StarTech.com S-Video or Composite to HDMI Converter with Audio - 720p - NTSC & PAL - Analog to HDMI Upscaler - Mac & Windows (VID2HDCON2)

I have been searching for options to convert old family videos from VHS to digital and have settled on this Startech unit. Short answer; it's a very well made unit that performs the task well.My other attempts involved several other devices and methods. First one was a Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge. That device takes composite video and converts it to a DV stream on fire-wire. I captured the stream with either Adobe Premiere (Elements) or Virtual Dub. Overall video quality was decent but not quite as good as the original VHS played directly to a TV. Also, finicky and sometimes returns an error and the recording dies. Also, several artifacts that appear such as image-tearing along the top or bottom of screen.Also tried a Diamond VC500 (composite video to USB), capturing with Cyberlink. Same issues as the DV bridge and very visible loss of quality, including pixelation. Also had problems with audio not staying in sync with the video.I've also tried DVD recorders. They are stable but also did not produce a quality that matched the original source.I also tried a budget HDMI upscaler (little square box, about $30 on Amazon) but the image quality was horrible.Enter the Startech: I bought it in part based on my experience with other devices made by them that performed very well. I am not disappointed with this device. Very solidly built metal case and high quality receptacles, etc. It will take either composite or S-Video input. I am using the composite. I send the HDMI output to an AGPtEk HDMI capture device (model VG0020?). The AGPtEK is dumping directly to a USB thumb drive.The main benefit of this Startech is that it seems to be absolutely reliable; NEVER dropping out due to any bad sync pulses or other timing issues related to the source. Also, absolutely none of the tearing or other distortion artifacts I experienced with the other methods. Also, no visible pixelation at all in the resulting file. My 60 year old eyes judge the overall quality as nearly equal to the VHS playing directly to a TV. Never have any audio/video sync issues.The resulting files are quite large (I am using a 128 GB thumb drive). Your 4:3 aspect ratio video will end up stretched horizontally. No problem; I can easily "interpret footage" within Adobe to easily convert back to 4:3 ratio.

I purchased to watch 20 to 25 years old Hi8 tapes from a Sony Handicam using S-Video. Works great. The picture was well converted and even (color and rendering) across the whole screen. I reviewed video from indoors and outdoors under a range of recording light conditions (poor to great). As near as I can personally tell, the converter represented the video as good (or as bad) as the tape originally played back on the TV.Couple of Notes:1. Image is stretched from 4:3. My TV has a setting to fix this. Looked perfect after changing the TV.2. Color as good as I can expect - better than I imagined. It is not great in some lighting conditions recorded on tape and perfectly fine for other tapes recorded outdoors on sunny day. This is the camera and tape recordings from 25 years ago; not the S-Video to HDMI converter. Also remember old tube color TVs typically had strong brightness and color saturation to make video look better than what was really recorded.3. Easy to use - just plugged in S-Video and L/R audio, turned it on and it worked. (Does not come with cables.)4. Audio is coming across as stereo. The Handicam was a stereo camera and the converted kept it stereo all the way to the TV.5. I am not sure the TV's processor is compensating although I can't rule it out. So, what I see is what is actually being converted from S-Video. Meaning? The converter is doing its job and the TV is not picking up the slack or masking quality issues.I was concerned at three times the cost money would be needlessly spent. I'm not now.

A few months back I bought an Orei 901 converter, but plugged in the wrong power cord and fried the unit. I liked it, but it was fairly cheap and wasn't going to last forever anyway. So, I did more research and really wanted to try this Startech VID2HDCON2 out, but probably like you, I couldn't find any reviews. So, I bit the bullet and bought it for $86 as well as a cheaper alternative, the Ruipuo Svideo to HDMI converter for $23. I did some basic testing on the N64, see pictures attached. I don't have any fancy capture cards to get clearer pictures, but you can get the idea. During testing, there was a noticeable quality difference between the two, and the Ruipuo unit gets quite warm while plugged in and feels very cheap, albeit it does the job just fine. But the Startech feels very solid, has an on/off switch, and besides getting you the best quality, it outputs the proper colors. You'll notice on the Ruipuo composite to S-Video comparisons, the colors are oversaturated. You could fix this with your TV, but that's not the point. Most of the cheap converters seem to suffer from this problem.Overall, I can't say it's 'worth' $86, but I can say for what I've researched under $100, this will be the best thing you can buy without spending at least $300+ on a really fancy one.

The $20 cheapie brands of converters strip out fields (e.g. Pac-Man on the Atari 800 computer). This Star Tech device doesn't strip out fields and provides a very good picture. For cost/performance average, this is my first go-to brand.My only gripe is that it uses something like bicubic interpolation instead of bilinear, which results in a ghostlike artifact in the contrasting areas of text. It's not bad and is only a minor gripe, and IMHO a positive of this is some softness that doesn't look overtly overly sharp. It grew on me and, back in the day of TV and CRT monitors, the blockiness wasn't pinpoint sharp either. If you want something so sharp, whip out the soldering iron and modify your retro console or computer with a third party kit. This device is less risky for most of us, especially me. :)