Terratec Grabster AV400 review

If you use the services offered by high street shops to transfer your VHS tapes to DVD, you could end up paying a fortune - up to £20 per tape.

And you'll end up with the whole of each tape on your new DVD - even the rubbish bits that you don't really want.

The Grabster AV400 is a video-capture device lets you do the same thing for yourself. It's powered from a USB connection and has a built-in video-encoding chip that lifts the burden of video encoding from your PC's processor. This is handy if you have a slower PC.

Installation was a bit tricky. We plugged the Grabster in and followed the instructions for installing the driver, but the device wasn't detected. We had to repeat the process and point the Windows XP driver by hand before we could get it working. However, once it was up and running, the device was very easy to use. It comes with an S-Video cable, a composite cable and a two-way SCART to composite/S-Video adapter in the box. We captured video using both the composite and S-Video connections without any problems.

The Grabster comes with UIead MovieFactory 3, which enables you to capture and edit video to create your own video-CDs or DVDs. It also works with other video-editing programs and Terratec even provides a very simple video capture tool for download from its website in case you don't want to use MovieFactory. This is easy to use and allows you to adjust settings such as brightness and contrast - handy if you need to touch up some murky old videos.

The Grabster AV400 is a good, simple video capture device. Driver glitches aside, it's easy to use, you'll very quickly get the hang of it. It comes with all the cables you need, as well as the handy SCART to composite adapter. You'll be able to get started as soon as you open the box, with no extra fuss or expense. But the Grabster isn't the best value video capture device we've seen. The ADS Tech DVDXpress DX2 we reviewed in the July issue does the same job just as well and it's £10 cheaper.