Ready for a one-stop platform for organizing, editing, and burning digital media? HP's DVD Movie Writer dc4000 is an external 8x DVD writer with built-in analog video capturing abilities to let you quickly and easily transfer your treasured home videos directly from tape (via camcorder or VCR) to both your PC and to recordable DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, and CD-R/-RW media. But it's not just for video--the drive's full suite of video-editing software also includes dedicated applications for photo, music, and data.

Write speeds are 8x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD+RW, and 4x DVD-RW, with up to 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW. Connected to a desktop or notebook PC through its USB 1.1 port, the dc4000 is designed to digitally encode VHS and other analog sources and create digital negatives on long-life DVD discs. It converts video from a variety of formats, including VHS, Hi8, Digital 8, and BetaMax--essentially any format from any component offering analog video outputs. The dc4000 is also designed to function as a standard DVD/CD writer to burn music, photos, and data to both DVD and CD.

After the dc4000 converts analog tapes to the digital MPEG-2 format--the same format all commercially available DVDs are written to--you'll be able to edit and share your DVD masterpieces with friends and family. And you can get as detailed as you want in editing your DVDs--the dc4000 includes ArcSoftShowBiz 2.1, a full editing package, and muveeautoProducer, a simple music-oriented video-editing application.

ShowBiz 2.1lets you add or delete scenes, add music or special effects, and create slideshows set to music. Easy-to-use screens let you drag and drop video clips, digital photos, and music files in either storyboard or simple timeline-editing formats.autoProduceris a fun and easy editing package that quickly turns digital movies into music videos with a few clicks of a mouse.

The dc4000 also includes an enhanced video-transfer wizard that simplifies batch loading of multiple tapes or clips to a single DVD and permits time-saving background processing. Other software updates include the 6.5 version ofRecordNowand ArcSoftPhotoBase 4.5to help you create, organize, and burn photo slideshows.

VeritasRecordNowandSimple Backuphelp you save data, video, or music on DVDs and CDs.Simple Backupreliably backs up, protects, and restores individual files or folders and can also help restore an entire PC hard drive. Additionally, CyberlinkPowerDVDsoftware makes it easy to play DVD movies on a PC.

What's in the Box
HP DVD movie writer dc4000, software CD (including electronic user's guide, quick-start installation guide, and getting-help support guide), a USB cable, a composite-video/stereo analog audio cable, an audio splitter cable, and 1 blank recordable DVD.