I still own one, in the back of the bottom draw.
An unmitigated disaster. Some people seem to get lucky with this thing and it'd probably be OK with really stable sources. There was a firmware revision done a few years back but as I'd since bought an ADVC 300 I wasn't going to incur the expense of shipping my Pyro back to the US to get it upgraded, especially seeing as how people were still having issues with it. My ADVC 300 on the other hand has been rented out to many folk and no one, using either Mac or PC software has had a issue with it, transferring either PAL or NTSC.

We also used to have a Hollywood Dazzle, the company I believe was bought by Pinnacle, a fitting fate. We sold our Dazzle for around $20, I feel sorry for the guy who bought it, maybe the wall wart will come in handy.

If you want to digitize audio, none of these boxes are much chop. The sound card in your PC might even be better, half decent external A->D boxes aren't too expensive these days and you could always resell it on eBay when you're done with it.

Bob.

i've got one & haven't had any issues. Only thing to worry about is tapes that aren't great. Good copy of VHS tapes worked perfectly but iffy ones have a hard time getting no dropped frames.

Don't forget. You can still pick up a used Sony Digital 8 with pass through feature. The Sonys with passthrough have Time Base Code and Digital Noise Reduction and I rarely lose a frame on tapes, even on SLP tapes.
So, you get both a converter and a digital camera for $100 to $300. It's a good converter too.
Just be sure the model you look for has this feature, because only a few do. (you pretty much have to look through the complete instruction manual to find out, but just find the 'using with analog video unit and PC - Signal convert function' area of the manual ..There should be a diagram with VCR plugged into camera and iLink firewire to PC

I have one and it works like a charm for previewing on external monitor, but I have not been able to get it to work the opposite way - converting analog to digital into the computer. Messed with it for over an hour one time, then pulled out my camera and used it instead.

thanks for all the advice, guys!

I forgot all about using the camera concept. When I wanted to do this a few years ago, I had to record the whole thing onto the camera tape first, then digitize. That was with my digital 8 that obviously doesn't have pass through. However, I since own a nice Sony 3CCD Mini DV, and this works great... in PREMIERE! How do I do this in Vegas? Basically, I'm just looking to transfer an analog signal (VHS) into Vegas. When I try this in the Capture tool with Capture Video, it rolls the tape in the camera. It won't do anything without a tape in the camera, but with a tape in it, and the analog source feeding into the camera, the video shows up, but won't let me capture it. Is there a setting somewhere I need to know about?

Thanks for all your help and tips!

mas

Do it the same way in Vegas as you'd do it in any NLE.
Use Vegas's VidCap but turn off device control and scene detection.

Bob.