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Good Analogue Capture Cards? (Component, Composite, S-video) VGA and HDMI maybe too
FireStarW Feb 9, 2017
I've been looking to get a capture card to replace my composite only easycap (the s-video on mine is nonfunctioning), to use with OBS to livestream all my various gaming consoles (NES era to PS2 era, WiiU possibly as well)

The card needs to be able to handle the resolutions of 240p and 480i over composite/s-video, and 240p to 720p/1080i over component. (240p over component is PS1 games on the PS2)
The VGA I would use is Dreamcast VGA, if the card has HDMI as well it's fine for it to be 1080p30fps as the WiiU has only one 1080p60fps game.

From my own research, the main thing is finding a card that does 240p over component, the only thing I've found is this Magewell Pro Capture HDMI ( http://www.magewell.com/pro-capture-hdmi ) which doesn't seem to have any reviews and has some odd availability in north america.

I was looking at the Blackmagic Intensity pro card before but it's component input doesn't even do 480p (the standard res used by the PS2/XBOX/Wii , the only consoles component is relevant on), the Hauppage HD PVR was a device with component I looked at but it doesn't do 240p over component.

Is there any device/combo of devices anyone else uses that is good?

Edit: Also , I'm also not interested in dropping a ton of cash on RGB cables and a scart converter box
damarrin Feb 15, 2017
I bought this two days ago. It works out of the box on Ubuntu 16.04 (tvtime + loopback module for pulseaudio). I don't know about 240p, but I'd be surprised if it didn't work. lsusb says it's ID 1d19:6109 Dexatek Technology Ltd., dmesg says
[47128.101491] usb 2-1.3: new high-speed USB device number 6 using ehci-pci
[47128.211978] usb 2-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d19, idProduct=6109
[47128.211980] usb 2-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[47128.211982] usb 2-1.3: Product: Video Grabber
[47128.211983] usb 2-1.3: Manufacturer: DK
[47128.211984] usb 2-1.3: SerialNumber: 0000000000
[47128.819395] cx231xx 2-1.3:1.1: New device DK Video Grabber @ 480 Mbps (1d19:6109) with 6 interfaces
[47128.819559] cx231xx 2-1.3:1.1: Identified as Pixelview Xcapture USB (card=11)
[47128.819981] i2c i2c-5: Added multiplexed i2c bus 7
[47128.820048] i2c i2c-5: Added multiplexed i2c bus 8
[47128.947317] cx25840 4-0044: cx23102 A/V decoder found @ 0x88 (cx231xx #0-0)
[47131.006988] cx25840 4-0044: loaded v4l-cx231xx-avcore-01.fw firmware (16382 bytes)
[47131.041372] cx231xx 2-1.3:1.1: v4l2 driver version 0.0.3
[47131.148618] cx231xx 2-1.3:1.1: Registered video device video1 [v4l2]
[47131.148708] cx231xx 2-1.3:1.1: Registered VBI device vbi0
[47131.148714] cx231xx 2-1.3:1.1: video EndPoint Addr 0x84, Alternate settings: 5
[47131.148718] cx231xx 2-1.3:1.1: VBI EndPoint Addr 0x85, Alternate settings: 2
[47131.148721] cx231xx 2-1.3:1.1: sliced CC EndPoint Addr 0x86, Alternate settings: 2
[47131.148918] usbcore: registered new interface driver cx231xx
[47131.168470] cx231xx 2-1.3:1.1: audio EndPoint Addr 0x83, Alternate settings: 3
[47131.168473] cx231xx 2-1.3:1.1: Cx231xx Audio Extension initialized


I also have an Elgato hybrid (an old one, the current one has at least a different case, IDK whether the innards are the same or not), but I can't recommend it. Image is fine (well, on kernel 4.4 it is, I couldn't get it to work on kernel 4.8 when I tried a while back), but the audio device it creates is temperamental and at best gives distorted audio and I had to route audio through the computer's line in input, which was a bit of a hassle. No such problems with the Silvercrest I'm linking to above.
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