The device, about the size of a classic iPod, connects to your video source via analog inputs (composite, S-video and audio) and to your iPod (or any flash or hard drive device) via USB. Using it is remarkably simple. I hooked up my Motorola DVR set-top-box with composite inputs to one end and my iPod on the other. When the program from my DVR started playing I pressed the record button on the Transfer and walked away. Video goes into the device, gets encoded in the H.264 MPEG4 format which is compatible with iPod and most other PMPs, then outputs it to the iPod. You can also record directly to a PC, a Sony PSP, a portable flash or hard drive. There are three quality levels that offer different resolutions and compressions, but I found the lowest quality (good) sufficient for viewing on my iPod Video. Good quality gets you about 85 hours on a 30GB iPod.
You can’t schedule recordings, so you need to be around to start and stop the device, which is a drawback compared to the Neuros OSD ($179) that offers on-screen scheduling. On an iPod the videos appear in the video movie menu with titles like 00001.mp4. You can hook the drive up to your PC later to change the title to something else.
As a fan of making the most of what I already have, the Pinnacle Video Transfer is a winner, because it lets me watch TV shows and movies on my iPod, but I don’t need to buy them each time.
So would you recomend this product to a school educator that does a lot with video transfers?