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The new wave of consoles from Sony and Microsoft gives everyone the tools to record, share and even live-broadcast their gameplay. It's all integrated into the hardware and has no performance impact whatsoever. The only problem is, you're limited to 720p video at 30fps, quality can be somewhat questionable, and porting files to your computer to edit them can be a bit of an ordeal. The new Elgato Game Capture HD60 aims to provide an alternative that replicates and improves on the 'stock' solution, while at the same time offering a tempting upgrade path to owners of the first-gen Game Capture HD.So what's the major hook with the new HD60? First and foremost is the unit's ability to record 1080p video at 60fps direct from the HDMI output of the consoles. That's a 2.25x boost to resolution over the quality offered by Xbox One and PlayStation 4 encoders, and at twice the frame-rate. At the 'best' quality setting, the HD60 encodes video at 40mbps - and that's about eight times higher than the 5mbps produced by the console's internal encoder. The HD60's predecessor, the classic Elgato Game Capture HD, also supports 1080p input, but only at 30fps - every other frame is discarded when you capture at full HD resolution. Full frame-rate, full HD - that's the HD60's major selling point.
It's an important distinction. In the here and now, 1080p30 support on the existing Elgato is absolutely fine for the most part, bearing in mind that platforms like YouTube don't support higher frame-rates anyway. However, based on a recent announcement, that's all set to change. To take advantage of the new support, you'll either need to buy the HD60 or else drop console resolution down to 720p - the old Elgato records 720p60 just fine, but it's not really the best way to play your games.
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