is that you're not going to get perfect digital copies, even from digital sources – it basically converts your source material to an analogue signal, then converts it back into a digital format. This makes it universal but you may find there are other ways to get better-quality results from digital video if that's what you're starting off with, and you may find a cheaper way around your specific problems.

More Digital video reviews:

• Sanyo Xacti VPC-CA8
• Flip Ultra
• Aiptek PocketDV Z300HD-V
• Pinnacle Video Transfer
• Sansa View 16GB