Glitch Found and Fixed!!! Works great again!, For the past year I have been happily burning movies and mulitple smaller mpegs onto DVD, making neat little chapters with music and animated thumbnails, with aboslutely no problems. I've loved it (even though the menu setup in Showbiz is a little limited) and became quite addicted. I have a HP computer with Windows XP, so no compatability issues.
The, ONE month after the year warranty expired, all systems crashed.
DVD Writer great, ArcSoft Editor some struggles, I bought the DC5000 based on the reviews. The device works great, easy set up and usage. I am struggling with the video editing software. I am using this on a laptop and ArcSoft doesn't want to import my finished video. Currently have a request into ArcSoft. Hope my experience is better than the others. Adobe Premiere and Windows Movie Maker will easily import the file, but I am looking to save it in mpeg format and neither Premiere nor Movie Maker will allow that.
It looked great at first... but then the problems came..., I succeeded to transfer 2 home videos without any problem with the DC5000, but then I ran into serious problems on the sound transfer. Mostly no sound is transferred, sometimes cracky, sometimes just OK, but not predictable when it will go wrong. Changed every cable I used more than once, re-installed software etc... Seems a problem in the USB-transfer has come up which was not there at the start. Waiting for answer from the HP-guys....
All in all a frustrating experience.
No longevity, I've had this particular burner/video capture device since March 2005. About a week or so ago, the device started making a really loud fan noise even while the computer was off and it wasn't doing anything itself. I've tried unplugging it and replugging but there is a persistent noise coming from the device. Also, during this time the burner has decided that it occasionally will fail a DVD burn in midstream resulting in DVDs for the garbage. I don't know what's been going on lately with HP but they seem to be severely lacking in support and product quality. I'm in the market for a new system but won't be considering HP if I can help it.
ArcSoft - the worst customer support I've EVER encountered, I bought this from Best Buy, as a novice in DVD-burning/video-capturing that I was. Once I installed everything, I made sure I got 10 GB on the disk, I stuck a DVD-R into the drive, hooked up my camcorder, and there you go - the wizard started moving things around. As it seemed to be slow, I went to care for other businesses and kept checking its progress every once in a while. Things seemed to work quite well, until - oops, there was nothing on the screen anymore. No idea whatsoever what happened, but I just got myself a coaster.
After some research, I found an MPEG on my computer, which turned out to be the recorded tape. Cool, I thought, whatever happened, now I can add chapters, titles etc. I worked for about an hour or so to create chapters. It didn't take me long to figure out ShowBiz 2, and it was my first time with a DVD authoring software. I put a picture of my baby on the background, chose a cool theme, custom snapshots for the chapters, the whole nine yards. With my hands shaking of excitement, I pressed "Burn". And that's when the nightmare began.
ArcSoft's ShowBiz 2 was terminated by Windows for an "illegal operation" apparently. I was running XP Pro, on a 2GB Pentium M laptop. After an hour of fooling around, I managed to burn the DVD after I took out all but three chapters. Rebooting, reinstalling etc. didn't seem to make any difference - anything more than 3 chapters was simply not burning.
Since the problem was obviously coming from the software, I contacted ArcSoft's Customer Support. Their web site, to begin with, sux. It took me a while to figure out how to file a ticket. Well, I finally did and set myself to waiting for an answer. Days started passing and nothing was coming back. I updated the ticket on their web site several times, but still no response.
The 30-day refund period was approaching to an end. I finally thought of getting in touch with HP directly, although with serious doubts that they will do anything but send me back to ArcSoft. They responded in a timely manner with a work-around. It seemed to be a problem carried over from dc3000. However, when I tried it, that didn't work either.
Great product, but you MUST meet the system requirments., I was a little anxious about purchasing this item after reading the negative reviews, afterall this is a $200 dollar purchase. After a lot of researching, I decided to buy the product. At first, my computer didn't recgonize the hardware, and just turned off randomly, but after I inserted the included setup CD everything was fine. To copy a home movie, you can just touch a button on the unit, or click an icon on the desktop. You then have the option to use HP's quick transfer wizard, which lets you choose a theme, title, date, and print a CD/DVD cover, and then burns the movie to a DVD, all extremly fast. You also have the option to use 4 different pieces of software that are included to capture/edit your video. One allows you to combine two pieces of video, one allows you to add commentary to the home videos, one gives you funcationality similar to the quick transfer wizard (with a few extra features), and one allows you to edit the video in any way, then make chapters, create DVD menus, and burn. No matter which software you are using, it is all extremly easy to use, and there is GREAT help documentation. If you do have a problem, you can simply email HP, and they always respond in less than 45 minutes, the fastest support of ANY company, by far. Of course, anything you read will always tell you that doing anything with video is extremly computer intensive. You MUST ensure that you meet the minimum requirments, or your computer WILL freeze up during the process. Even if you have a high end computer, all other functions will be very slow while working with video, so I recommend creating your DVD's sometime when you won't need to quickly access the internet, or other programs.
Works FANTASTIC, I've read alot of the negative reviews. But, I went ahead and bought it anyway. I am extremely happy that I did. It works great!!! Not a problem. So far I have transferred 2 home movies to DVD without a hitch. The only thing I don't like is that there is no ON/Off switch. The unit stays on as long as it is plugged in. I usually disconnect it from the unit. Whenever I need to use it, I plug in the power before I turn on the PC. Then I plug in the USB cable and I'm off and running. My wife and I both agree this is one of the best investments we have made. I'm even planning on transferring all of my old Laserdisc movies to DVD!!!
Take care and God bless.
Frustrating experience, (What's this?) I purchased this DVD writer with the plan of converting all my Mini DV movies to DVD format. The install went through successfully and at first try. I connected my camcorder to this to download the movie and it seemed to be running fine till about 15 minutes into the process when it abruptly exited. I tried restarting the download but could not get it to start, the DVD would auto eject when I tried this. I rebooted my machine and tried again, this time is it exited the download in about 2 minutes. I tried reinstalling the software and at this time it crashed my XP. Since the machine I was using had a lot of other software on it I thought this to be an incompatibility issue and installed this on a machine which only had XP with its latest patches. Different variations of failures occured and finally my XP crashed on this machine too. I even tried a firmware upgrade to no avail.
I bought this on a recommendation from a coworker for whom this seemed to work very well but my experience with it has been a 2 weekends of frustration. I finally returned the product to Amazon.
Working after years of hard work!, (What's this?) Bought this at least 5 years ago. The spring ion the door is long gone, but this burner still works. It has developed an intermittent noise (loss of lubricant in disk platter mech?), but still great. It converted a lot of VHS to disks and burned tons of DVDs in its ongoing lifetime. I'd buy a new version of this if I still needed to convert video sources, but now I have a recordable DVD that has all the inputs.
frustration, I purchased this DVD writer about 3 weeks ago and have been trying to get it to work ever since.
The software is incompatable with just abut every media software I have. I have a Pentium 4(2.4)512MB with ample memory on my harddrive. I am running Windows XP. I managed to get it to work only temporarily to find another probelm once I reboot.
HP DC5000 DVD Movie Writer Automatically set video clips to music Burn DVDs from home videos with just a PC connection and a VCR Video Transfer Wizard automatically converts home movies to DVD Supports 16x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD+/-R, 12x DVD ROM
HP DC5000 DVD Movie Writer.Automatically set video clips to music.Burn DVDs from home videos with just a PC connection and a VCR.Video Transfer Wizard automatically converts home movies to DVD.Supports 16x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD+/-R, 12x DVD ROM. Feature Highlights Faster 16x DVD+R writer--up to 55 percent faster than 8x Can store up to 8.5 gigabytes (GB) on one DVD+R DL disc with double-layer recording capability Transfer and preserve home video--even design DVD case covers Multiple editing features for a variety of skill levels--from novice to enthusiast Delete unwanted scenes and keep the highlights Automatically set video clips to music Create special presentations for family and friends USB 2 input for convenient connection of digital still cameras; USB 2 to the PC for high-speed performance and fast transfer; Support for all major formats, including +/-R/RW and -ROM. What's in the Box HP DVD Movie Writer DC5000 External USB 2.0 Drive, software installation discs, Quick Start Guide, Getting Help Guide, USB cable, composite audio/video cable, universal power xupply, power cord, stand for vertical operation. The HP DC5000 DVD Movie Writer is the fast, all-in-one DVD video and storage solution that lets you transfer, edit and preserve home videos with one easy-to-use device and a PC--without the need for additional hardware or software. It installs in seconds, and the included Video Transfer Wizard offers automatic conversion of home movies to DVDs. It enables easy transfer of videotapes to long-lasting DVDs and protects them for future generations. Turn old home videotapes into DVD movies, share them with friends, family and future generations.
