Gameplay capture

I have good and bad experiences with recording gameplay footage off video games. There are many and many different ways of capturing our beloved games, but which one is the best and the worst?

Emulating games on PC may be the easiest thing to do. However You would give up the actual felling that You are playing on a console. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against emulating, but personally I prefer playing on the actual hardware.
More on emulating on the Emulating topic.

Game capture devices:
Nowadays its almost easier to find a game capture device than preordering a game. In the past few years as Youtube and Broadcasting sites became much more popular, these hardware pieces became much more searched. Just a few examples: Elgato, Roxio, Easycap

If You want to record some good quality footage, I highly recommend getting something well supported capture stick/card.
Buying the cheapest one off of ebay may be not a good idea, here is why ( according to my experiences ). A friend of mine bought an easycap usb device. It worked ~okay for the first few days. Than it started behaving as if it was faulty. The audio was behind the video about 3-4seconds, and after the 1st month it was already dead. I've heard more of the same stories, so I wouldn't recommend anything like that.

Tv-Tuner cards:
These are a bit better than the cheaper audio/video capture devices. However, it is highly recommended to buy one with a digital tuner part. You might ask why. Its simple. The one i bought had 3 different releases. High-end, mid-end and low end. I got the mid-end one because at the time that was the only available. It turned out, that only the high-end one with the digital tuner can upscale the RCA or RGB signals to 1080I.