As I mentioned above, I also have a USB capture device. It takes a lot of free contiguous hard drive space to do a capture and convert, the software is flaky, the computer has to be fast with a lot of memory and have a fairly robust processor. And even if you get a successful capture, output to disc often results in bad discs. The combo decks are both easier and more reliable.
If you use a deck to convert, how would you get it on your computer? So you can post video capture for pictures and also YouTube?