- We're at the AVerMedia booth at COMPUTEX 2023
to show you guys something really special.
These are the world's very first HDMI 2.1 capture devices,
and they've got two of them,
internal, external, whatever you want.
Let's start with the internal one.
This is like a traditional PCIe-based capture card.
They call it the Live Gamer 4K 2.1,
because as I'm sure you can see, HDMI 2.1.
On the back here, it's just those two HDMI ports.
You've got in and out like any gaming capture card,
that way you can have your monitor still visible
while you're recording.
On the front here, not really too much.
You've got some cute venting.
You can see the internals of the card there.
On the bottom, PCIe Gen 3x4 connection.
It's not PCIe Gen 4, because really, honestly,
even this connector is a bit overkill.
There's not really anything else on here.
There's no external power, which is nice,
but I wouldn't really expect it with something like this.
It's a pretty low-power device.
And then on the top, you've just got a diffused RGB
kind of triangle bar thing.
It's configurable in their REC Central software,
and I think they said it was also compatible
with MSI stuff, which makes sense,
because this computer is just full of MSI stuff behind me.
That's pretty much it physically.
RGB really isn't what's important here, though.
What is, is those HDMI ports I talked about before.
They're HDMI 2.1, and if that doesn't mean anything to you,
it probably should.
If you have a PlayStation 5, or an Xbox Series X,
or really any modern GeForce computer
that you want to capture separately
from the computer itself, you're gonna want HDMI 2.1.
If you have basically any other capture card,
you're gonna be limited, in theory, to 4K 60 passthrough,
which, if you have a high refresh rate 4K monitor,
it's gonna kind of suck.
And then depending on lower resolutions,
it's gonna kind of vary,
but I imagine most of them are kind of like,
you might be able to get 1440p, 60, or 120, maybe.
But this thing, 4K 144 hertz, variable refresh rate, HDR,
passthrough, you can do 1440p, 144 hertz,
variable refresh rate, passthrough.
You can do 1080p, 240 hertz,
variable refresh rate, passthrough.
Basically, whatever you plug into this thing,
be it your Xbox or your PS5,
you go into the settings,
and you look at the resolution thing,
and it's gonna be like,
check mark, check mark, check mark, check mark.
As long as your display can do it,
these things generally will support it.
But PCIe capture cards are kind of annoying.
Unless you're fully static,
and this is like your streaming PC or whatever,
having to put this in there
and not be able to be portable with it kind of sucks.
But they know that.
That's where this comes in.
This is the Live Gamer Ultra 2.1.
On the back, it's got the same HDMI 2.1 in and out ports,
but we've also got something a little different here.
It's a line in and out.
There is a spelling mistake on this one.
It says min in, but it's meant to say line in.
It's a pre-production one.
Don't worry about it.
This is used for party chat,
which if you're a Nintendo Switch person,
and you wanna be able to capture your party chat,
very useful for that.
I did find out that the party chat and the HDMI
get mixed into one audio stream,
which if you're recording or streaming,
can be a little less flexible.
You can independently change the volume
between the HDMI and the party chat in,
but it is still recorded to one track.
They said they might be able to do a firmware update
or something like that to make it
so they're separate tracks,
which they really should do
because it gives you a lot more flexibility
when you're editing and even when you're streaming.
But for now, it's all in one.
And then over here is what I'm really excited about.
I understand it's a USB port.
It's not that exciting.
It's just 10 gig type C, whatever.
But if you look at the market,
the only other capture cards that can do 4K 60 recording
like these use Thunderbolt, but this is just USB.
If you don't have a laptop that has Thunderbolt,
which I mean, a lot of the modern ones do,
but some of the older stuff doesn't,
or if you're using a computer,
a lot of them don't have Thunderbolt,
but most of them these days have USB 10 gig.
So that means this is much more flexible
than the previous generations.
And if you looked at Thunderbolt capture cards,
AVerMedia actually has one.
There's something like $500.
This is not $500, but we'll get to the price later.
Around the front, RGB, of course.
But other than that, there's nothing really on here.
I mean, size-wise, it's a little bigger
than their previous capture cards.
They found one of their Live Gamer minis.
You can see the new one is a little bit thicker,
but nothing crazy, honestly.
They found one of their previous gen capture cards,
the Live Gamer EXTREME 3, just to compare the size here.
It is a bit taller, but not by much.
And then in terms of width and height,
it's almost the same.
So still super portable, which is great.
But what's a capture card without some capture?
So let's try it.
They actually let me take it out of this computer,
so I'm gonna put it back in this computer.
They've got this PCIe extension here,
so a little more finicky than usual.
Ah, I forgot how much manual screwdrivers suck.
Lttstore.com.
I couldn't bring it on the plane.
It's too long.
There we go.
Whoa, it does like a, did you see that?
That was so cute.
It does like a little boot up sequence.
The LEDs go slow, slow, fast.
I'm a child, you know?
Okay.
Looks like it's on.
It definitely can capture HDMI.
I don't know if it can capture this segue to our sponsor.
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- Hey look, it's working.
Oh, this is, what is this game?
Ah, what the hell is this guy called?
Devil May Cry, there we go.
I played this game before,
I just don't remember what it's called.
I'm bad with names.
Oh God, oh God, that's not good.
I mean, you can look at it right there.
It's variable refresh rate.
This is the monitor showing what signal it's getting.
We're going through the capture card.
Variable refresh rate, it's working.
They said it's a 4K 120 hertz monitor,
so let's see.
I don't really know how to PlayStation.
Also, it's in Chinese, so.
Okay, HDR is on.
4K.
And I guess 120.
Let's check out the display settings here.
Test 1440p output.
Variable refresh rate is set to automatic.
120 hertz set to automatic.
HDR always on.
Hey, look at that.
And the next screen test will be run.
It's working on all of them, which is great.
There we go, 1440p, 120 hertz,
variable refresh rate working as well.
Also with HDR.
Now, in 1440p, the max you're gonna be able to do
is 144 hertz for pass-through.
At 1080p, you can do 240 hertz variable refresh rate,
but there is a bit of a caveat there.
That is the pass-through resolution.
Because these cards are relatively inexpensive,
you're looking at $300 for either the PCIe version
or the external version,
which compared to the other stuff on the market
is pretty reasonable.
You're not gonna be doing 4K 144 hertz recording,
which to be honest, there's not a lot of use for that.
There is professional equipment
that can do higher bitrate video, like 8K 60,
but that stuff is professional and also expensive
and also doesn't have pass-through.
So for pass-through,
this is the best you're gonna get right now.
They did say it is possible to make a card
that records at 4K 144,
but it would be pretty prohibitively expensive.
And at least for the market right now,
there's not a lot of demand.
So maybe post in the comments
if you want $1,000 capture card
that can do 4K 144 hertz and maybe they'll make it.
But for right now, let's see.
There we go, 4K 60 FPS.
I can't go higher, which makes sense.
Okay, so you can do 1440p 120.
That's good.
Let's see, how are we capturing it?
Yeah, look at that.
Cool.
There's like black bars because OBS is set to a 4K canvas,
but this is 1440p 120 recording, which is great.
And then let's try 1080p.
This might break stuff
because the PlayStation is outputting at 1440p,
but I'm just gonna try it anyways.
Highest FPS, that's the option.
I guess it makes sense that it can capture
the different resolution than the input.
640, yeah, let's try 640.
Yeah, I mean, that works.
It just looks like crap.
It's very fast.
I feel like when you're usually screening around
with capture card resolutions and frame rates,
it's like gonna shut off for five minutes and turn back on.
You gotta wait for it.
But this is just right away
because the recording is decoupled from the pass-through.
This doesn't even flicker when you change it,
which is pretty sick.
Cool.
Let's try their software and change the RGB.
I lied, we're not in Rec Central.
This is their gaming utility.
We can go in here.
RGB control.
So by default, it's in third-party mode.
I think they said it supports MSI and Gigabyte for now,
but they're working on adding everybody else.
But you can also just go in here and change it.
So right now we're in rainbow mode.
What about glowing yo-yo?
Rainbow flash.
That's rainbow flash.
We've got comet.
Oh, that's a seizure one.
Static.
Ah, static.
That's what I like.
This is very early software.
I think I broke it.
Oh, there we go.
Much better.
I unbroke it.
We get the input video signal, 1440p, 120 hertz, 8-bit HDR.
The audio signals there shows the firmware version,
shows all the max capture versions,
USB 10 gig.
They have a performance test tool in here.
So if you're having issues with your capture card,
say like you used not the proper USB cable
or your computer's not fast enough,
it literally says, if performance is poor,
please upgrade your computer.
This will test to make sure that the proper resolutions
are supported and that it's working.
I think it's still pretty early
because it's in kilobits and it's a very long number.
You might want to update that to like gigabits, maybe.
It already supports multi-device, which is great.
Oh, here, look, you can change the headset volume
for party chat on the USB one.
So you can change the volume separately,
but again, it's still just going to be one track.
They've got RGB control.
Same thing with the scaling in here.
And then the performance test.
Hey, yeah, there we go.
All of our resolutions are supported.
It's the last thing to do is to try the USB one.
So I'm gonna in,
switch it to the ultra, and there we go.
We're in business.
Let's try 4K on this one too,
because I set the resolution weird.
4K, 60 recording.
Sick.
Oh, I want one of these.
I want one of these.
Can I take one home? (laughs)
Screen and video, resolution, 4K.
Hey, look, we're in HDR mode.
This is only 120 Hertz monitor,
so we weren't able to try out 144 Hertz.
So we're just gonna have to take their word for it.
While this is loading, there's a few more things to mention.
They're planning on releasing white and pink versions
of both the internal capture card and the external one.
These won't be available at launch.
If so, if you want them,
the best you're gonna be able to get is black.
They're targeting pre-orders in late July,
and the cards are supposed to come out in August.
I wouldn't recommend pre-ordering as usual.
Wait for independent reviews to come out.
But based on this first look,
and my previous experience with AVerMedia capture cards,
I'm very excited.
Whoa, the fact that this is USB
and has feature parity with the PCIe one, so sick.
And for only 300 bucks, I want one.
I can just take this one home, right?
Something I forgot to mention earlier
is you don't actually need software for these.
You probably want something to capture with.
You can use OBS or RecCentral, which is their software.
But in terms of drivers,
both the PCIe and the USB one are driverless.
They're just UBC plug-and-play.
On Mac, it's a little bit different story.
You will probably need software or a driver.
And they told me that the Ultra 2.1
is not yet supported on macOS, but it is coming soon.
They're just trying to focus on getting the Windows one
like 100% up to snuff before they work on that.
So thanks for watching.
If you like this video, like it,
get subscribed, do whatever,
and maybe check out the Mini's forum video I did.
I think that had USB 10 gig.
You could plug this into the Mini's forum,
and that could be like your streaming PC, huh?
Yeah, because it had a GPU too.
You could use the GPU to encode.
You don't even need to build two computers.
You just have like a little one.