We bought an Avermedia Live BOX 7 or something like that for our dorm. The only thing you need is a monitor and a monitor cable. No need to hook it up to a computer.
If you want to use it to capture stuff, it won't work (at least, we couldn't do it..).
You can hook it up to a computer and watch it while you're computer is on (picture-in-picture mode, something else we couldn't get to work
)
But if you want to use it for gaming, it's great. The image is very crisp, and it's anti-aliased (makes it a little blurry around the edges, something apart from the crispness). No delay as far as we've noticed, and we played F-Zero GX on it..
If you're not interested in capturing videos, then it's recommended.