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Review: EyeTV
I've been using it for a couple of months now. I schedule it to record The Daily Show four nights a week, along with all my Sunday political shows, so I can watch (er, listen to) them as I work. I turn the news on in the middle of the day. I watch hockey games while I am working late. And because I have a big ol' 160GB FireWire hard drive, I can save a lot of programs without worrying about deleting (one hour takes 650MB at standard/VCD quality, and 1.3GB at high quality). And if I have Toast, I can burn VCDs directly from EyeTV for posterity.
The performance is fine. Because the MPEG encoder is in the EyeTV box, most of the performance drag is where it has to be: playing back movie files, and writing them to disk. I keep EyeTV hooked up to my house file/web server (a PowerBook G3/500 which also serves as MP3/CD/DVD player and -- now -- television), and when I go on the road, I merely copy a bunch of programs to my laptop. Warning: watching Trigger Happy TV on the subway can be a bit dangerous; people think the abandoned aluminum foil hat under the bench belongs to you.
To view a recording on another computer, you Save to QuickTime Movie from EyeTV, or you can install another copy of the EyeTV software on another computer, and copy the EyeTV files over.
If you want to copy individual recordings, either bypassing Save to QuickTime Movie (the movies will play just fine in QuickTime Player), or copying selected recordings to your other EyeTV folder (instead of all of them), it can be difficult to locate the right files: the filenames don't really tell you anything about what's inside. So, I wrote a command-line utility to search the recordings.
Also, it is difficult, but not impossible, to edit programs. QuickTime tools don't allow for editing MPEG-1. You can "export to QuickTime", but you won't be able to edit the resulting file. What you'll need to do is demux (I use bbDEMUX) the file into separate audio and video streams, then convert the streams and merge them back together.
I convert the demuxed audio to AIFF with SoundApp (under Classic) and then put that file in the same directory as the demuxed video, one called "movie.aiff" and the other "movie.m1v", and when I open the video in QuickTime Player, it merges them together automatically (a nice time-saver). Then I export it to MPEG-4 format. This process can be very tedious, and is prone to failure for large files, but it can be done.
I did have problems for awhile with EyeTV not saving recordings. I had set my drive to spin down, and EyeTV wouldn't properly spin it up; I changed my Energy Saver prefs to not sleep the disk whenever possible, and the problem was solved. There are some other minor glitches: for instance, the software allows the screen to dim and screen savers to come on during playback, and there is the occasional crash (which happens less with the latest release of the software). Also, as the resolution is 352x240 (regardless of quality setting), I don't want to use it to watch programs that demand high resolution. I'll record those on the DirecTiVo.
But really, the only serious problem I have had with EyeTV is the scheduling. You can use the TitanTV service via a web browser, which is a nice idea, but it is often incredibly slow, such that finding the program and manually adding it can be less frustrating, if not faster, than going through the browser.
The service has improved recently, so maybe it won't be much of an issue anymore for some people, but for me, a better solution is Karelia's Watson, which is similar to Apple's Sherlock, but better in most respects (more and mostly better tools, and faster). The new version of Watson (1.6, released Tuesday) has new buttons in the TV Listings tool, one for "watch," one for "record," and even one for adding the program to iCal. I use Watson to quickly find the program I want, I hit the right button, and EyeTV is ready to go. You can't beat that with a stick, although it will cost you another $29 for the privilege, if for some insane reason you've not yet purchased Watson.
I also use EyeTV to digitize other video sources; you can play back something from your TiVo or VCR and record a copy to take with you on your next trip. I have a Meade telescope with an electronic eyepiece, so I can record the moon. Mmmmmm, moon.
EyeTV isn't perfect; the software could use some improvement, it could be easier to convert to an editable file format, and the resolution could be better (which will require updated hardware, perhaps using FireWire). In the meantime, I could live without EyeTV, but I wouldn't want to. It's a nice device to have.
The general feeing is that the drivers aren't up to snuff yet, but it's a neat idea and a relatively nice to work with.
BBK
The transfer speed of USB is limited to 1.5 Mb/s (theoretical, in real world terms it's far lower), while a high quality VCD (MPEG-1) is nearly twice that. If you have a Mac, why not take advantage of the built in IEE-1396 that has come standard in Macs since 2000? Faster speed potential is your friend, especially with video. It's hard for me to imagine something inferior to VHS able to replace a VCR (in terms of ease of use and quality).
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
I have been using Eye TV, on a PowerBook G3/500 as well, for a few months. The first couple releases of the software were "too slow" - recordings came out with pausing and other glitching - but between OS X improvements and ElGato's improvements, it's working perfectly fine right now.
I've only used it to record VHS video tapes. I generally don't watch TV at all, and don't care much to know what the current schlock on TV is. But I do want to save the VHS video tapes onto a more permanent medium. A good thing is that it even records tapes that are Macrovision encoded.
The quality isn't superb, but the price is right.
Formac (http://www.formac.com) has a box that claims higher quality, similar features, and connects via Firewire. It has a higher price too.
- David
I've used several USB video input devices for several different Macs, and sad to say, I won't even consider buying one of these gadgets for myself until they use Firewire. They just return substandard results, with frequent drop-outs. Sorry.
Q. Do I have to use Internet Explorer to access TitanTV?
.6.
:)
A. Yes. EyeTV always uses Internet Explorer because other browsers do not work properly with the TitanTV.com web site.
Well, I'm going to assume that makes it unappealing for most of us mac-people, doesn't it? I don't even have IE on my machine anymore - I got rid of it when chimera hit
Added to which, the only reason I'd get a box like this would be to get rid of my TV - hook my VCR and various consoles through the Mac. But according to the FAQ there's a 1.5 second delay between signal output and display, making games unplayable. Damnit.
Triv
I saw EyeTV at Macworld NYC during the summer. I had my credit card out to buy one, but saw the MPEG1 quality, and put the card away.
I have a couple of Tivos and the EyeTV quality is well below even the lowest quality I can get on my Tivo. I would rate it at about the same level as a decent telesync of a film...no better. I asked why no MPEG4/Divx compression and didn't get a decent answer.
Also, I don't want to watch TV off my Mac, even on a Cinema Display. I could stream it to my tv using Qcast but then what's the point? Might as well just buy a Tivo.
I'm the most gullible of early adopters and I didn't buy EyeTV. Hopefully it'll improve in time.
I did however buy the very cool Powermate volume knob that they were using to control EyeTV. That's turned out to be a neat gadget, and really nice for film editing.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
1. buy an ethernet card for your Tivo http://9thtee.com/
2. Install it, and the software that comes with it
3. Add the module noscramble.o (find it on the dealdatabase.com forums)
4. Install TyTool on your computer to extract the mpeg-2 video to your PC(find it on the aforementioned forums)
the Formac Studio/TV does this but it has firewire and with much better quality. Yes, it's 2x the price of El Gato's recorder, but the quality will probably make it worth it.
freevo.sf.net
and use standard hardware instead of one particular brand
I bought one of these the FIRST day they came out. I had been waiting for a good TV tuner for Os X for a while. The software support is very good, they come out with new updates all the time. And it has gotten better and better over time. They are promising new features soon. Although it can be used as a PVR, i never used it, because i HAD to use IE to get the stupid little files from TitanTV. The site is slow and the process sucks.
I just got Watson 1.6 (came out yesterday) and it RULES. Using the TV section when you find a show you want to record, click on it, then click on the EyeTV icon and it will set it up to record, it works GREAT!
Give it a try, i'm actually using it as a pvr now...
Perhaps you mean does it have the bandwidth to transmit MPEG-1 encoded video?
The answer is yes. More than enough for NTSC size and resolution. WinTV USB just sucks, and AFIAK it transmits uncompressed video.
A better question is exactly how much is done on the hardware before its transmitted to the computer. Its likely that the device merely does mjpeg encoding, which is then enhanced to full mpeg using software (because the motion component requires knowledge of several frames - more frames in memory means much higher cost for the device). If mjpeg is all it does, then this means that hacking it to Linux might require more work than otherwise (because you can do mjpeg more than one way since its just an intermediate step on the road to mpeg encoding, and not necessarily following a standard).
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Second, the picture quality is pretty low, but the files are "small" (i.e. the same as raw audio CD or about 600 mbytes/hour.) In all, it looks like VideoCD quality. It's better quality than a lot of QuickTime movies on the web, but a far cry from DVD, or even Sorensen on a good day. But it's good enough. I'd rank it around the quality of a 5 year-old VHS tape at EP. Far from videophile acceptability, but also far from unwatchable (unless you're a real snob about it.)
I happen to own one and I didn't have aspirations to download copies of movies and be able to watch them at DVD quality levels. It's so far worked fine to watch (oddly exactly the same as the reviewer) the Daily Show at work. I was looking for a quick way to create time-shifted copies of a handful of shows I watch. I also want to rip VHS tapes recorded at EP in 1995 and before to VideoCD and this looks like a great solution.
So anyway, my main point is, the tradeoffs are acceptable, and it's nice that it's bus-powered and includes its own tuner along with a video input.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
They liked EyeTV as well.
This link might be interesting to you:
p acks.html
:)
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/snapstreammedia/cable
Snapstream is a PC-based DVR. This is their solution to the satellite question. I'm not sure what it does for Mac, but it does show that Satellite users are not left out.
there are hundreds of things like this for the pc.
cheaper too
all the cool stuff is for macs? by one or 2 vendors. for the pc there are 20-30 vendors making the sutff
A better alternative to EyeTV is available from the Japanese company Pixela. They sell a PCI capture card for Mac OSX featuring built-in TV tuner and s-video and composite inputs that captures in both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 up to 12Mb/s at full DVD resolution 720x480. The english language page is at http://www.pixela.co.jp/en/press/captytv_pci.html
EyeTV uses a HARDWARE ENCODER, can you say hardware?
This device ENCODES and then sends the ENCODED mpeg1 video to the computer using usb at 1.2 megabytes per second.
Lets do some math:
if one hour of mpeg1 = 650 megs then:
650 / 60(mintutes) / 60(seconds) = 180555.6 bytes
you following me?
now the correct bandwidth that we need here is 180kBps. I think USB can handle that, don't you?
I hope we are all informed now, and i don't see anymore: "USB can't handle that" or "every USB tuner i've seen SUCKS"
cause its a HARDWARE ENCODER.
Thank you for your time.
no, not even close. ATSC signals are 19.5 mbegabits/sec, USB is 12.5 megabits/sec. A fully expanded 1080i signal is about 125 mbytes/sec, which blows way past firewire. if you're recording to a DVHS via firewire, about the best non-compressed you can expect is 480p.
and why mpeg1? why not divx?
...is the studio/tv from formac. It's firewire so you can get much better throughput, and OSX.e rt ers_studiodvtv
http://www.formac.com/p_bin/?cid=solutions_conv
It beats the EyeTV hands down.
Hauppauge supports Mac OS X under their MyTV product line from their Eskape Labs division.
MacAddict recently did a review and comparison of EyeTV (which I also use) and MyTV. EyeTV was easier to use and had a stronger value in their opinion. I was waiting for MyTV to get its drivers out of its eternal beta stage by the time EyeTV showed up.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
then use this killer utility to split the file (at time intervals) and rejoin components.
Much easier than what you are doing, IMO. I've been recording Simpson's episodes for a month now and I delete the commericals from the file each night.