Thanks for sharing, I had not heard of the Aver Media device - it looks great. I love the fact that it supports recording directly to an SD card without the need for PC, too. There might be an Elgato for sale soon!
Yeah, the direct to SD recording is a nice option to have. I personally havent used it yet, not even to try it out. But there are plenty of YouTube videos out there showing its relative quality. You do take a noticable hit on the video quality though, being limited to 16mbps, as opposed to the standard PC connection which can do 60mbps. But the codecs are good, so as long as you are not trying to record Street Fighter, and doing something at a little more mundane pace, it looks just fine. With the lower bitrates on PC free mode, when the scene gets busy, it washes out more than usual, as opposed to the blocking you get on the Elgato at equalliy low bit rates. Its really just a matter of codec maturity more than anything else.
Now, this is just my personal view of the technical differences in the video quality of the two cards. For me, the Elgato produced a smoother video. I think their codec is producing a little bit better frame interpolation, and frame pacing correction than the AverMedia is. Things always seemed smoother on the Elgato. However, that comes at a trade off. What gets used up for frame interpolation is wasted elsewhere, so the colors on the Elgato suffer. By itself, its hardly noticeable, but side by side, the AverMedia produces MUCH better colors, i think this is largely due to the higher 60mbps video rate. Not only are the colors more accurate, but they have better contrast as well. Now, again with trade offs, on some occasions i have noticed that the AverMeida will lose the color accuracy with a lot of movement on screen, like i mentioned above in PC Free mode. They can kind of wash out when motion blocking occurs. Where as the "pre washed out" look of the Elgato seems to keep the coloration more consistent, even if it wasnt completely accurate to begin with. So the quality swing on the Elgato is less precepitable, but the general quality of the AverMeida is higher.
Speaking of overall image quality. The Elgato has a softer look to its finished image quality. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it does help to reduce or hide some of the codec noise and blocking issues, as well as reduce some minor aliasing. Where as the AverMeida has a very sharp image quality to it. In some cases i feel like they might actually be applying an Edge Detection/Enhancement filter to one of the passes on their codec. I say that because i have noticed some odd artifacting anomalies on text with the AverMedia that i didnt get on the Elgato, and some cases hard edges of on screen objects seem to almost be "blown out" with how much they stand out, almost looking cell shaded like Borderlands in some instances. Its a bit annoying at times, because in the situations where it does that, it looks overly processed. But on the flip side with the Elgato, in some instances its lack of sharpness can make some in game dials, lettering, ammo counters, etc. a little more difficult to read clearly at a glance, especially when there is a lot of fast motion on screen. They just sort of blend into the background of the image.
So while i can appreciate the video smoothness, and the consistency of the Elgato, the more vibrant colors of the AverMedia was a bigger selling point for me. In terms of Gran Turismo, the dials and the track edges were much more well defined with the AverMeida. So while it did, at times, feel a bit more framey or hitchy than the Elgato, being able to see tuning screen numbers more clearly, along with the track edge, as well as the dials more clearly (even during fast motion with some blocking) was more important to me, and became its biggest selling point.
Honestly, i think it comes down to personal preference and what you are doing, and how it works best for you. For me, and what little i am doing, i prefer the AverMedia. I dont think they are THAT different that going with either will really be detrimental either way. I feel like you do get more bang for you buck with the AverMedia, but if the Elgato is working for you, i would be hard pressed to ditch it for the AverMedia, or vice versa. Its really splitting hairs to choose between the two.
