AOpen Xrecorder VX2000S review

After giving a rather guarded recommendation to Leadtek’s WinFast DV2000 last month, we were particularly interested to see how a similar product from AOpen lined up against it. Like the DV2000, AOpen’s Xrecorder VX2000S is a TV tuner with video capture capabilities, but in this case, everything you need is found in an external box rather than an add-in card.

As such, you’ll find all the connections rather more accessible than having them tucked around the back of your PC, which is a big point in the Xrecorder’s favour. The fact that the it uses USB 2.0 (USB 1.1-compatible) rather than FireWire also makes it handy for those of you looking for an external solution to plug into your 1394-less laptop. You’ll find the usual collection of composite and S-Video inputs on the front face of this slimline silver box, as well as the surprise addition of a FireWire port. Alongside the USB 2.0 port at the rear, there’s a socket for plugging in your co-axial TV aerial and below that, the 5V DC in. The box itself will lie quite comfortably on top of your PC, or you can fit the supplied stand for a more upright arrangement.

Without ripping the case apart, it’s impossible to be too specific about the contents, though we can tell you that there’s a Philips TV tuner module and SAA7114 analogue capture chipset inside. But the big gun here is Cirrus Logic’s CS92288, which is the hardware MPEG1/2 video codec and forms the keystone of this product’s feature set. It’s also likely to be the largest contributor to the Xrecorder’s rather hefty price tag.

Getting the TV working is a breeze, thanks to the inclusion of Ulead’s Video@Home. A quick scan of the channels, a little renaming and re-ordering, and you can sit back and use the supplied remote to control the action. However, while simple to use, Video@Home is a little on the basic side, lacking a channel browse function, picture-in-picture or downloadable programme schedules. That said, key PVR features like scheduled recording and time shift are provided. Additional software in the form of Ulead’s VideoStudio 7 SE DVD and PhotoImpact 7 SE should be enough to cover any creative urges you have with your recorded material, though we were a little thrown by the fact that the hardware cannot be used with VideoStudio’s own capture driver. AOpen will be disabling VideoStudio’s capture tool entirely to avoid confusion when it hits the shelves, but this is still a curious development from a supposedly WDM-compliant driver set, and also means that you’ll not be using the Xrecorder with any other capture tool than Video@Home for the time being.

As far as video capture is concerned, the quality largely depends on whether you’re using USB 1.1, or 2.0, as the biggest constraint here is bandwidth. For USB 1.1 systems, you’ll find yourself understandably limited to 4Mbps, while hooking up to a USB 2.0 port will put a full 15Mbps at your disposal – which is way beyond the maximum 10.08Mbps used by DVD movies. If, like us, you were expecting to find a nifty FireWire to USB bridging chip that lets you capture a raw DV25 AVI over the USB 2.0 connection, you’ll be disappointed, as even the FireWire connection is fed to the Cirrus Logic chipset. This means your output will always be MPEG-based, regardless of the original source, and subject to the vagaries of real-time, single-pass hardware encoding.