Capture/Play Retro Consoles on a PC

Hardware and technical stuff
1

Hey folks! As y’all know, I run a space gaming blog, and currently it covers computer games exclusively. However, I’d love to capture some classic console space games from my Dreamcast or Playstation 2.

Therefore, I did some research, and I was gonna get this card:

To play and record the games on my PC, but now I’m being told that’s not the best option.

What I would love to do, ultimately, is to be able to connect a classic console via component cables to my PC so I can both play the games on my monitor and record/stream them via OBS.

Therefore, do y’all know of any solution I can get to allow me to do that?

Thanks y’all!

2

Jeremy Parish did a ton of this kind of stuff for US Gamer and his own projects, I don’t know off the top of my head if he put any guides together but you might want to google around and see if you can figure out what he used for his setup.

3

I think this very topic came up on either the last Bombcast or the one before that.

4

If you have a desktop this card is a fantastic internal solution and will take care of anything up to 720p/1080i. One HDMI input and a dongle that supports component, composite and s-video inputs. Officially doesn’t support HDCP protected streams such as PS3 but you can find a patched client to bypass the restriction. I used this to stream some Mega Man 10 from PS3 a while back.

5

I have heard that the elgato is pretty dang good at what it does, where have you heard otherwise?

6

who’s telling you it’s not the best option? i have this exact elgato and it’s fine for older consoles.

7

My podcast cohost was like “Whoa, put on the brakes there son.” And he suggested the internal card and the component-to-hdmi converter option.

8

FWIW I really liked the AverMedia card I used to record/stream a bunch of stuff in my previous life, until I didn’t. Thing was a bit flaky.