 This video is brought to you by the Corsair Vengeance K70 and K95. These fully mechanical keyboards are designed for performance gaming. Visit corsair.com slash Vengeance Gaming to learn more. Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Avermedia Live Gamer Portable. Now, we covered the Live Gamer HD not that long ago. The main disadvantage of the Live Gamer HD is that it relies on a PCI Express slot in order to operate. So that means that if you're recording PC footage then that's fine because you have a PC that you're using anyway. So you might as well just, you know, have the Live Gamer HD which is great because it offloads from the CPU with its hardware H.264 encoder and all that good stuff. But it, ugh, I mean it wasn't really the optimal solution for console gamers who want to record their gameplay because you had to have a PC nearby. This kind of solves that problem and by kind of solves that problem I mean completely solves that problem in a really big way. This is the Live Gamer Portable. It comes with three months of a premium license for XSplit meaning you get the updated audio codec which is the most important thing about premium. You can also have more scenes. It's, okay, smart and sharp, your all purpose sharing weapon, yeah, yeah, yeah, all that good stuff. It's USB 2. So flexible connectivity between PC and game consoles, USB interface for direct PC connectivity, a simple flip of the switch for PC free mode. There you go. That's the one that I think is most exciting about this product because otherwise the PCI Express version is already fantastic and has this functionality. So, aha, so they say for class 10 SDHC cards, FAT32. This one can operate without a PC. Now it can't capture 1080p 30fps without a PC because it just, whether it's the bit rates or whatever else. I think the bit rates are up to 60 megabit per second for 1080p 30fps with this particular device. So an SD card is just not going to handle it, but it will do 720p, no problem, recording to an SD card. And given that you're probably recording from a console and many of the games run in 720p or up sampled 720p anyway, you should be getting most of the quality anyhow. So here you go. PC mode, SD card mode. When you're in PC mode, what you do is you plug it in via USB 2 and then you are able to record from a variety of different inputs, including HDMI and AV in. So they include the adapters you need in the box. So we'll get that opened up a little bit here. And then the output, so the pass through is capable of doing up to 1920 by 1080 60fps. So basically what that means, guys, is you're able to game at 60 frames per second and record and stream concurrently at 30 frames per second. It also uses the same excellent software as the PCI Express version. So you've got a bunch of advanced functionality. It is so simple to set up. I have a number of capture cards now, including a Blackmagic Intensity Pro and an AVerMedia Live Gamer HD. Their Rec Central is a billion times easier to use. You just press like the easy setup mode one and then it just goes. Like you don't have to worry about it. We actually did an NCIX Tech Tips episode back when we got that card showing how easy it was to use. And there really wasn't much of an advantage to using expert mode unless you're really fine tuning things. So audio capture is also possible. So you can either capture your commentary constantly or you can mute it and go sort of in and out of it, much like the Live Gamer HD. And this is something that the more gaming oriented capture cards don't have. It has a hardware or it has a hardwired button. So you basically just press that when you're ready to record and the software itself stays primed and ready to go. So you just be like, yep, I'm ready to go now. Here we go. And other than that, that's it. There goes a motorcycle. The device is actually powered over USB as well as accepting all the data that it needs over USB. So very, very, very cool. So let's go ahead and put that there and let's have a look at what we've got included in terms of accessories. Eh, eh, come on out. Oh, this is not working. OK, so what's this? XSplit Broadcaster. So there's your three free months of XSplit premium. Cool. And then we've got gamerszone.aviermedia.com. So that's where you'll get the latest Rec Central, which, like I said before, you will want because it's excellent. OK. And then inside here, we'll get all the accessories, including presumably a component adapter so that those Xbox 360 and PS3 gamers who either don't have HDMI or can't use HDMI for whatever reason will be able to connect. So there is, ah, yes. OK. What the, OK. So that, yeah, OK. So there's one of our console adapters. So this goes out from here to presumably, I think that's a PS3 adapter. I'm not much of a console guy, to be perfectly honest. Those of you who watch this regularly will already know that. So I don't even know or care what that plugs into. But the point is it plugs into one of the consoles. I think it's, ah, one of, I think it's PS3 that doesn't support HDMI capture because of HDCP. So presumably that's PS3. Xbox 360, they're probably assuming you're going to use HDMI. So they include an extra HDMI cable because what you're doing is you're adding a passthrough. So you're going to go HDMI in from your console to this. OK. And then you're going to, whoops. And then you're going to go out to the TV. Now we did some gaming with the Live Gamer HD to find out sort of we were like, oh, OK, well, if there's capture hardware in here and if there's all of that stuff going on, is this going to add any significant latency to the point where it's going to affect the gameplay experience? And the answer is no. We didn't notice any difference between running on a TV through the passthrough versus running out directly to the TV, which is really important. The last thing you want to do is be in a situation where it's like, yeah, I want to record my epic gameplays. And then the tool that allows you to do that makes it so your gameplays are not so epic anymore, which leads us into the rest of the accessories that we have here below. So here's your straight component input. So there you can plug that into the adapter as well. So that's got your RGB as well as your audio cables conveniently color coded. So the blue ones are for audio. This has always been kind of funny to me that the labeling standards for red component is the same as the right channel for audio. So that just goes in there. No big deal. And then you can run whatever component cables you already happen to have on hand over there. And then we've also got a USB connector, which will be for using the supplied mini USB cable is recommended. Interesting. So there you go. Maybe try not to lose that. Although, I mean, I can't really imagine there being any difference, but there you go. So it's A to mini B. There you go. And that powers it and as well as gives you data. And then they provide an audio cable. So because you're again, you're adding one because you have a passthrough as well. So commentary can be enabled and disabled with a push to talk or a hot key button. And the footage is actually recorded with 422 color depth would be the right term for that. Right, B roll? Yeah, 422 color depth. So it's basically more information than 420, for example. But it is recorded using an H264 format. And the reason for that is we're limited by the USB 2 data rate. And quite frankly, we could end up limited by no, I think USB 3 would be capable of capturing uncompressed. I mean, it's not really the intention of this device. To replace sort of professional grade capture devices where you're trying to capture with sort of 444 color and you want uncompressed footage that's going to record. I mean, it would fill up this SD card in a matter of seconds if you were capturing that kind of footage. So it's not the intention. But the idea here is using the onboard encoder to give you a format that's easy to work with, preserves enough of the color clarity that you're going to be able to do whatever it is you need to do with it. Bearing in mind, again, you're not shooting with a cinema picture profile or something like that. You're recording from a computer. So the way it looks when you record it should pretty much be the way it's going to look when you output it. Whereas with a camera, you want to record with sort of weird profiles that allow you to do a lot more in post-production. See, I'm getting a smile from my crew because this was stuff I never understood before they they edumacated me. And I was like, no, no, you want it to look good in the viewfinder, right? And they're like, no, no, no, it's not actually what's important. The LED ring around the outside of the button here can indicate to you whether it's recording right now. It can also so by the color as well as the flickering of it, you can tell exactly what the device happens to be doing. And you can see here this was a sample provided to Linus Tech Tips. So I will be definitely trying this guy out. In fact, I guess it's possible we could use. I mean, this will be super handy. We could use this to record mine and slick Super Mario World livestream, which would be kind of freaking awesome because this is portable. We just chuck an SD card in there and like, yeah, oh, that's exciting. I didn't even think about that. What else can I say? Oh, yeah, time shift functionality. So what's cool about this is it actually acts as a bit of a buffer. So instead of sort of, oh, you know, I want to record that, but it just happened. You can actually use their time shift functionality to go back and grab stuff that you otherwise may have missed. And I think that's pretty much it. I mean, honestly, guys, what sets this apart from other capture devices? Because there's other stuff out there. Hopage has one, sort of the pro grade guys like Blackmagic have stuff like their PCI Express cards, their external cards. What sets us apart? It's the gaming optimized features. It's things like the excellent integration with XSplit. The AverMedia card was easier to get working with XSplit because I didn't have to dink around with Blackmagic's software in order to get it exactly the right way before it actually works. No, it just worked. Okay, so there's that. There's the fact that it comes with the XSplit license for three months. There's the fact that it has functionality like, oh, I'm ready to record now. I'm not ready to record now. Having that hardware button actually is kind of handy. And I mean, what else really sets it apart? Yeah, I mean the integration. That's what's good about it. There you go. And it works really well. It's more of a consumer grade device that you don't really have to fight with. So thanks for checking out my unboxing and first look at the LiveGamer Portable. I will definitely give you guys my full impressions of it once we've actually used it. But I'm basically saying that it's awesome already just based on my experience with the LiveGamer HD. So don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. Yeah, it comes with a sweet little case in the box too. I actually didn't show that during the unboxing video. So there you go. I wish it was a little bit bigger and it had space for the cables, but I don't know. I guess it's padded. So you can see there's some padding to it. It's going to prevent scratches and sort of incidental, accidental drops to the actual delicate part of your machinery. Something I also didn't mention before is it doesn't support 1920 by 1200. So 1920 by 1080 only. Okay, guys, for the full list of supported input and output resolutions, you're going to want to check with AVerMedia. Also, one thing that I don't want to guarantee because I haven't tried it, I've only used HDMI passthrough. Remember, guys, with an analog input, it is going to be doing some processing inside before it can output to HDMI. So it might introduce some input latency. I don't know. I haven't tried that. But with a hardware encoder, it shouldn't be much. That's for sure. Okay, now I think I covered everything and we're done.