Which is best or if there is even better one than those two for under $250 please tell me?

You will get split answers, as there are many Canopus fans, and man ADS fans. I have used the ADS Pyro AV/Link for about 3 years now, and I love mine, but I have never used a Canopus. My honest opinion is that they are pretty even, and my choice to go with the ADS was based more on the fact that I got it for one heck of a price, and it included some decent software.

What exactly are you wanting to do, because about the only reason to have either of these, would be to capture video from various sources as AVI or DV-AVI for archieval or editing. If you just want to capture video, make small changes, and then encode, I would look at a dvd recorder, and mpeg2 editing software, such as womble's mpeg edit.

Give us some specifics on what you want to accomplish here...

I've had an ADVC100, which is an older Canopus model, for about 4 years and I love it. Does a great job and no dropped frames. The unit died from a power spike about 2 yrs and 11 months after I bought it and Canopus fixed it for free. Has an undocumented feature that will allow you to transfer macrovision protected tapes, something a standalone recorder can not do. Also has dipswitch to force audio and video to stay in sync (which really isn't an issue since no dropped frames). Both the Canopus and ADS units are quality

I want to mainly use it to transfer old VHs, VHS-C and possibly Hi8 and Digital8 tapes to my computer, where after that I'll edit it in Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 (which will also be the capture software) and burn it to a standard DVD. Does the ADS Pyro AV Link have a lot of dropped frames? I want to know because I got the pinnacle usb 500 (which was a piece of crap) and it had a bunch of dropped frames. My system is AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU, 2 GB 5400 RAM, and two 500 GB HDD. Is that good enough to have out of a 30 minute video, with five or less dropped frames?

I can't speak for the ADS, but your system is more than enough for the Canopus. An external DV capture device does not require a killer system. My main video computer is ancient by today standards (NF2 MOBO, AMD 2500 O/C'd to 3200, 1.5 TB HD space). DV encoded video takes up roughly 13 GB per hour.

The ADS and Canopus units are nearly identicle. Either one of them will do a great job for you.