Question / Help cheap hardware to live stream

[prose16343]

I have a surface pro and wondering what my cheapest option would be to live stream on twitch for xbox 360 and wiiu via hdmi.

I'd like to be able to record audio probably from the mic and cam on the surface pro.

i know there is expensive solutions like elgato etc, but really looking for something cheap with hdmi in.

Any ideas?

 

[GillyMoMo]

The cheapest, well isn't really cheap. I have a Happauge Rocket. It's USB 2.0 and portable. It cost me about 160 dollars, it works well and worth the money to spend. Esp. in a case such as yours. The only issue I can see you having is not enough CPU power to push the stream. If you look at some of us that are you will see we have pretty high end boxes that we stream with.

 

[prose16343]

thanks for responding, i think something having a hardware encoding might be best.

 

[cmo2788Gaming]

As Gilly said, you are going to get alot of CPU bottlenecking, You could always get yourself a barebones PC and just use it for streaming and then monitor chat on your surface. Also if you did that you could go with a PCIe capture card and skip the hauppauge all together. If interested i can post you a link to something that should work for you with that kind of setup.

 

[GillyMoMo]

I will say using a PCI-E capture card over USB. I enjoy the Rocket but in a way it's kind of a pain to use since I have to have some kind of monitor to capture the video. Some of those adapters can work directly into OBS, thus only needing one monitor outright.

 

[dodgepong]

There is no cheap solution. If you want to capture your Xbox 360 over HDMI, you'll have to get an HD capture device. Devices like the Elgato are all more or less priced the same, and you won't find anything cheaper..

And yes, you will run into performance problems. I'm actually curious as to how well a Surface Pro will live-encode video...

 

[cmo2788Gaming]

The Elgato is slightly better than the HDPVR/HDPVR2 IMO, just seemed like it had less hiccups, but for around the same price you can get a PCIE which i have had much better reliability and performance with. and like i said you can get a barebones for 200ish and a capture card for another 200 and be set for any kind of streaming/capturing. As you wont be gaming on the PC specs don't have to be to insane as long as you are just using it as a slave to encode. Not cheep but better than going out and buying a high end PC and capture card. only downside to it is you usually have to build them yourself, but it's honestly not that hard.



**Edit** Also i recomend the Black Magic Pro for the PCIe if you choose to go that rout.

 

[dodgepong]

Well, if you want a PCIe solution for HDMI capture, then I recommend the Avermedia c127 (Game Broadcaster HD). It's only $120 and works well with OBS.