HP DVD Movie Writer dc4000

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Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard (Consumables)
Price at amazon.com: Used & new from $220.00

List price $349.98



Product Features:

• Read and write CD-R and CD-RW discs, as well as DVD± R/± RW discs
• Transfer home videos to DVD fast and easily
• Includes software that lets you edit video, photos, music and data applications
• Compatible with Microsoft Windows XP and 2000 Professional.
• One-year limited hardware and software warranty

Product Description:

Ready for a one-stop platform for organizing, editing, and burning digital media? HP's DVD Movie Writer dc4000 is an external 8x DVD writer with built-in analog video capturing abilities to let you quickly and easily transfer your treasured home videos directly from tape (via camcorder or VCR) to both your PC and to recordable DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, and CD-R/-RW media. But it's not just for video--the drive's full suite of video-editing software also includes dedicated applications for photo, music, and data. Write speeds are 8x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD+RW, and 4x DVD-RW, with up to 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW. Connected to a desktop or notebook PC through its USB 1.1 port, the dc4000 is designed to digitally encode VHS and other analog sources and create digital negatives on long-life DVD discs. It converts video from a variety of formats, including VHS, Hi8, Digital 8, and BetaMax--essentially any format from any component offering analog video outputs. The dc4000 is also designed to function as a standard DVD/CD writer to burn music, photos, and data to both DVD and CD. After the dc4000 converts analog tapes to the digital MPEG-2 format--the same format all commercially available DVDs are written to--you'll be able to edit and share your DVD masterpieces with friends and family. And you can get as detailed as you want in editing your DVDs--the dc4000 includes ArcSoft ShowBiz 2.1, a full editing package, and muvee autoProducer, a simple music-oriented video-editing application. ShowBiz 2.1 lets you add or delete scenes, add music or special effects, and create slideshows set to music. Easy-to-use screens let you drag and drop video clips, digital photos, and music files in either storyboard or simple timeline-editing formats. autoProducer is a fun and easy editing package that quickly turns digital movies into music videos with a few clicks of a mouse. The dc4000 also includes an enhanced video-transfer wizard that simplifies batch loading of multiple tapes or clips to a single DVD and permits time-saving background processing. Other software updates include the 6.5 version of RecordNow and ArcSoft PhotoBase 4.5 to help you create, organize, and burn photo slideshows. Veritas RecordNow and Simple Backup help you save data, video, or music on DVDs and CDs. Simple Backup reliably backs up, protects, and restores individual files or folders and can also help restore an entire PC hard drive. Additionally, Cyberlink PowerDVD software makes it easy to play DVD movies on a PC. What's in the Box HP DVD movie writer dc4000, software CD (including electronic user's guide, quick-start installation guide, and getting-help support guide), a USB cable, a composite-video/stereo analog audio cable, an audio splitter cable, and 1 blank recordable DVD.
From the Manufacturer The HP DVD Movie Writer dc4000 is an external DVD writer with built-in built-in analog video capture. It lets you quickly and easily transfer transfer home video directly from tape (via camcorder or VCR) to digital digital format on your PC and to DVD± R/± RW discs. It provides a a full suite of software to enable video editing along with photo, music music and data applications, and it lets you write and read CD-R and and CD-RW discs as well as DVD± R/± RW. simple The HP... read more


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Description from Manufacturer: Ready for a one-stop platform for organizing, editing, and burning digital media? HP's DVD Movie Writer dc4000 is an external 8x DVD writer with built-in analog video capturing abilities to let you quickly and easily transfer your treasured home videos directly from tape (via camcorder or VCR) to both your PC and to recordable DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, and CD-R/-RW media. But it's not just for video--the drive's full suite of video-editing software also includes dedicated applications for photo, music, and data.

Write speeds are 8x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD+RW, and 4x DVD-RW, with up to 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW. Connected to a desktop or notebook PC through its USB 1.1 port, the dc4000 is designed to digitally encode VHS and other analog sources and create digital negatives on long-life DVD discs. It converts video from a variety of formats, including VHS, Hi8, Digital 8, and BetaMax--essentially any format from any component offering analog video outputs. The dc4000 is also designed to function as a standard DVD/CD writer to burn music, photos, and data to both DVD and CD.

After the dc4000 converts analog tapes to the digital MPEG-2 format--the same format all commercially available DVDs are written to--you'll be able to edit and share your DVD masterpieces with friends and family. And you can get as detailed as you want in editing your DVDs--the dc4000 includes ArcSoft ShowBiz 2.1, a full editing package, and muvee autoProducer, a simple music-oriented video-editing application.

ShowBiz 2.1 lets you add or delete scenes, add music or special effects, and create slideshows set to music. Easy-to-use screens let you drag and drop video clips, digital photos, and music files in either storyboard or simple timeline-editing formats. autoProducer is a fun and easy editing package that quickly turns digital movies into music videos with a few clicks of a mouse.

The dc4000 also includes an enhanced video-transfer wizard that simplifies batch loading of multiple tapes or clips to a single DVD and permits time-saving background processing. Other software updates include the 6.5 version of RecordNow and ArcSoft PhotoBase 4.5 to help you create, organize, and burn photo slideshows.

Veritas RecordNow and Simple Backup help you save data, video, or music on DVDs and CDs. Simple Backup reliably backs up, protects, and restores individual files or folders and can also help restore an entire PC hard drive. Additionally, Cyberlink PowerDVD software makes it easy to play DVD movies on a PC.

What's in the Box
HP DVD movie writer dc4000, software CD (including electronic user's guide, quick-start installation guide, and getting-help support guide), a USB cable, a composite-video/stereo analog audio cable, an audio splitter cable, and 1 blank recordable DVD.Average Customer Rating:

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Comment: Installation Nightmare! Rating:
I'm absolutely amazed that anyone would be happy with this thing. I spent over 3.5 hours on the phone with HP's help center (located in INDIA - DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THIS ONE!!) only to find out that my installation disc was missing the DRIVER!

"You'll receive the replacement disc in one to two days," they told me. FIVE DAYS LATER, it showed up. At first the RE-installation seemed to work, but then the software kept crashing repeatedly. Error messages such as "Device Disconnected" kept popping up even though not a single thing had been touched.

Bottom line: for me, this DVD writer was a total failure and a complete waste of my time. The only saving grace was that I was able to return it for a full refund one week after I'd bought it.

Sorry, but I can't recommend this hunk o' junk at all.
AVOID! AVOID!! AVOID!!!

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Comment: Laserdisc collectors note - So far, so good Rating:
The Pinnacle Systems video capture device I bought last year was totally useless from day one - a dead loss. This HP unit, once it was hooked up and the software loaded, worked from the start. Eureka! Of particular interest to people who, like me, have rare or unusual items on laserdisc that may never show up on DVD, is that it will indeed capture video from a laserdisc player. I used the S-video connection for the picture and RCA connectors for the audio. This is important to know because I called HP customer support before buying mine specifically to find this out. After talking to a couple of people in what I assume is some country in the far East, and being on hold for a total of about 25 minutes, I was told that the DC4000 wouldn't work on laserdisc transfers. But something about the way they explained it suggested to me that they weren't really sure, and I suspect that the info HP supplied them to parrot back to inquiring customers didn't address the question at all and they had to improvise their (wrong) answer. Way to go, HP! Anyway, for those who are interested in this application, I can tell you that it does work. I won't suggest that a transfer of a 2 hour film is going to look quite as good as the original laserdisc source, but it does look noticeably better than a VHS copy. Also I'd say that the DC4000 is particularly worthwhile for transferring old VHS tapes, as they tend to deteriorate a little more every year that you keep them, and the two or three that I've copied look reasonably close to the original source. As I understand it, commercially produced DVDs have dual layers for twice the data capacity, as opposed to the one recording surface that recordable DVDs have, which is why they never look as good as the professionally produced product. Nevertheless, this is a very cool item to have, and I'd say that the few discs I've produced so far look better than most homebrewed discs you'd get from eBay sellers or internet entrepreneurs.

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Comment: Excelent DVD writer Rating:
All the given product descriptions are on target. It's the first DVD writer I buy and I don't regret it. The price is nice since you don't have to buy any video capture device.
Video capture is real-time and with very good quality. Also, it supports all kind of DVD blank media. Enjoy!

Posted at November 11, 2003 07:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)