You may have read the previous review we put out about the HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition Plus, so a lot of this will seem to have been covered there previously. While there are certainly some difference between the GE+ and the Rocket, having previously setup the GE+ within about 5 minute, the Rocket was done in even less. Truly an impressive achievement for any capture device out there.
3 cables. That is the difficulty curve for setting up the Rocket. One cable from the console, one cable in the HDMI out port to display the game on the HDMI pass-through to a TV and 1 cable to connect up to a PC USB port. No need to twiddle with quality options, no need to adjust colour/brightness settings for Sony consoles (well known for having issues in this area on other cards), everything worked seamlessly.
Again, it really should be stated that this doesn't seem to be any huge achievement for any device out there. We are well beyond the era of 'Plug & Play' being a novelty and expecting everything to work straight out of the box. Unfortunately, game capture devices have always been plagued with a plethora of issues. Not so with Hauppauge and that is an admirable feature worthy of mention across any console thrown at it.
That being said, we should probably talk about some of the main features of this card over its sisters the GE/GE+ or other cards in the same bracket. Firstly, the Rocket allows for recording anywhere. If you have a console wired up to create content on and some method of storing content, you are good to go.
The device itself fully powers via USB, whether that is from the PC you are capturing/streaming with or whether it is directly via the console you are capturing from. There is a unique USB cable with a pair of USB tips attached included, one for PC capture and one for console power. It makes for a simplistic approach with no risk of 'oh no, I brought the wrong cable' scenarios ruining your recording session.
If you are utilising the Rocket's 'record on the move' functionality, all you need to do is pop in a USB stick of choice and slap the red button to begin recording. No setup, no special formatting, no playing with options, just pop it in and be done with it. This really opens up the market for those that might be entertaining gamers but lack the technical know-how to set up more complex systems to capture content.
To add to this ease of use, you are given a touch panel on top of the device to adjust settings surrounding microphone volume levels. That's correct, you can pop in a microphone (included, a basic lapel mic) to record voice over the gameplay and save adding it in later post-recording. You have the ability to switch volume levels on the fly, outright mute or even boost the overall volume from the device itself. There's also a handy 'lock' button to prevent wayward fingers from accidentally altering options during recording accidentally.
So, what does it lack? Frankly, not much. There is no option for optical/5.1 surround sound on this card, but considering that is something rare within capture cards in the first instance, it seems unlikely that you'd miss it. The only other alternation is the inability to stream/upload directly to YouTube via Hauppauge's proprietary StreamEez application. Again, this is not a huge issue due to being able to capture the input from the card from any number of sources on a PC in order to broadcast it or otherwise edit content captured.
We spoke about the editing and capturing suite provided by Hauppauge when we reviewed the Gaming Edition Plus model, so we aren't going to speak about them again here. I thoroughly encourage you to check them out there. It's a nifty suite for beginners and definitely worth a look. This, again, comes entirely free with the capture card, although the Rocket edition doesn't support Mac capture this way. The only method of utilising your footage with a Mac is via iMovie as of now. If you are a Mac user, we'd recommend using the Gaming Edition Plus
The final thing to mention is the size of the device. It literally fits in the palm of your hand. It wouldn't be a stretch to say you could fit it in your pocket as it's not massively bigger than phablet style phones (albeit a fair bit thicker). You could reasonably easily pot the Rocket in one pocket while bundling up cables to pop in the other. This level of portability is unparalleled with only the Avermedia Live Gamer Portable coming close, but still being a fair bit larger.
As mentioned on our previous Hauppauge-themed article, these guys have really come out swinging with these 2 devices. They have unbeatable simplicity alongside usability in both devices with the Rocket winning the day in portability and the GE+ winning with the additional features and Mac compatibility. Barring these differences, they are easily the best capture devices we've had the pleasure of testing at Senshudo and make for a definite must buy for anyone looking for a new device.
You can find the HD PVR Rocket on Amazon for just over £100.