The device is very simple. A small adapter with USB plug on one side, and HDMI socket on the other. For whatever you connect via USB, that device will likely just see it as a webcam so you don’t need special drivers or anything.
Just in the first day I playing around with it, I was able to test the following:
- Connected to Windows 10 device, and used the camera app as a quick test to see if the video worked (which it did).
- Connected to an Android phone ( Samsung S9+ ). Since my phone is USB-C, I used a USB-C dock and plugged this device into the dock. I was able to see video, you do have to find software designed to view video from a USB webcam.
- Connected to a Chromebook. Again, it seemed to register as a webcam and from there I was able to see video input.
- On the Windows PC, I set up OBS ( Open Broadcaster Software ). Now, I have never used it before but the manual that came with it suggested this app. It seems to be designed for people that do video streaming, but it allows recording as well.
- Used OBS to record, and stream (via Facebook live) some video using a Nintendo Switch as my input.
The only issue I noticed is sometimes, especially when first starting the capture, the video would get artifacts. Now, I have no clue if it is the adapter, or something else like the software or just the fact I don’t have a powerful PC. I did change one setting in Windows ( I think it was disabling the Game bar ) that may have helped address it, the video I recorded from the Switch looked pretty good.
Also there is a small amount of lag on the video, it wasn’t an issue with Animal Crossing but if you are going to play a fast paced game you may want to get a HDMI mirror device that will take 1 input and output to two HDMI devices ( a monitor and the capture device ). To see a short sample of video I captured from Animal Crossing: New Horizons check out this link ( https://youtu.be/RuPB3_cEiTk ).
Here are the main points I noticed about this product:
Simple setup: You just plug it into the computer, and then hook it to your HDMI source.
Simple use: Your device just sees the input as a webcam.
Useful tool: This could have a wide range of uses for a variety of users. You can take video from a wide range of devices - computers, gaming consoles, devices like a Raspberry Pi, cameras that have HDMI output really anything that can output HDMI video. Once you have the video signal, you can record it, stream it, or probably use it in collaboration software.
Bottom line: Just based on these quick tests, it seems like a good budget level entry device into video capture.
Amazon Product Page: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08C7CSD2D/
