I was fairly impressed with the Roxio Game Capture device. Sure, you have to run cables from the console, through the device and into your display and PC, but if all your stuff is in one room that’s not such a big issue. 
AverMedia contacted me asking to send one of their Game Capture HD devices for review and I agreed. I mean, who doesn’t want all sorts of cool stuff. Plus, we could totally use this for game review videos here at GDN.
The AverMedia Game Capture HD does have some other advantages, aside from not needing to be directly connected to a PC, it can capture and output 1080i, something the other could not. It also has two modes, one that lowers latency so that you can play and capture without any loss of response and another with the full on-screen display so that you can do playback, file management, etc. The only way to achieve anything with the Roxio is to have a fairly strong PC.
The unit is fairly small and is designed to fit into your gaming console area. It connects between the console and the display device and the signal passes through it. Setup is extremely easy as there are just a power plug and two sets of component and audio input and output.
Internally you can store a 2.5" SATA hard drive. I happened to have an OCZ 60GB SSD that fit right in so I installed that. It’s also got a USB port right on the front of the unit. What I do is record to the SSD because then I can just copy the files off to a USB drive as I wish and still maintain a central repository of all the files. It’s not really necessary and you could record to the USB drive if you wanted. I have a stack of USB jump drives so I use them for quick file moving. When I get the USB drive to the PC then I just leave them on the drive to edit and save the edited videos to the desktop. If I were in an office where the computer wasn’t near the consoles or if I were at home where the consoles are in the living room and the PC in another room it would be a fast way to get files to and fro. What would have been even cooler would have been network connectivity so that yo could then use the AverMedia Game Capture HD as a sort of network-attached storage unit and just transfer the files when you needed to use them. Perhaps they’ll look into that in the next iteration of the device.
