Review: Pinnacle Video Transfer

The Video Transfer from Pinnacle is designed to be connected to a video source, such as a set-top box, video recorder or television, and convert content to a digital format at the flick of a switch.

It houses S-video and composite connections at one end and, since there’s no internal storage on which to save the media, a USB port at the other. Once you’ve connected a USB storage device, such as a USB key or portable hard drive, content is saved for you to view on a computer or portable device.

Setup is quite straightforward and you’re supplied with the necessary cables along with a Scart adapter. A series of LEDs light up around the main control button to let you know that a signal is being received and that compatible storage is attached.

You have a choice of three quality settings, with the lowest intended for smaller screens such as the iPod’s and the highest for playback on a PC. To start recording, you simply press the ‘Rec’ button and the current signal will be encoded to a digital format and saved on the attached storage.

When you stop a recording in the same way, you need to wait around 10 seconds for the video to be finalised, but at this point you can remove the storage and watch it instantly.

There are extra advantages here, such as the ability to record directly to a video iPod and a maximum file size that’s only limited by the Fat 32 format (which is 4GB per file).

It’s not all good news, as the Video Transfer restricts you to the H.264 format, which is based on MPEG4. Although this isn’t a massive issue, a choice of formats would have been good as, depending on your player, you may need to re-encode.