Dvd Movie Writer

lukin

Could anyone tell me what would be the minimum spec required for this ?
Thanks.

woolymammoth

OS Required - Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional SP2, Microsoft Windows XP
Min Processor Type - Pentium III 800 MHz
Min RAM Size - 128 MB
Min Hard Drive Space - 550 MB

as per the spec tab..

lukin

Yeah, I know but they never tell the truth on those things

vibe666

looks like a simple enough thing to start off with for no frills one click movie backups, if a little pricey, but thats what you pay for the simplicity of the interface.

that said you'd pay as much for a decent internal burner and a high quality capture device anyway.

if you don't mind getting your hands dirty I'd go for the latter though as it'll give you a lot more flexability in how you record things, and what you can do in the way of editing and picture/sound filtering, although as i can contest myself entry level video editing/encoding has a very steep learning curve although after a couple of weeks of tinkering you'll be getting much better results exactly the way you want them with a seperate burner and capture device.

if you want to keep it simple and easy go for he HP movie burner, it seems like a pretty good deal.

and the minimum specs should be fine, as most of the encoding etc. will be done by the drive itself. might be worth investing in USB2 though if you don't have it or the whole lot will be obsolete by the time you get it burnt with USB1.1.

lukin

The USB is the only part I'm not sure about.
Can I actually upgrade my USB port?

vibe666

yeah you can get a USB2 PCI card to put in a spare slot on your motherboard for 10-20€ which will do the job. not a big job and most people could do it themselves as long as they are reasonably proficient.

if you're somewhere local to me and you decide to do it and aren't happy taking the lid off your box I could do it for you, or i'm sure you could get someone else here on boards (or a friend in the real world) to do it for you, it's really only a little job.

lukin

Thanks, but it's O.K. I've installed PCI cards before.

vibe666

good stuff, nothing like getting your hands dirty.

don't forget to let us know how it turns out if you get it. quite interested myself.

been doing it all manually since i got my dvd writer and capture card, but would be interested to see how much easier it actually is with the HP. have to say they're always top notch with the straightforward no nonsenese stuff they come up with (printers, scanners, burners etc.), so it could be a good buy.

have you seen many reviews on it?

lukin

Just one, in PC Live, they said it was pretty good.
I've used two types of capture cards before and found them to be too much trouble.
I don't know if I'll buy the HP one yet, I might wait for the price to come down.
It may not work on my current sytem but if it doesn't I could be buying a new Dell in the summer anyway.