Review: EyeTV

EyeTV from El Gato Software is a USB peripheral housing an MPEG-1 encoder, a TV tuner, and coaxial and RCA inputs, and accompanying Mac OS X software to operate the tuner and record and playback programs, saving the data to your local hard drive. In less geeky terms, it is a digital video recorder for your Mac. Boffo. OK, there's nothing exactly unique about a DVR for your computer. But this one is made for Mac OS X, and it works with any Mac OS X box that has USB.

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.

Comments

What about satellite users?

[bwalling]

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)?

Re:What about satellite users?

[mgs1000]

Okay, this is what you do:

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)

Re:What about satellite users?

[Anonvmous Coward]

This link might be interesting to you:

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/snapstreammedia/cablep acks.html

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. :)

Re:What about satellite users?

[swb]

I don't know about satellite, but I wish there was a more open standard for digital cable tuners. I'd like to see them included in TVs, VCRs, Tivos, or other devices, even if it only means "closed" non-PC devices (ie, no capture cards, I wouldn't count Tivo as a PC, others may disagree).

I hate the idea of having to pony up $8 per TV for tuners. It'd be great if they could be integrated into the device directly.

I don't know how practical this would be -- I'd imagine that there are multiple digital cable standards out there (Motorola, Scientific Atlanta, etc) and probably little desire for a common standard.

I'm also curious about the economics to the cable company. While I'm sure my SA2100 box wasn't $500 in bulk to the CATV company, I can't see them making a profit off the box @ $8 per month for at least a year, maybe two.

If I could take a few weeks off work and had a few thousand to spend, I could do a decent job of rewiring my house and get a couple of TVs per CATV tuner box, centralized Tivo, etc, but not now.

Re:What about satellite users?

[Anonymous Coward]

5. Profit!!!

Re:What about satellite users?

[BigJimSlade]

Okay, this is what you do:

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)

5. Add a VideoLan server into the mix to serve up the video to any of your PCs!

Re:What about satellite users?

[Drishmung]

The digital TV stuff is very standard. It's MPEG-2.Of course, it's also very scrambled to prevent piracy. Each company tends to use its own standard (well, there are three or four in total that are in use).

Now, MPEG-2 is standard, but not terribly 'open', as it encumbered with patents. If you want to sell someone an MPEG-2 decoder, you need to pay licence fees to the patent holders. That's been one of the problems with releasing free MPEG-2 decoders for Quicktime, since Apple would have to pay royalties per player.

The STBs are made in Taiwan, in the millions. Economy of scale, heavy automation, and very low wages, combine to ensure that your STB cost the CATV company less than $200. I'd say that even so, at $8/month, it takes them at least 13 months to make any money off you.

Re:What about satellite users?

[swb]

The video stream is the easy part, and I knew that was standardized, although I wonder how many vendor-specific tweaks and extensions to MPEG2 have been done by the major cable system vendors.

The standardization I was talking about was the layer 2/3/4 communication that enables authorization, pay-per-view, guide data, and so on.

It'd be kind of cool if the major vendors had decided that the boxes themselves would just be java machines with a standard boot protocol, and everything else that ran on them was downloaded to the box from the headend, instead of hardcoded into the box. Make it easier for TV, PVR, and third parties to make boxes that fit the standard. The major vendors could then still make money to cable co's selling headend systems and software, instead of closed hardware/software systems!

Re:What about satellite users?

[Drishmung]

I don't believe any tweaks etc have been done to MPEG-2. OTOH, there is lots of room in MPEG to put the stuff the CATV people need, namely conditional access and guide/interactivity.

There are a very few CA systems. Moto have their own, nearly every one else uses one of two other vendors. This is the Smart Card stuff. It's 'standard', but they are very paranoid about revealing how it works, as if it is broken it costs tens of millions of $ to fix.

The other bit is middleware. Rather than write for every processor in every model of every STB, most manufacturers now use one of two or three middleware systems. At least one of these is Java based, but most are not (although they will run Java). MS tried to own this space with WinCE but so far has been laughed at.

So, what you want is what is already in place, but the target system isn't quite what you expect maybe. BTW, the OS on most of these STBs is VxWorks from Wind River.

I was going to build

[batboy78]

I was going to build a Linux PVR, but this sounds interesting. Any chances of Linux controlling software?

Re:I was going to build

[Anonymous Coward]

freevo.sf.net

and use standard hardware instead of one particular brand

Naming question

[American AC in Paris]

This product was designed for use with MacOS X.

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"?

Re:Naming question

[miTTio]

A pirate walks into a bar, with a steering wheel on his crotch.

The bartender brings this to the pirate's attention.

The pirate replies: "AArghh! It's driving me nuts!"

Re:Naming question

[LinuxHam]

Thus, shouldn't this product be called "iEyeTV"?

But that would lead to too much pirating...

(rimshot)

Re:Naming question

[miTTio]

that is because pirate jokes are timeless

Re:Naming question

[Wise Dragon]

Aye, because of all the booty!

Some other owner comments

[bbk]

You can find some other comments by owners Here .

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

Re:Some other owner comments

[faster]

El Gato makes Toast for Roxio (long story truncated: the Toast guys quit, Roxio begged, they said "we won't be your employees, but pay our company and we'll keep working on Toast"), so it will get better. They do have a clue about creating great software.

All the cool stuff is for Mac.

[Blimey85]

Damn. I use to be a Mac nut but I finally went to the dark side.. then I switched to Linux but anyway, now that I don't have access to a Macintosh anymore, I keep reading about all of this cool stuff you can do on Macs. Granted even if I had a Mac, I probably couldn't afford to get the cool stuff but at least then my dreams would be a bit more realistic.

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?

USB 1.1

[batboy78]

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.

Re:USB 1.1

[benwaggoner]

an ATSC (USA standard) HDTV stream goes up to about 19.2 Mbps, so no, USB 1.1 doesn't have the bandwidth needed. And it's MPEG-2, not MPEG-1.

If you want to convert it to a low resolution MPEG-1, sure. But why?

Agreed - good stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

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

ordered one two days ago

[krel]

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!

Re:Great, except I don't want to make a Mac

[Dot.Com.CEO]

I would think the 32'' tv would be the focal point of your entertainment system ;-)

Re:Great, except I don't want to make a Mac

[batboy78]

What are the specs for your divx box? Does it capture and encode into Divx or play back only?

USB vs. Firewire

[ThesQuid]

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.

Re:USB vs. Firewire

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Whether the device uses USB or not probably has nothing to do with quality of the encoded material. As I said in another post, broadcast TV only uses 8 Mbps (of MPEG-2), so the 12 Mbps available over USB is plenty. (Assuming you're not sharing that particular bus, but that's obvious.)

Now, your experience may simply have been with crappy devices. But that doesn't necessarily mean that USB sucks.

I mean, USB does suck, but just not in this particular way.

Re:USB vs. Firewire

[Cy Guy]

I assume you are referring to USB 1.x. USB 2.0 is direct competitor to firewire.

But yeah, you can understand why they lock you into the low resolution, you'd never get full screen hi-resolution over a USB 1.x connection using MPEG 1 compression.

I think the whole thing is pretty overpriced for what you get though. I got the Video Blaster card with the same features (but with full screen video) at CompUSA last month and it was only $50. While I know that many Mac owners don't have the option of putting new cards in their boxes, a 300% markup seems kind of steep for an external unit that also has more limited capability.

Also, what is up with the 20MB software installation? You can play MPEG1 files with QuickTime, so all you need is a scheduling interface.

for the love of god

[cygnus]

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.

IE

[Triv]

Q. Do I have to use Internet Explorer to access TitanTV?

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 .6.

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

Re:IE

[pudge]

IIRC, I had to use MSIE to sign up for TitanTV, but I used Mozilla fine with it. I needed to manually modify my browser settings (I forget how) so it would call EyeTV when it got that certain file type, etc. But as noted in my review, TitanTV is unnecessary, and IMO not preferable, to using Watson.

Re:IE

[Anonymous Coward]

The instructions for setting up Mozilla with TitanTV & EyeTV are available from

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.w oa /wa/default?user=bscholln&templatefn=FileSharing.h tml&aff=consumer&cty=US&lang=en

I'm also setting up a small section on EyeTV on

http://bschollnick.phpwebhosting.com/digital

- Ben

Saw it...passed

[droopus]

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.

Re:Saw it...passed

[jdcook]

Am I the only one who looked at the Powermate knob mentioned inthe parent and wondered about Tempest on MAME?

Re:Saw it...passed

[benwaggoner]

As long as it targets MPEG-1 in VCD compatible mode, that means only 352x240 resolution. The only way that's going to look good on a Cinema display is if it just plays in a small window. Even a good 720x480 DVD can show with problems digital scaled up that much. It isn't as bad with CRT, since the video card can lower the resolution, softening out some of the scaling artifacts you get with a fixed resolution display.

Re:Saw it...passed

[WhaDaYaKnow]

I asked why no MPEG4/Divx compression and didn't get a decent answer.

The answer would be that at least until recently no hardware compression chips where available. Because the data is sent over the slow USB bus, it has to be compressed by the device, before it goes over the bus.

If they had used Firewire, any compression could have been used, provided that the Mac's CPU can handle it in real-time.

so the question is.....

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:bitrate limitations

[jolshefsky]

Umm ... USB is limited to 12 megabits/second or 1.2 megabytes/second which is about 10 times faster than low-quality VCD (150 kilobytes/second) and about 5 times faster than high-quality VCD (about 300 kilobytes/second.)

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.

try formac's firewire solution

[redherring22]

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.

Re:try formac's firewire solution

[WatertonMan]

That does look very, very nice.

I found a few reviews on Google:

http://www.whatcamcorder.net/frame.html?http://www .whatcamcorder.net/reviews/VideoEditing/Formac/For macStudio.shtml

http://www.ibook-user.com/reviews/review-formac.ht ml

http://www.synchrotech.com/product-1394/analog-dv- converter_01.html

I'm afraid that MPEG-1 is a distinct turnoff with the EyeTV thing. Further USB seems far too slow. Has anyone used the Formac and would like to say how it works? I wished it did Digital Cable as I have that and many channels I'd like to record are on the digital. C'est la vie I guess.

Re:try formac's firewire solution

[scrypt]

The only problem with this approach, is that you will need a much, MUCH larger hard drive to record to. The Formac device stores video in DV format, which eats up 1gb for every 4 min. of footage. So, unless you just plan on recording commercials (or you have/plan to buy a large RAID), you will be better off with something that compresses the signal.

Re:try formac's firewire solution

[mr100percent]

Sure, I've used the formac DV Studio. It comes in 2 flavors, one with an FM tuner, and one without.

It's got all you want, RF, S-Video, and Composite In and Out for all them. It's firewire and DV, so Final Cut Pro and iMovie can import the DV, even from a TV show. Qualitywise, it's DV so depending on your video source, it should look pretty good, very high quality copying.

Formac makes its own program to watch TV in a window, floating or regular, and lets you record channels on a schedule.

The OS X software, at the moment, sucks. There is a lag between changing channels and the change, and it eats up 80% of the CPU time on a Powerbook G4 800MHz. Recording a show is straight into DV-size uncompressed .mov files, unless you set otherwise. Recording just takes almost all your processor and HD use to keep up, which it does. A half-hour show gives me over a gigabyte of data, which I got Quicktime Pro for me to crunch down to smaller size (like MPEG-4, which does wonders).

Luckily, Formac announced they're working on a updated OS X version of the software, availible this month, which I eagerly await.

Get Watson 1.5

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

To "store?"

[fireboy1919]

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).

Re:Great, except I don't want to make a Mac

[l33t j03]

Problem is the 32" flat panel TV is actually a 15" Optimus TV/VCR combo that he pretends is a 32" flat panel.

See, thats why the Mac would be the focal point.

Answers to slews of dumb responses

[jolshefsky]

First, the MPEG-1 stream they're getting is VideoCD quality. VideoCD quality was designed to come from 1x CD-ROM drives which spit data at 150 kbytes/s which leaves plenty of bandwidth on the 1.2 mbytes/s USB.

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.

Re:Answers to slews of dumb responses

[Tokerat]

Well you're right, but the MSAL (Most-Significant Acronym Letter) is still correct.

• Worst-case senario:
• Low-Speed USB 1.1: 1,500,000 bits per second. (1.5Mbps * 1,000,000 bps)
• VideoCD data stream: 1,228,800 bits per second. (150KBps * 1024 bytes per KB * 8 bits per byte)

Woohoo! It works!

(semi-ot): tv/radio capture in linux?

[Tyler Eaves]

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 ...

Re:(semi-ot): tv/radio capture in linux?

[BigJimSlade]

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 ...

Video4Linux drivers support a number of FM tuners. I thought it would be cool to have a linux PVR for catching various radio talk shows that I miss (Car Talk is one of them... it's on way to early Saturdays in my area)

MacAddict Review

[NutMan]

MacAddict had a review of EyeTV and also MyTV.

They liked EyeTV as well.

Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge

[red_dragon]

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.

I bought one recently, the quality is OK

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

...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...!)

Re:All I want is a USB 2.0 or Firewire tuner.

[nsayer]

It's not quite the same product, but there are a few analog-video-to-DV-over-firewire products. Dazzle makes a Hollywood DV Bridge, Miglia makes one as well (that looks nicer). I have the miglia on order and will provide a review when it arrives.

MPEG-2 PCI card for OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

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

oh boy.

[hrieke]

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.

Re:oh boy.

[Maskirovka]

This is nothig new. ATI's All in Wonder radeons have had this feature for some time.

I'm Going to TRY to make this clear For EVERYONE

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:They're charging $200 for this?

[Znonymous Coward]

Can you put cards into an iMac flat screen?

Dear el Slashdotto

[Anonymous Coward]

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

You don't need it.

[pantherace]

if you are building a linux box for PVR, use mencoder to capture DIRECTLY TO DIVX/MPEG4. Last night I captured an episode of smallville directly from cable, and it looks great.

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):
mencoder -tv on:driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:input=0:norm=NT SC:outfmt=rgb32:freq=83.250 -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -o test6.avi

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.

Re:Hello Shitty Quality

[Twirlip of the Mists]

MPEG1? USB1.1 does not have the bandwidth to capture that at any decent framerate/resolution.

Twelve megabits is plenty for full-motion, full-resolution video. The SDTV signals you get over digital broadcast TV are only encoded at 4 Mbps, albeit with MPEG-2. MPEG-1 at 12 Mbps won't look that shit-hot, but that's a limitation of the codec, not of USB.

Re:Hello Shitty Quality

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Ack. Sorry to reply to my own post, but I let that last one go out with a typo. Damn you "Preview" button!

That should have read, "The SDTV signals you get over digital broadcast TV are only encoded at 8 Mbps, albeit with MPEG-2."

Oops.

Re:bitrate limitations

[panZ]

While you are correct about the pipe being big enough for 300kB/s I have a few minor corrections because I am anal retentive. =P

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?

Re:Another Reason NOT to buy an Apple

[milovoo]

>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

A better solution....

[z-kungfu]

...is the studio/tv from formac. It's firewire so you can get much better throughput, and OSX.
http://www.formac.com/p_bin/?cid=solutions_conve rt ers_studiodvtv
It beats the EyeTV hands down.

Re:A better solution....

[Andy Smith]

Unfortunately the Studio is very low quality and suffers from bad colour shifting. I sent mine back within a couple of days. I use a Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge which does have one major problem, in that it suffers from environmental electrical interference and is therefore unstable, but the quality when it works is superb. Even with the instability I'd recommend it over the Studio without a doubt.

Hauppauge supports OS X

[Spencerian]

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.

Re:Hauppauge supports OS X

[cygnus]

Hauppauge supports Mac OS X under their MyTV product line from their Eskape Labs division.

thanks! i was unaware of those products. but the PCI versions seem to be so much better, if only based on the resolutions... the WinTV PCI cards can take 1600x1200 stills!

Re:Hauppauge supports OS X

[Tumbleweed]

> the WinTV PCI cards can take 1600x1200 stills!

That's interesting - but what are they taking those nice 1600x1200 stills _from_? NTSC and PAL aren't anywhere NEAR that kind of resolution - not even CLOSE (like around 1/4 that resolution). So what they're really doing is taking the image and scaling it up. Shit, you could do that better in the GIMP or Photoshop, so that's hardly a big deal.

Re:Hauppauge supports OS X

[cygnus]

right right... but i think they support 800x600 or whatever dvd resolution is, don't they?

there *has* to be something out there better than this, anyway.

Re:Hauppauge supports OS X

[Tumbleweed]

I hate to break it to you, but DVD resolution is a whopping 480p (progressive) at best, and you only get that if you're watching on a computer or a _really_ expensive TV. (480p (as opposed to 480i - interlaced) DVD players are relatively cheap, now, but the tv's are still mondo pricey.

I just wish someone would come out with a widescreen TUBE tv that supports 480p with no speakers. No higher resolutions needed (what would I use them for?. Lowest-cost possible with a great picture for watching regular tv and DVD movies. Is this too much to ask for? *sigh*

UK Support ?

[rixster]

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 ??

Editing can be easier than that

[SirOgre]

From EyeTV, export to quicktime movie.

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.

Hauppauge

[Andy Dodd]

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.)

Re:WinTV PVR is like this, but...

[MrResistor]

High quality MPEG encoding can't be done in real time.

Yes it can, and it has been done for a few years on a regular basis. Perhaps you mean it can't be done on a home system, and that's true. Don't say it can't be done, though, because I've got several machines converting video to 50Mbps MPEG in realtime in the room with me at this very moment.

Re:Hello Shitty Quality

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I have to confess that your point about "it doesn't matter what Mbps the signals are sent to me at" was completely lost on me. Huh?

USB can handle that ridiculous resolution at 30fps just fine, but thats TV quality, and looks really crappy on a computer monitor

That is, after all, what we're talking about here. TV signals: 480 lines at 59.94 fields per second. That's all the data you're ever going to get out of an SDTV signal, no matter how you slice it. This particular encoder down-rezzes the picture to half-D1, but that's to comply with the VideoCD spec, not a limitation of USB per se.

FWIW- HDTV and DVDs are at a much higher resolution as well.

HDTV, yes; DVD, no. HDTV can come in a variety of formats, but the most common are 1080i (1080 lines at 59.94 fields per second) and 720p (720 lines at 60 frames per second). DVD, on the other hand, has exactly one resolution: 480 lines at 59.94 fields per second, same as over-the-air television. Some-- many-- DVD players can do a reverse 3:2 pulldown and turn the 480i picture back into a 480/24p picture, but that's just trickery with fields. It doesn't actually give you any more resolution. Also, most DVDs contain an anamorphic picture that your TV stretches out (or squeezes down, depending on whether your screen is 4:3 or 16:9), but that doesn't magically give you any more resolution either. In fact, you're decreasing the effective horizontal resolution of the picture when you do it. You're trading horizontal resolution for vertical resolution, and just about everybody agrees that it's a good trade-off.

But the idea that DVDs contain more resolution than regular TV signals is a myth.

Re:They're charging $200 for this?

[wadetemp]

You know of one that works with OSX for a reasonable price? I agree with you in spirit, but not in reality.

Re:Hello Shitty Quality

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If you were capturing the output, you would *still* be capturing the full uncompressed analog frames at the exact same rate- regardless of the original "source" bitrate.

Ah, I see the problem. You don't realize that this device takes analog video input and encodes it to an MPEG-1 bitstream, then sends the bitstream over the USB connection to the computer. The data pushed over USB in this case never exceeds about 180 KB/s, so USB is more than adequate for that task.

If this device included a better encoder, it could generate an MPEG-2 bitstream at 6 Mbps, which is visually indistinguishable from broadcast-quality SDTV to the casual observer. USB could carry that bitstream to the computer quite easily. You said, "USB1.1 does not have the bandwidth to capture that at any decent framerate/resolution." That's not true at all.

Modern DV cameras produce resolutions higher than that.

Wrong. "Modern DV cameras" produce exactly 480 lines at 59.94 fields per second, nothing more. (Well, NTSC cameras, anyway. PAL cameras produce a picture that's slightly different.) In fact, they produce a picture that's considerably worse than broadcast quality, because the DV codec preserves full-bandwidth luminance data but discards more than half of the color data. In video jargon, this is called "4:1:0." Whereas broadcast-quality video (4:2:2) can be represented as an 8, 6, or even 4 Mbps bitstream with no objectionable artifacts or macroblocking, DV video (including DVCPRO and DVCAM) can easily be squeezed down to a megabit or less, due to the lower effective resolution in the color channels.

This device is *severely* limited- period.

That's true, but not for the reason you keep repeating. It's got nothing to do with USB qua USB. It's limited by the fact that it includes a cheap MPEG encoder chip. Saying "USB1.1 does not have the bandwidth to capture that at any decent framerate/resolution" is just exaggeration.

Windows support is coming...

[Slur]

...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.

Re:Hello Shitty Quality

[Chasing Amy]

> DVD, on the other hand, has exactly one resolution: 480 lines at 59.94 fields per second

No, you forget that NTSC is not the only encoding system in common usage. There are DVDs which are encoded to PAL resolution--for example, the "Red Edition" of *Dellamorte Dellamore* which I just finished watching a few hours ago on my region-free DVD setup. ;-)