Genki’s new capture cards make it cheaper to stream in 4K

polygon.com:

Genki is something of a powerhouse when it comes to making gaming accessories. Up there with 8BitDo, my head always snaps quickly in Genki’s direction when it announces new products. This month, the company debuted its “Alpine Collection” of streaming and charging accessories on Kickstarter, clad in lusciously translucent plastic. The collection blew through its goal in less than a day, and you have through Oct. 26 to back one of these products at a discounted rate, if you’d like to. Each of the products below will ship in December.

I’m most excited about the ShadowCast 2 Pro because it seems poised to disrupt the high-end capture card space. It’s wildly capable yet surprisingly affordable at $119 during the fundraising campaign. Frankly, its $160 retail price seems like a good deal, too. It pushes the bar above the category mainstay, Elgato’s HD60 X, thanks to its higher 4K HDR / 60 frames per second capture. Capturing at 1440p? You can capture content at 144 frames per second. Its passthrough capabilities (what you’ll see on-screen as you play games) are impressive, too, retaining HDR and variable refresh rate (VRR), assuming your input console or PC is compatible.

In terms of ports, it features two HDMI 2.0 ports, a USB-C port to connect to your PC (or an iPad), plus two 3.5mm ports (one for audio monitoring and chat, the other for audio mixing).

Genki’s newest bite-sized capture card solution, the ShadowCast 2, has received some great upgrades. It plugs into your console or PC via HDMI, then connects to your capture source via USB-C just as its predecessor did. Genki implemented USB 3.2 in this version, allowing 10x more bandwidth than USB 2.0, which it uses to deliver uncompressed stereo sound and 1080p resolution