[quote name='Zmonkay']EDIT: So while looking around the net, I came upon USB video transfer kits, such as
http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-VC500-Touch-Capture-Device/dp/B000VM60I8
Anyone have any experience with this or other similar items? I think this would be the best route, but again reviews range from "ZOMG I love it" to "makes blurry pos vids"...
Or maybe this:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/p..._id=1081003&p_id=5616&seq=1&format=4#feedback and then find a good software to use with it?[/QUOTE]
I haven't had good experiences with those little converters. Ultimately, you're going to get what you pay for. Sure, everybody wants to be cheap, but you can't be unrealistic either. From what I've seen personally from those converters, the picture is awful, it will drop frames pretty bad, and the sound is bad.
Also, a point of doing anything on your computer is you will need a really fast CPU with a lot of RAM and a pretty huge hard drive. Customer experiences are going to vary with everything, so even reviews will be difficult to gauge. You could try one of the converters to see for yourself. But if you're wanting this to be a Christmas gift, it could just end up being a waste of time.
Oh, and to go along with Jay's suggestion, I checked out the Amazon Warehouse and found this (there's others on there as well, but this was the cheapest).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-list...=generic&qid=1289764011&sr=1-8&condition=used
If the refurb one I posted earlier turned you off (though that was a combo unit), this one comes straight from Amazon but has to be listed as "used" because it's basically just a customer return. People have had almost exclusively great experiences buying from the Amazon Warehouse. I haven't looked into how good the recorder is, but the comments are good and Toshiba is a good brand. It's got HDMI on it too so it can be used as an upconverting DVD player as well.