Roxio Game Capture Device [Video] Review (hardware/software)

Roxio sent over a Roxio Game Capture unit for us to review. It’s a video pass through box that can capture video and send it straight to your PC while still allowing video to display on your standard TV or monitor. The input and output are component video (Y, Pb, Pr) and stereo audio. This is not a problem for the Xbox 360 gamers as these cables come with the unit, but for Playstation 3 gamers, you’ll need to invest in a component out cable. The whole package sells for $99.99 and includes:

• Game Capture Unit
• Component video cable
• Stereo RCA cables
• USB Cable
• Driver and VidoeWave software CD
• Setup instructions

Roxio Game Capture Installation

There was some difficulty in getting the unit to work properly but it turned out that a complete uninstall of the software and device driver and a reboot, re-install, reboot sequence did the trick. If you have problems getting the video to stop flickering on all settings, this might be what you also need to do. After that we were off and running.

The Roxio Game Capture unit is a simple setup. Turn off your console, plug the output cables from your console into the Roxio Game Capture unit, attach the output cables from the Game Capture to your monitor/display, plug the USB cable into the PC and turn on the console. If all goes well you’ll see the video on your standard display and when you start the Game capture software on the PC it will find the unit and see the video signal. On the Xbox 360, if you are using the dual video cable be sure to switch it to HDTV before powering the unit on.

I was only able to get the signal to be properly viewable with my Xbox 360 set to 1080 output yet the unit is only able to capture 480p video and export it to AVI, WMV, DivX and MP4. That’s a shame really since the consoles and many online sites like YouTube are HD capable now. The unit is able to upscale a bit and as you can see in the video below looks quite good at 720p.