Cheap capture cards?

91Chris · February 7, 2015

Hello. Not sure if this is the best section to post this in...

Does anyone have any experience with the cheap HDMI capture cards that are available on AliExpress, eBay etc?

Ones like these...

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/YK762H-PCI-E-HDMI-Video-Capture-Card-161390/32240673391.html

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/HD-Video-capture-Card-PCIe-1080P30-HDMI/32268733818.html

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/YK762HY-PCI-E-HDMI-Video-Capture-Card-161389/2048391436.html

Just wondering if they are any good?

I'm looking at getting one so I can use my PC as a monitor for games consoles where I would play the games through the card via VLC or similar. I'd like any input in regards to quality and latency. I have seen a YouTube video where a guy used one to play his PSP through it and he described it as "snappy". He seemed impressed but more opinions are better.

Not interested in solutions like "why not just plug the console directly into your monitor?". This is what I am currently doing but I'd much prefer to play the games "in" Windows so I can just tab in and out of the game without switching inputs. If anyone is already doing what I'm trying to achieve successfully then I'd like to know what hardware you're using.

Thanks,

Chris.

Aniallation · February 7, 2015

Don't double post.

Syntaxvgm · February 7, 2015

Don't double post.

be easy on him, the forum have been acting really weird. The loading things stay on, but if I navigate away I'm still making the post. I'm assuming it's easy to double post this way.

91Chris · February 7, 2015

Don't double post.

I didn't mean to. The forum gave me 404 error when I hit "post", so I just did it again.

OP, is there any reason you don't want to buy from Amazon? I wouldn't know much about capture cards but use Amazon a lot (for everything)... those cards you linked to I found on Amazon (at least the first one) have horrible reviews saying it's faulty. For $120 you could get this thing and use it... I don't know if capture cards cheaper than that should be trusted. Again, I'm not an expert on these things, I usally know more about storage or CPUs or what.

I have no problem buying from Amazon but if I can get the exact same thing much cheaper directly from China then I'd rather do that.

I have seen those bad reviews but I am not sure what to make of them to be honest. They could be giving the bad reviews because they are not tech savvy and their issues could just be user related. The video I watched was actually a real time demo doing exactly what I want to do with it, seemingly problem free. I'm pretty tempted to just go ahead and try it based on the video alone, but i thought I'd ask here.

Here's the video I mentioned...

http://youtu.be/ARTFLCswGuU?t=8m40s

Chris.