Looks like it's time to hear a Gens11 emulator user's point of view on the matter:
So the way this topic is going I'm getting the general implication that people are taking the view of what's the point of using an emulator with TAS functionality, when their are perfectly good alternatives?
Well the reason I use Gens11, is due to its GMV functionality, which is very useful for recording videos (if I wasn't gonna record a video than an emulator that can use savestates to put at the start fo levels would be enough for me), if I record without a GMV and use the emulators built in screen recorder on a screen recorder or whatever then this has a few disadvantages -
1) It uses up quite alot of space on my HDD, however granted you could just regularly delete the video files, however the beauty of a GMv file is that I can do as many attempts as I want for as long as I want, and the finished product? - a file of just a few kb in size - so much more eficient, and this functionality also outweighs Gens+ as you have to reload the savestate and then start the .giz recording again, which, for speed running where lots of attempts happen every 30 seconds or so, leads to a lot of repetitivity.
2) If I use Gens11 built in AVI recording function then I do find that the emulator does tend to lag somewhat and drop frames, making it difficult to play. Perhaps other emulators dont have that problem, although with fusion I had trouble with the output recording, sometimes it didnt encode correctly and it was unwatchable, however that may be something to do with the codec used?
I did for a period try to use official consoles for speed runnning and recording, however I found it difficult, mainly because I've grown used to the controller I used on PC, I totally suck at GC/SMD spindashes lol. So I also tried Sonic Mega Collection Plus on my PC, however because my PC was Windows 7 the specs were too high so it didn't work well at all, like none of the menu writing came up and stuff. But anyway I'm going off topic a little, the point was returning to emulators was so much nicer, for speed running, mainly for the recording, much simpler, quicker and easier.
Banning these emulators would be a massive change to TSC, and I know you're saying that we wouldn't delete stats that use these emulators from the past, however their is a rule that says something along the lines of "any stats submitted before a rule is placed that violate that rule are void" (I forget the exact wording), so if we want to keep consistency across TSC then all previous stats would need to be deleted using emulators, which is a pretty much impossible task.
I know how you feel timpz, it frustrates me too to see stats and think they must be BS, but having no way to prove it, I've come across stats like that myself that still stand, yet there's no real proff against them. :V
So personally I vote to not ban emulators, and that's my reasoning, I can't help feel that I've missed something that i was gonna say, so I might post again/edit this. So that's where I stand on the matter at least, and maybe other people who use these emulators feel the same.