I've been getting close to a 300M run on Akai Katana Shin, which is decent even by Shmups.com standards, so I've been thinking that I wouldn't mind sharing a video of that, or of a bunch of other games (Goku Makaimura, Hard Corps: Uprising, etc.) in which I am getting good at. More importantly, perhaps, I'd also like to finally be able to take real screenshots of console games for use in reviews in place of the usual half dozen touched-up or outright prerendered bullshit shots that every other site is using.
The thing is I'd like a solution that does everything: both PC and consoles up to 1080p/60, and after a few hours of searching I still haven't found anything satisfactory. Software solutions such as FRAPS and Nvidia's upcoming Shadowplay reduce your framerate (and how would you connect your consoles to your PC without an HDMI input?) while hardware solutions seem to be dominated by this company called AVerMedia which everyone agrees has nonexistent customer service, and whose products seem to universally downgrade both the image quality you see on your screen, and that of the video file of the recording. Amazon has cards from a couple of other companies, but from my quick research there seem to be even more complaints about those, on top of their being generally technically inferior even on paper (i.e. can't do 1080p, etc.)
AVerMedia is coming up with the Game Capture HD II soon, which on paper sounds like an uberproduct, but given some of the things I've read about their track record, it's hard to believe it will deliver on the image and recording quality front:
http://gamerzone.avermedia.com/game_cap ... pture_hd_2
I am really at a loss for what to do. This seems like the only PC component category that has no clear winners but just a bunch of mediocre competitors. Or else I am missing something obvious... The top card at the moment seems to be the AVerMedia C985 Live Gamer HD 1080p, which is $180 on Amazon, and though it has a lot of good reviews, it also has a lot of bad ones that read pretty depressingly: random malfunctioning, sound syncing problems, crap image and recording quality -- even some lag here and there.
http://www.amazon.com/AVerMedia-C985-Ga ... 007UXJ6LE/
I'll keep looking. Theoretically, the best solution would be a completely autonomous external device, such as the aforementioned upcoming Game Capture HD II, because it's the only option that doesn't interfere with a PC game's framerate, but whether there already is such a device that is also otherwise satisfactory, or if the GCHD2 will deliver, I don't know.