StarTech.com VID2HDCON Composite and S-Video to HDMI Converter with Audio

I don't write many product reviews, but I would be remiss to not write a review when you find a product as good as this. Unlike many of the cheap, junky $10-$15 av to hdmi converters, this one (which is not cheap and junky) does the job and does it well in converting a composite video signal form your vintage equipment (vcrs, etc.) to a 480p, 720p or 1080p hdmi signal without losing any of the quality of the original composite signal. The cheap converters tend to wash out the luminance and chrominance parts of the signal and you end up with a degraded picture from your vintage equipment. Not so with this converter. The black and white and color portions of the original composite signal are completely preserved. A beautiful piece of electronic equipment worth every penny. I only wish that every av to hdmi converter worked this well!

I’m a laserdisc enthusiast and have been since the late 1980’s. Composite video is the native output format for LD, so in a post CRT world, finding modern equipment that works well with the old LD players is a challenge. My 55 “ tv that had very decent upscaling from the composite input died. The new 65” tv that replaced it did a horrible job of displaying the output from my LDP. I’ve used several HDMI converters in the past and they all offered disappointing performance. This unit had some encouraging reviews, so I gave it a go. I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of this unit. Taking a 480i signal and producing a 760p output that looks as good as this is impressive and appreciated. Low noise was a plus and dulled, but correctable color was the only real issue I had. It’s not a perfect device, but for a relatively small investment, my extensive LD collection gets another reprieve from technological obsolescence.

This StarTech.com VID2HDCON is the only analog video (composite) to HDMI that I could find that offeres a selection for 480i output over its HDMI port. Lots of converters are out there but this is the only one with 480i and that is important to me. I use it with an AVerMedia EzRecorder 130 standalone recorder to convert my 8mm analog home video tapes to MP4 video files. The AVerMedia device has no way of controlling the output resolutiuon (frame size) that is encoded into the MP4 video that it creates. The AVerMedia converts video into the same frame size that is fed to it. 8mm analog video is 480i. The only way I could keep the MP4 video file as small as possible would be to keep the output HDMI frame size at 480 just like the analog 8mm video source material. There's lots of analog (composite) to HDMI converters out there but none other on the planet (that I could find) has a selection to output 480i. Of course this StarTech device will also output 720 and 1080 HDMI but those two resolutions can be found in many devices. 480i? That's rare. This StarTech has got it though. And, it keeps the file size down when fed to the AVerMedia device becuase the AVerMedia device will maintain the 480 frame size in the mp4 video file. On my 60 inch tv, the encoded file looks as good as the original analog source. Nothing added and nothing detracted. Just perfect. I don't want a device to stretch my 480i video to 720 or 1080. No matter what, any "upconverting" is going to stretch people's faces and reduce detail. The only problem that I can forsee is some cheap TV's cannot display 480i from an HDMI source but they are few and far between. I'm cranking out home video right and left. The StarTech.com VID2HDCON does a perfect conversion from composite to HDMI as far as I can tell. Colors are like the source, detail is like the source, there's no lost frames nor glitches when the source tape is crinkled and such. It just works. I have no complaints. I've converted about 50 of my 2 hours tapes so far with this hardware combination. Now that I'm compiling the files onto hard drives, it's really cool to be able to switch between all the videos to view short segments. Sure beats inserting 50 video tapes into a camcorder to view them.

If you have old 480i Camcorder/VHS Sources. This will _not_ letterbox the sides and leave the video in it is original 4:3 format. It'll deinterlace the video and stretch that 480i into 480P/720P/1080P. If that's an issue, this isn't the device for you.

I bought this to be a part of my VHS to Digital transfer system. It works good on most footage. For sports I was not as smooth as I wanted. I was happy with the overall build and quality.

I had a similar (and much cheaper) analog > HDMI converter. Worked fine but stretched the 4:3 image from my VHS player to 16:9 dimensions, distorting the image and causing all the people onscreen to look a bit bloated. This adapter fixes that problem, accurately presenting the VHS picture in 4:3 aspect ratio. Odd that you have to pay almost four times as much to get a converter that doesn't stretch the image, but here we are.In fact, the 4:3 aspect ratio is preserved in all picture modes—I couldn't find any setting that would display the image as stretched/bloated. Which is fine for me, but if you want to switch back and forth I don't think this will do it for you.I had planned to use this with an S-VHS connector but found I got better results just using the simple yellow component (RCA) cable. Using the VCR's menu screens as a test source, the letters are smooth and clear using the component input but the edges of letters are jagged using the S-video input.Anyway, if you like the boxy aspect ratio of your old VHS tapes, this will bring it to your flatscreen no problem.