Roxio Game Capture HD Pro Is An Epic Fail!

Well, I watched the above video via Roxio and was pretty excited about how easy it was going to be to livestream on Twitch TV. I've wanted to stream some of my gameplay for a while now but no ONE game capture card seemed to offer all the features I wanted. I almost pulled the trigger on the earlier Roxio card but didn't since it didn't support livestreaming. I managed to pick up the new Roxio Game Capture HD Pro from Newegg with a $60 discount off the $150 list price.

Bear in mind that I've never used a capture card OR streamed anything on Twitch TV. So a couple of hours ago I installed the HD Pro software and connected it to my Playstation 2, wanting to keep things simple instead of trying it with my 360 or PS3. I got the program running and the PS2 screen showed up in the capture box on my laptop. So I'm thinking "wow, this is gonna be easy." So I hit the famous one button Livestream tab, then I check my channel on Twitch TV and......nothing. Just the generic banner of a lightning bolt. I try to stop and start livestreaming multiple times. Sometimes I get a picture to broadcast, sometimes not. Weird thing is some videos of parts of the livestream show up on my channel, as if the program were capturing instead of livestreaming. The videos actually look pretty good, so I guess this might be a cool device IF I bought it to capture videos. But I bought it to livestream!

Another crappy thing about it is that you can't even TITLE your stream, so everything that goes on Twitch just says Untitled Video. How hard would it have been to allow you to put a TITLE on your stream like "Way of the Samurai PS2"? (That's what I was testing with). I did see bits and pieces of slightly choppy video on my channel, but I would say 97% of the time, it was just that lightning bolt.

I hear that Xsplit is the most popular program to use in livestreaming. The geniuses at Roxio didn't even bother to make the HD Pro compatible with it. From what I can tell on the forums of both sites, both companies are looking at solving that problem. At least that's what they've been saying for about 3 months now.

So as of right now, I have still failed to enter the world of livestreaming. What a joke. This is why I've never been interested in PC gaming. You can spend hours messing with computer programs and accomplish nothing. It's so much easier just to buy a 360 game, put it in a 360 console, and wa lah, you can play it. I hate tinkering. So I was prerty much already suspecting that this "smooth" process with the HD Pro was going to be a pain in the ass. And I was right. So I haven't decided what to do yet. Should I send it back or keep it in the hopes of it becoming compatible with Xsplit? Hell, I don't even know if that would even help me. Or maybe Roxio just needs more time to iron out the bugs. I think I might try installing it on another computer and see if I get better results. But at this point, I would recommend not buying this product. I hear other game capture cards with livestream built in are on the horizon as well. And they'll probably be better than this one.

I'll keep you posted.