Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

While this product is actually pretty good for a simple USB capture device, you HAVE TO, HAVE TO, HAVE TO get the most *current* drivers for it to work optimally. I understand the pain that 99.9% of users have with installing and using this product and I partly blame StarTech and the Chinese / Taiwanese hardware industry. Guess what, if you get updated drivers from StarTech's site, they're old. "What? But StarTech makes this thing, they'll have the newest drivers. Right?" Wrong. In fact, this device is really just a re-branded product call the GrabBeeX+deluxe made by VideoHome of Taiwan. The drivers on StarTech's site are newer-ish but since the Taiwanese company that makes the GrabBeeX+deluxe (a.k.a StarTech SVID2USB2) is still around and have WAY newer drivers than what StarTech offers, go to their web site and get the latest drivers (look for the GrabBeeX+deluxe). Unless you really know computer's and how to read driver properties, you'd NEVER figure it out. It's no surprise this product gets a bad rap. Also, you can and should upgrade the GrabBee video capture software to version 1.0.9.3 if you go to VideoHome's site (see link info below). Startech's GrabBee video capture software (bundled or on their support site) is the WAY old version 1.0.7.6. The newer 1.0.9.3 version has updated codecs (read more below). Having 21+ years in IT to track down who makes these obscure hardware components has become a refined skill and I can say that the chipset that is in the device is made by eMpia and it's the 28xx series. But don't go to eMpia's site to get newer drivers, go to the makers of the GrabBee hardware / software (VideoHome): [...] . tw and look for the product called GrabBeeX+Deluxe (USB Grabber). Under the "Driver" and "AP" section you can find the newest drivers and version of the GrabBee capture software. By the way, the newer GrabBee capture software has capture software and codecs as new as Feb of 2011 and supports formats like XVid and has a far newer MPEG encoder than even the 1.0.7.3 version. These newer codecs will yield far better results and are more optimized to take advantage of modern CPU features like SSE2/SSE3/SSE4 (which help in video / audio / multimedia processing) that the older codec versions were not as well optimized to use. Do yourself and others a favor and get the newer drivers and GrabBee software and THEN review this product. What comes out of the box is ancient as far as drivers and capture software go and you WILL HAVE PROBLEMS, especially if you have Vista or Windows 7. By the way, the latest drivers do work on Windows 7 64-bit. One other issue some people might have and not realize is that your computer may only have USB 1.1 ports. For this device to work well, you have to know if you have USB 1.1, USB 2.0, or USB 3.0 ports for it to plug into. You should also try and figure out if you have the chipset drivers for your motherboard installed already as they can help immensely. Also, if you're not tech minded, you may not know that in your computer's BIOS, your USB settings may be, by default, set to not fully utilize the max speed of you USB 2.0 ports which is called HighSpeed. USB 1.1 uses FullSpeed and USB 3.0 uses SuperSpeed. Theoretically, a USB 1.1 port has just enough bandwidth to capture *compressed* MPEG1 video stream but not raw, uncompressed video streams which is why you need USB 2.0 or faster. Also, having a slower speed IDE or SATA hard drive that spins at 5400RPM or less may impede writing to the hard drive fast enough and cause drop-outs and other anomalies. Always defragment your hard drive! It's no surprise people get frustrated with this nifty device. I hope posting the below link directly to the GrabBeeX+deluxe will help some of you. Everything you need for updated drivers and GrabBee capture software is there (copy and paste to your browser and just remove the spaces): [...] and if it doesn't work, go to VideoHome's site and click on Products > USB Grabber > and find the GrabBeeX+deluxe at the bottom of the list and click More Details. The Driver and AP sections are what you want to download from. Have fun! UPDATE 6/27/2011: GrabBee software 1.0.9.6 is now available on the [...]. UPDATE 8/9/2011: Well, it seems VideoHome has retired the GrabBeeX+Deluxe from it's products page in place of new hardware and as such have made it a bit tougher to easily find the driver. You can now find it here: go to VideoHome's site and choose Technical Support > Download, change Product Name to USB Grabber, then scroll down to the bottom of the page and go to page 2 or click Next >>. Have fun. UPDATE: 8/15/2011: Amazon has removed the links to the drivers so follow the directions I have up on my 8/9/2011 update. UPDATE: 10/4/2011: It seems eMpia has updated their drivers for this device around 8/23/2011 even though it seems VideoHome has stopped updating them. Just do a search for BDA_082311_UAC and that should get you to the eeti . com web site. If not, try [...] and remove the spaces. Updated my driver to one from 8/23/11. UPDATE: 1/30/2012: Don't use the eMpia driver from eeti . com. It seems others have been having issues with the eMpia drivers from 8/23/2011 so it seems you might be best to stick with the drivers dated 4/22/2011 from Videohome's web site. UPDATE: 10/5/2012: Although I have not tried them yet, eMpia has updated their drivers in February 2012 (WDM_Media_D020412_EMPAudio.rar & WDM_Media_D020412_UAC.rar). Do a Google search for WDM_Media_D020412_EMPAudio (you'll need Winzip to open the RAR files) and it should be the first hit pointing to home dot eeti dot com dot tw / web20 / ic_suppot dot html. I know some of you had issues with the August 2011 driver so these might be a bit better. Don't know yet if they work on Windows 8. UPDATE: 1/29/2013: The videohome site (videohome dot com dot tw) has newer "official" drivers for Windows 8 support (dated 2011) and also GrabBee 2.0 (do a Google search for GrabBee_V2.0.0.0.zip, it should be the only hit that comes up). UPDATE: 1/23/2014: Please don't send me messages asking for support with this device on Windows 8/8.1. I won't reply. Ok, eMpia has done a sneaky thing with their original web site at eeti and has secretly hidden slightly newer drivers (dated 9/27/2012. You'll need the file(s) titled WDM092712_ImageUAC.rar and WDM092712_ImageEMPAudio.rar. The driver version shows as 2.2012.927.0 so slightly newer than the February 2012 driver. These will *not* turn up on a Google search. If there's any hope for you Windows 8 / 8.1 people, these are your best shot. Seeing as how there's *nothing* newer than these drivers, I would not hold my breath for proper Windows 8 (or 9) support if the 9/27/2012 drivers don't work. Check in the comments section for the link. Amazon keeps removing it. UPDATE: 4/17/2014: I wish Amazon would stop deleting my comments on the newer drivers from 9/27/2012. Please go to the comments section and go to the very last comment and you will find the info I left on where the last drivers for Windows 7 are. I do not think this device works on Windows 8. I don't have Windows 8 to test with it but I would guess the 9/27/2012 Windows 7 drivers would work ok. (empiatech dot com/IC_drivers/201209/) If you're having trouble with recording audio, it's likely Windows 7 is trying to use the audio capturing of your *sound card* and not the audio capture of the USB capture device so you have to set the USB capture device as the default sound recording input. That's why it is not working for you. I use Windows 7 and it works fine for me. UPDATE: 8/7/17: It seems Amazon removed many of my comments and updated driver info. What I can say about getting newer drivers for this device is to use Snappy Driver Installer (SDI) v1.17.8.1. It's Windows only. One of the last times I used it, it found newer drivers for my setup than I even knew existed. In order to update your capture drivers using SDI, do this: 1. Google Snappy Driver Installer and download the SDI Lite version (about 4MB), 2. Extract it to it's own folder, 3. plug in the USB capture device, 4. run SDI, allow the firewall exception, choose the Download Indexes Only option, 5. wait for it to download the indexes (a few minutes), 6. you should see newer drivers appear with a blank checkbox next to them. Hover the mouse cursor over the driver it lists and it will show you the installed driver and the newer one available and it's driver date, 7. click the checkbox to the left of the newer driver(s) and then click the green Install button at the top right and wait for it to download and install the update driver for you. That's it! I tested SDI again on Windows 7 x64. SDI finds two drivers: 1) USB 2821 Video (v2.2012.204.0) and USB EMP Audio Device (v5.2012.111.0).