Ezcap 286 SDI Video Recorder, Recording from TV, Gameplay, Endoscope with HDMI/SDI Pass-Through

I purchased two of these ezcap286 video capture devices for various gaming videos, I've found nothing to complain about, flawless performance a little picky of which NTFS hdd you record too, saying fat32 only has not been my experience. Something note worthy would be do not plug this device in and have it connected via usb it's one or the other, and I've yet to get it to stream but that's the point it's a stand alone unit no pc required. Xbox One looks and records flawlessly yes videos are partitioned and I've found this to be beneficial rather than a hindrance. I've captured lower quality videos than what the manufacturer has listed but this may not be your experience. There's many video capture devices to choose from after owning two I'll keep these forever until a 4k version is available or an updated patch that would allow for this functionality.Side note I've paired this with a PIP device that allows for DVD hulu etc capture and I couldn't be more impressed. Something I've noticed is that if your using the remote the capture doesn't continue on. But once pressing the red button on the device it does indefinitely. Be advised for insurance purposes you may need to replace the power supply with a UL listed one 12v 3amp for a few bucks. It's so worth it.Update sadly both devices have failed and are not serviceable, needs better cooling 😎, when it works its epic when it fails. Even bios updates won't help this product line!

It works well to convert SDI to HDMI, but it had weird glitches like only being able to read or write if everything was first connected without power, and then it was powered on. The biggest problem was that in spite of promising to record at 30 fps, it really only recorded at 15 fps. On Nov 27, 2019 I installed the firmware dated Sept 12, 2019. It fixed the media reading problem, but the frame rate is still 15 fps. Not good enough for me, so back it goes.

Works good when connected through the Blackmagic ATEM video controller at one third the cost of the Blackmagic H.264 recorder device.

At first I thought it would be a good product, but when using it started to have problems, it does not record with sd cards of more than 32GB formatted in fat 32, it does not record audio and when I wrote to the support about the problem, only answered me once, but I did not Helped solve the audio problem.

Me gusto, funciona muy bien y es colocar una SD Card y grabar, Muy simple.

Box works but only records at 15fps. New firmware promised but not delivered yet. Box does convert SDI to HDMI and can be connected to a Windows 7 computer (no Mac) to live capture on PC. If they fix the recording capability this is a 5, but since it advertised 30fps it is a disappointment

(I purchased this exact item on another listing that simply didn't have the "EZCap286" title. I wanted this review to be available for whoever shops for an EZCap286, regardless of which listing.)This review is based on about four hours of testing and trying things. I wanted to get some review out there for other potential customers, since nobody else has written a detailed review.Summary:Very solidly built box, not a bit of plastic anywhere. Very minimalist interface - literally just two buttons (HDMI/SGI input select, and record start/stop) - not even a power button. What I got was exactly what was pictured - and a bit more. It did record HDCP content but didn't pass the picture thru to the TV. There were a few things I didn't like but I think it will do what I need.Details:After hooking it up, I put a thumbdrive (16Gb FAT32) into the USB port, waited until the thumbdrive light stopped flashing, then hit the REC button, whereupon the recording LED on this box turned solid red, and the thumbdrive activity light started flashing. After a few minutes, I hit REC again, whereupon the LED (after a few seconds) blacked out, and the thumbdrive light stopped flashing. I took out the thumbdrive, opened it in my PC, and found a single video file that immediately played in VLC Media Player without any problems. The same results were obtained with a 32GB FAT32 SD card.For an input source of 1080P/30 (coming from Apple TV and also my DirecTV receiver) the resulting video was nicely clear with acceptable color saturation and no obvious compression artifacts - basically exactly what I'd been watching on the TV while recording.File sizes: Measured by recording video content with typical motion. The resolution was selectable, but the frame rate (frames/second = fps) always appeared to match the input frame rate. Given in megabytes/second (Mb/sec):1080p @ 30 fps 1.98 Mb/sec1080p @ 15 fps 0.98 Mb/sec720p @ 60 fps 1.19 Mb/sec702p @ 30 fps 1.00 Mb/secAfter a little bit of driver installation, the PC USB interface worked fine with my laptop via USB2. I used OBS and set the EZCap286 as the input device, and it recorded a very clean, clear image with no apparent dropped frames.Extras:Not shown on the Amazon listing: there's a small remote control with start/stop, 1080p/720p selection, input selection, and snapshot/screenshot button (which produced very nice, clear JPG images). Also included is a corded infrared receiver for the remote control. There's also a mini CD containing Arcsoft ShowBiz video editing software, and some "how to use" documentation for OBS ("Open-source Broadcasting Software" - which is really nice for free software).Things I don't like:1) No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to write data to a USB external hard drive (either a 500Gb WD USB-powered portable, or a 1.5Gb wall-wart-powered external) whether FAT32, EXFAT, or NTFS. With the USB-powered drive, the red REC light came on as if it were recording, and the drive's USB activity light flashed wildly, but no files were ever generated (maybe there was data being written, but it never appeared as a file to Windows. The bigger drive never did anything.So EZCap286 does NOT appear to meaningfully support external hard drives. The manual implies that it DOES support NTFS - "EZCap286 supports FAT, FAT32, and NTFS for USB flash, and only FAT32 for SD card." And the Amazon listing says it does support "USB flash drive/HDD or SD Card". I couldn't get there.2) There is no way to properly eject a storage media - the manual provides a badly worded disclaimer that improperly disconnecting an NTFS drive or SD card from a PC could cause corruption, but doesn't give any indication of how one can do that from THIS device. There is no power button or "eject the media" button. The only option is unplugging the EZCap286 or the USB/SD from the EZCap286. Hmmm; not good. That's a well-known way to corrupt a disk.3) The manual SAYS it doesn't support HDCP capture. Well, it sort of does, and sort of doesn't. I'm not sure how to rate this, because I think I like the end state. The EZCap286 appeared to be perfectly happy doing test recordings from DirecTV, AppleTV, and a certain Marvel Comics BluRay despite the HDCP, as confirmed by perfectly clear video files on the USB thumbdrive. However, the TV refused to display the pass-thru picture (when connected to the EZCap286 output HDMI port) from any HDCP source; the TV showed an error messsage that the cabling was not compatible with the content protection. So even though the TV is happy with the HDCP for a direct connection, and this box ignores the HDCP, it doesn't perform the necessary handshake to pass it along to the TV. Okay, again, not a big deal - I simply sent the signal to this recorder using an HDMI splitter, separately from the TV, and didn't even connect the output from this recorder to anything. So it's both good (it is happy to record HDCP content) and bad (it required purchasing or owning an HDMI splitter to work around the blockage, to watch what it was recording).4) The manual description of firmware update procedure is incorrect. You have to uncompress (WinZip and 7Zip will do it) a .rar file into a .img file. Then follow the steps. Then, no blue light comes on - after a while I gave up and power cycled, and it seemed to have been updated since the video filename counter was reset to 0.I'll ping the manufacturer/seller about the hard drive connection. Maybe there's a solution.

I plugged and did not work, there is a paper with a web link that does not exist and the email provided never answers