Review on 📺 StarTech.com Analog to HDMI Converter with Audio - 720p Upscaler - NTSC & PAL - Mac & Windows (VID2HDCON2) by Brett Blazis

I was looking for options to convert old VHS family videos to digital and settled on this Startech unit. Short answer; It is a very well made device that does its job well. My other attempts included several other devices and methods. The first was the Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge. This device takes composite video and converts it to a DV stream over FireWire. I recorded the stream using Adobe Premiere (Elements) or Virtual Dub. Overall video quality was decent, but not as good as the original VHS that played straight to the TV. Also picky and sometimes gives an error and the record dies. In addition, several artifacts occur, e.g. B. Image tears at the top or bottom of the screen. Also tried Diamond VC500 (composite video to USB), capture with Cyberlink. Same problems as DV Bridge and very noticeable loss of quality including pixelation. There were also issues with the audio being out of sync with the video. I also tried DVD recorders. They are stable, but also do not deliver quality that corresponds to the original source. I also tried an inexpensive HDMI upscaler (small square box, about $30 at Revain) but the picture quality was terrible. Enter Startech: I bought it partly based on my experience with other devices made by them which have worked very well. I am not disappointed with this device. Very sturdy metal body, quality connectors, etc. Either Composite or S-Video input will do. I use composite. I am sending the HDMI output to an AGPtEk HDMI capture device (model VG0020?). AGPtEK is copied directly to a USB stick. The main advantage of this startech is that it seems to be completely reliable; NEVER fails due to bad clock or other source related timing issues. Also, absolutely no tearing or other distortion artifacts that I've experienced with other methods. Also, there is no visible pixelation at all in the resulting file. My 60 year old eyes rate the overall quality as almost on par with VHS played straight to a TV. Never had any audio/video sync issues. The resulting files are quite large (I'm using a 128GB flash drive). Your 4:3 aspect ratio video will be stretched horizontally. No problem; I can easily "interpret" footage in Adobe to easily convert it back to 4:3 aspect ratio.