Diamond GC1000 HD 1080 Game Console Video Capture Device Review

To test the GC1000 I installed it on my first generation Surface Pro 128.  The added portability of a tablet or laptop installation seems to be perfect for the GC1000 but any computer with USB will work.  I used the latest drivers and software off of the Diamond support site to insure I had the latest versions.  During installation the GC1000 does show up strangely in the device manager and a quick search on Google leads me to believe that the GC1000 may use the same hardware as the Fujitsu H5x Video Capture Roxio Game Cap HD Pro or Xenta HD Gaming Capture device.

I connected the GC1000 directly into my home theater which consists of a Denon AVR 4250CI and Sharp - AQUOS Quattron - 70" Class HDTV and then fired up my PS3.  All connections were HDMI as per the usual setup which also introduced my first gotcha.  The GC does not support pass through of any kind when not powered on via the USB port.  This means that you must either physically remove the GC1000 or leave the GC1000 powered on at all times if you want to see anything on the screen.  Likewise the DMCap software won’t launch or install unless it can detect the GC1000 so, long story short, make sure you have a long USB cable, USB power adaptor or HTPC nearby.

With everything setup and installed I was soon able to see my PS3 on both my Tablet and the TV.  Only the screen resolution was off on both devices.  After some Google research I discovered that GC1000 only supports the PS3 in 1080i which forced me to reconfigure my PS3 into 1080i and set my smart TV to process the upconvert bypassing my professionally tuned setup. 

Success!  Well sort of.  I am able to view screens with no problem in a crystal clear HD but, any attempt to record video reveals the record button was greyed out.  Screen shots look great (see below) but there was no way to record the video.  Back to the manual and Google I go. 

It appears Diamond enforces the industry standard High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (or HDCP) requirements over HDMI and will prevent you from recording when the protection is detected.  The good news is according to the manual you can record off of the PS3 (and other devices) when using the component connections as these are not subject to the same digital content protection.

It should be noted that the Diamond GC1000 does come with both HDMI and Component connections however, you cannot convert between them.  This makes sense given that HDMI is a digital signal and Component is not but, when your home theater isn’t configured to to support them both it can get a little annoying.

Not to be dissuaded I packed things up and headed to the PC.  I am currently running two GTX770’s in SLI and dug up the appropriate HDMI cables to configure a passive monitor capture.  What I discovered is that the monitor signal from my 24" Dell UltraSharp, wasn’t getting passed back to the video card and Windows 8.1 refused to activate it.  This is likely a signaling issue with my monitor or a problem with trying to record from the same computer.  Either way it was rather disappointing.