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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.
I have Direct TV (and a DirecTivo). All of these computer tuning devices seem to support cable, but not satellite. Are there any devices/TV Tuner cards out there for satellite users (I assume the device/card would need an access card)?
I was going to build a Linux PVR, but this sounds interesting. Any chances of Linux controlling software?
This product can also be used to record full length motion pictures, which is piracy as far as certain industry groups are concerned.
Thus, shouldn't this product be called "iEyeTV"?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
the focal point of my entertainment system. I have a divx box (awaiting a new TV out card), it's a small, unobtrusive, 2 pci slot Dell, sitting under my cable box. Unless you look at it closely, it doesn't even look like a computer, and it doesn't take away attention from my 32 inch flat screen TV.
Maybe when Apple comes out with a small form computer (other than that silly cube) that looks like a generic A/V peripheral and costs $300 I will consider this.
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
This Eye thing seems pretty cool. I've really been wanting something that would allow me to easily record video and then edit it. It would just be stupid silly stuff like me sticking a picture of my head into a still of some episode of Seinfield or something but it would still be fun.
Are there any plans to make a version of this for PC's or is there something similar already avail for PC's?
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Does USB 1.1 have the bandwidth to store HDTV signals into MPEG-1? I have used a WinTV USB Tuner before for video capture, and I must say the framrates weren't that good.
I would like to see a firewire or USB 2.0 device that is platform independent. That way I would never miss another episode of Smallville again.
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
This device seems it would be well suited for Freevo. I hope it can be made functional under Linux or Winblows as well. That would be a huge threat to the existance of commercial DVR's such as Tivo.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
MPEG1?
USB1.1 does not have the bandwidth to capture that at any decent framerate/resolution.
In my experience, the only way this can be done is with devices that have build-in MPEG2(dvd) encoding chips, and a USB2/firewire interface.
See the Dazzle DVC150 or the Adaptec Vide-oh DVD.
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
and i feared this digitizer would be as crappy as that old global village one, but this right here says it's not! thank you slashdot!
karma: ouch!
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.
ok, i'm not mac os x savvy enough to know this, so i'll ask:
why hasn't someone written drivers for Hauppauge cards yet? they cost a fraction of the price of this product.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
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."
anyone hack it so it works under linux yet??
preferrably NOT using the mess called video4linux.
i'd like a real video record app, not something that kinda works.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You might be thinking of low-speed devices which run at the slower 1.5 megabits/second if I recall correctly ... I haven't seen one, though.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
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.
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!
That'd do it, can't find it. If anyone knows where one is please post a link.
The bitrate limitations on the USB port makes this product D.O.A. as far as I can tell. Who wants to watch a tiny window of video on an expensive Apple monitor?
-dameron
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)
I've been wanting a radio capture card for a while (For Car Talk, Bob&Tom, etc...) and I've noticed most of them are part of TV tuner cards. Anyone know of one that works well under linux? Uder $50 would be nice ...
TODO: Something witty here...
They liked EyeTV as well.
For those who'd rather have a FireWire device, there's the Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge, which I've been wanting to buy for some time now. The DV Bridge, however, is bidirectional (D->A and A->D), has S-Video and Firewire ports, doesn't have a TV Tuner, and goes for about $100 more, making it more geared towards video editing than just video recording á la TiVo.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
...but I have tended to avoid TV recently, so my standards are not that high =)
It's neat as a PVR. Not the greatest quality, but good enough for me. The 1.5 second delay from live is too bad- I wanted to use it for gaming, too. But that delay is the cost of being able to pause live TV, instant replay your live TV, etc...
Tip- Register for my.yahoo.com, configure the TV listings, then just manually set programs if you don't have or want to use IE.
There is no technical reason why EyeTV *needs* IE. All Titan/IE does is download a file with a certain protocol that EyeTV is listed as a helper for.
My conclusion is it's worth the 150 bucks I spent on it. (Now if only Formac, or someone else, would EVER deliver OS X drivers for my dead ProTV card...!)
Actually, a keyboard from apple costs 59 dollars usd. You can get it in black or white, from here: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/144/wo/WZetV0ZSyQSIhPLKsI/0.3.0.3.27 .7.0.CoverPageLeftAccessoriesPromo.1.1.0.3.1.5.17. 3.1.1.0
Also, you can use any usb keyboard, mouse with your apple. I use a microsoft mouse with my iBook, the wireless intellimouse explorer. It's very nice, except for the battery consumption.
I have Hauppauge WinTV for my PC and it's not very good. WinTV has problems with non-standard NTSC scaling. Thus, there is a black squiggly line at the top of each channel that can't be cropped out. It shows up in all my recordings too.
I wonder if the Eye TV has this same issue.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Why not just get a video tuner card? That's all this thing is, plus whatever software they wrote to make it work like a TiVO
Vote for Pedro
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
If the TV execs. hated Tivo and company, El Gato just became target number one.
It's one thing if the process to record TV is see as technically hard, but this thing will allow your mother to do it- and that's where the execs will start to worry. It's too simple...
I'm guessing that you can edit out the commericals, compile a season of a TV program and send it around the world in nothing flat.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
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.
That's a paddle! A pretty cool looking USB paddle, but a paddle nonetheless.
Before you el posto our URL on your sito, por favor, contacto nosotros, so we are el prepared-o when our web servero goes up in el smoke-o, and burns down half of el buildingo.
Sincerely,
El Presidento
El Gato
What would you post instead?
(I'm serious - let's hear a real example)
Macs have more cool stuff, deal with it.
-milo
CPU usage was about 50% on one cpu (800 MHz P3 (box is dual) filesize is 374.5MB (using default VBR mp3 and a vbitrate of 800 (default)) it can be reencoded to a lower bitrate and nearly the same quality if you turn vhq on (Very High Quality) in mencoder (note this is without commercials taken out (57 minutes, most shows are about 43 mins with them out so: about 280 MB with commercials edited out.
Box used: dual P3 800
256MB RAM
ATI TV Wonder VE (~$30 when I got it)
mplayer/encoder 0.90pre10
redhat 7.3
Command line used (or one that has been used, not sure this is the EXACT one I used for smallville):T SC:outfmt=rgb32:freq=83.250 -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -o test6.avi
mencoder -tv on:driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:input=0:norm=N
This comes with a disclaimer though, there isn't a nice frontend to recording to mplayer. freevo (freevo.sourceforge.net) is working on easy recording though.
12megabits/sec (Mb/s) is 1.5 megabytes/sec (MB/s) which is the theoretical max for full speed USB. You can take about 1/3 of that off for packet overhead and timing as well leaving a full speed device about 1MB/sec of isoch data to play with. That is more than enough for a decent video stream like you said.
One other thing, you see low speed USB devices all the time. What do you think your USB mouse is?
--Let's hack root on 127.0.0.1 --panZ
>Now look where the grass is greener, on the Windows
>PC you can get a PCI tuner card for less than $100
>bucks that will record your
Can I imply from this that you have never
actually done it? Try it, then try it on a
mac and see if you still think Mac is "obsolete".
-milo
woh- what's with freevo stealing mac icons? That cant be legal :)
I bought a Hauppage WinTV PVR which does for WinTel boxes what this does for the Mac. You can record in MPEG-1 (VCD) format or MPEG-2 at several different bitrates.
This works pretty well for watching recordings on the PC that you don't intend to keep. Forget it for making permanent copies to VCD or DVD though. High quality MPEG encoding can't be done in real time. You need to capture to some other format (MJPEG or Huffyuv) then convert to MPEG afterwards. MPEG compression for a two hour movie in VCD format can take almost 24 hours. Compressing to DivX is much faster and takes half the disk space, but cannot be played on most current DVD players.
In any case, VCDs created from MPEG captures using this card look OK on the computer, but really awful on a real TV. If VCDs for your TV is what you want get a cheaper card without MPEG encoding and use Virtual Dub, TMPGenc, etc. as described at vcdhelp.com.
...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.
Try getting video via the Intel Pro camera. It has an RCA port in it to capture anything(VCR, etc). Needless to say, the performance pales in comparison to my regular TV card due to USB limitations.
Now if it was USB 2, it would be a different story.
I've had a cursory look at the website and the comments so far but I can't see if it'd work in the UK (i.e. with PAL). Anybody got any references / success stories ??
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
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.
Hereis the dealmac discussion...
"Smokey, this isn't Nam, there are rules." -Walter
My guess is that they're using a dedicated chip to do the MPEG1 encoding, and at the time of manufacture there were no dedicated DIVX/MPEG encoding chips, or none that were cost effective at least. Using dedicated chips like this cuts down on your time to market, and quite often the actual cost of the device. A microprocessor may be good for higher priced devices but not possible in lower cost devices.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
It's not Slashdot's fault that Macs are more efficient, interesting, and attractive than Windoze machines. But seriously, what other company makes both computer hardware and operating systems? (I suppose you could say Microsoft if you count the Xbox as a computer... but that's another story)
Glog!
So when was the last time you went to Apple's website? I don't see any resemblance to any thing at Apple. Although I could just be drinking too much of the kool-aid, and thinking that nothing can be as good as the mother ship.
Artist will always make art.
Why are you using Internet Explorer?
-- Boycott Shell
I'm sorry, did you READ the comment you replied to? No?
Probably for the same reason you bought an Intel Pro USB Camera?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
All of their WinTV PCI products (Except the PVR ones) work under Linux and have for many (>5) years. I have one of their original Wincast/TV boards and it works beautifully under Linux (although I usually use Windows for TV because of DScaler, the deinterlacers available for Linux need a bit more polish.)
The PVR ones work somewhat - The drivers under Linux allow you to watch TV just like a non-PVR card, but don't support the onboard MPEG encoder yet.
The USB PVR model also works for composite video.
I fail to see how this article is anything but a Slashvertisement... Devices that offer higher quality than this USB1 piece of junk have been available for over 5 years. It's all about PCI or Firewire, USB (1.1 or 2.0) is inherently unsuited to video (It can't guarantee uninterrupted data, so there's nothing preventing dropouts.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Hardware encoding = much better than raw video. But it still sucks, it's only MPEG1 not MPEG2, and MPEG1 isn't that hot.
This ripoff device can't come close to my 5-year-old Hauppauge WinCast/TV which I got for half the price back then.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
EyeTV doesn't capture subtitles. I'd buy one if it weren't for this. I wrote to inquire when/if they'd be enhancing the product to address this shortcoming and got no response, which is never a good sign for a consumer product company.
yup, I thought about that, but I was
too lazy to look it up (yup, too lazy to
move the mouse and type a few keys)
Since most people (and some major publications)
can't manage that whole loose / lose thing, i've
decided to just let it all slide grammar-wise.
Why should I worry about it? You knew what I meant,
and next year it will probably be an alternate
definition in the dictionary.
sloppy thinking, it's the way of the future,
might as well join up now.
-milo
Yes, I agree that USB devices would suck for this,
but my Sony DVMC works great on firewire. I don't
use it for the discussed purpose, but only because
I don't need to (I can't think of any TV that's worth
saving as a DV stream (well, farscape maybe) but
it could save in MPEG format as well)
I imagine that just about any platform could get some
sort of timed video-in working, and from looking at the
prices you listed, it's at least as expensive on
the PC, and you have to look at that crappy UI.
-milo
That is true, but don't you have to pay a $250 activation fee on the ReplayTV unit as well as the other units? If the total cost was around $300 total I think I would do it, but $450 is just a bit too much to be worth it to me at this point.
and be a slashdot editor as well.
Can you help???
...but not Linux. There was an interview with a guy from El Gato on the "Your Mac Life" radio show a week or two ago, and they said they were working on the Windows software.
-- thinkyhead software and media
> But seriously, what other company makes both computer hardware and operating systems?
Milan?
SUN ?
IBM ?
HP/Compaq ?
Amiga ?
And probably many more. Apple doing both an OS and hardware is nothing exeptional. It's common.
I use one of these also and have had problems with it 'disconnecting' from the mac. I saw it as an input voltage problem and have taken steps to make sure it had good power. ie: different circuit in house, ups, etc. It is pretty reliable now but I'm still trying to get it to work better. I'm looking at swapping the power supply for a higher quality model and also would like to test it with a 'continuous duty' ups to see if that helps.
Have you come up with anything to make these things work better?
Microsoft brought us Windows XP. I bought a Mac.