Game recording in HD - part 1

I've been recording my games for a while now and since I've had a few questions how I do it, I figured I'd put up a couple of blogs about it.

As far as I know, for recording HD video from your Xbox (excluding computer video capture cards) HAVA is the only game in town. I use the HAVA Platinum HD which runs about $100 but they also offer the HAVA Titanium HD which runs about $130 and is wireless. Note that both of these are component and not HDMI. I don't know of any HDMI HD recording devices.

The HAVA is a pass-thru device, the component input goes into the HAVA and then from the HAVA into your TV. If you were just recording stuff from your cable box, you could use the included cables as is, however the XBOX video cable requires you to use couplers. So your setup looks like this

XBOX component cable->coupler->HAVA cable->HAVA->HAVA cable->TV

The same thing is needed for the sound.

Once you have it hooked up, you can turn on your TV, HAVA and XBOX and if the TV shows your XBOX, you got it working just fine. Now you plug the ethernet cable in the back of the HAVA (or the wireless module for the Titanium) and run it to your router.

Run the setup program for your HAVA and you should be up and recording in no time. Now you can upload your videos to YouTube (10 min and 1G limit) and share your pwning with the world!

Part 2 and 3 will detail some network issues I've encountered and how I solved them.