One thing that did concern us was an intermittent number of dropped or paused audio frames, which suggested to us that the system was having trouble handling the full data stream for some reason. Our test videos came out mostly fine, albeit only in the kind of quality you'd expect from composite and S-Video connections.

It is, after all, primarily designed for digitising home movies, so if you were considering using it to archive an old commercial VHS library, you'd have to look elsewhere. It's undoubtedly to be expected, but Dazzle DVD Recorder can't handle copy protected material, whether it's DECSS encoded DVDs or Macrovisioned VHS tapes. The DVD Recorder software is wizard-driven and extremely easy to use. No cables are supplied for connection, so you'll have to be ready with some standard RCA or S-Video cables to hand. Then it's a matter of plugging in the Dazzle capture device, letting it handle driver detection - we tested on a Windows Vista system, and the box carries a Vista-compatible logo - and plugging in your video source of choice. The supplied cap carries a warning to install the software first, so nobody should accidentally install the device prior to the software. The first step to installing the DVD recorder is to ignore the hardware, and instead install the DVD Recorder software, and optionally the trial version of Pinnacle Studio 10 that comes with the hardware. It scores highly with us for its pure ease of use, as just about anyone could have it up and running in no time flat. The main Dazzle DVD Recorder device is as simple as it possibly could be an imposing chunk of red plastic in a teardrop shape with a USB cable at one end, and a set of coloured and quite obvious inputs on the other end.

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