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Review: Elgato EyeTV 500
The package is simple. The 500 comes with the box itself, which is slightly larger in all dimensions than a paperback book; an IR remote control and batteries; a CD; a quick-start card; and a standard 6-wire FireWire cable. The back of the box has antenna-in and -out jacks (the purpose for the antenna-out jack is unknown. As delivered, it has a plastic cover on it), two FireWire jacks and a DC power input jack (there is no power supply, um, supplied, and DC power input is optional. They do not recommend you plug bus-powered devices into it if the EyeTV device itself is bus-powered). The front panel has a window with the IR remote control receiver and a status LED. The box is light for its size and liberally perforated with ventilation holes, but in extended use I couldn't detect any heat.
The installation procedure is simplicity itself: You connect an antenna to the antenna jack, you connect the FireWire cable between your computer and the box, you insert the CD into your computer and drag the EyeTV application from the CD to your Applications folder (or anywhere else you want it). The first time you start the EyeTV application, you'll get a setup wizard that will ask about your EyeTV hardware, discover it, and begin the auto-tune procedure.
This is the first place that EyeTV stumbles ever so slightly: The purpose of the auto-tune procedure is to fill in the channel list used for the channel up and down buttons and for the channel list drop-down menu. It takes a couple of minutes to complete, but the first time I did it, the EyeTV missed a station that I knew it should have found. When I repeated the procedure, it found that one, but missed a different one. Finally, the third try yielded 28 streams (I have a good outdoor antenna in Santa Clara, CA, aimed at the Mt. Sutro tower). Elgato should add some way of manually adding or deleting channels (I don't really care about non-English language and home shopping channels).
The other thing to keep in mind is that this receiver is designed strictly for over-the-air reception, and for good reception, you'll very likely need a good outdoor antenna. If you get cable TV, then this isn't for you.
The software integrates well with TitanTV.com, which provides program-guide information. You can click on shows on the TitanTV web site and watch the EyeTV tune to the correct channel or set up to record the show. Recording shows is more or less on a timed schedule basis - it's not quite up to the standard of a TiVo season pass. But the software does poll Titan for schedule changes (if you allow it).
Once you've recorded a show, an iMovie-like editor lets you locate the commercials and cut them out, although the job of finding and marking them is a manual procedure. Once you've marked them, you can compact the show, which permanently removes the marked sections, reclaiming the disk space they were taking.
And speaking of disk space, the CPU and hard disk requirements for digital TV content are enormous. 1080i shows can take potentially 20 GB per hour. An episode of CSI:Miami, after being compressed to 41 minutes, takes 11 GB. A 41-minute episode of The Tonight Show takes 8. Simply displaying these streams at full size in a window takes about 75% of the available CPU of my wife's 1.6 GHz single-proc G5. I wouldn't recommend buying one of these for a machine less powerful than that. The software will scale the image down if it needs to, so it won't outright fail on lesser hardware (and you will be able to access multicasted streams), but the big selling point of this box is being able to watch 1080i shows at full size on your 23" cinema display. If you want to do that, you'll need some serious processor muscle.
All in all, I give this product a big thumbs-up. Digital TV will truly revolutionize broadcast television over the course of the next few years just the way color did for our parents and grandparents. At $299, the EyeTV 500 is a great way for Mac owners to get started without spending a lot, but still enjoying all of the benefits (and breathtaking pictures) Digital TV has to offer.
Thanks to nsayer for this review. Have an interesting review in mind? Slashdot welcomes feature-length submissions.
This setup could be very cool with an attached 23 or 30 inch Cinema Display...
As far as HD space goes, could one use the newly discussed h.263 codec that was presented at WWDC to compress the movies into smaller file sizes?
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
$300 is too much to pay for a tv tuner and mpeg encoder.
Considering the price of a real TV or a PVR in the same ballpark price that do the similar (or more functions), I don't see the justification for the expense. This is another example of where computers impare normal functioning of human logic.
Is it just the "rules" that prevent HD component recording? Right now there's a huge variety of devices that can record from composite or s-video (TiVo, VCRs, DVD recorders, video capture cards on your computer, etc). I just want to dump HD component video into a recorder the same way I dump it into my TV.
The big problem right now is that I can record over-the-air HD with devices like this (and even some HD VCRs and HD capture cards in computers), but I can't record the analog HD signal out of my DirecTV HD box and if I ever got digital cable, I wouldn't be able to record that one either. If I want to record DirecTV HD, my only option right now is to get a HD TiVo (for about $1000), but that's not an archiving solution. (and yes, I know there's hacks, but I'm talking off-the-shelf technology that my mom could use).
I'm very well versed in this stuff but I find it incredibly frustrating trying to sort out exactly what types of signals I can record and when.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Why not just encode the SD material into DV25, which the MacOS loves. Then users can just use iMovie to edit. Why do devices like this insist on shipping with software intended to reinvent the wheel? I would love a simple PVR for my PowerBook, but I don't need editing features, I can use iMovie for that.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Antenna out is for the rest of your boxes, you insensitive clod!
But seriously, though - your source should go to your primary recorder, then out to any other inline devices, then to your tv. That way you get the best signal into the recorder.
For instance, You'd go from source, to the eyeTV, to your VHS recorder, to your projector, then to your regular TV, were you to have all those things.
My curiousity is this whole "but not with cable" thing. Just how does it block that?
kulakovich
If you have a modern digital cable box with Firewire outputs, just download iRecord and connect your Mac to the box with a quality firewire cable. iRecord is developing quickly into a good PCPVR solution for digital cable boxes.
The interesting thing is that you can record anything the box is showing over the firewire output, including video on demand, HDTV, Music Choice, and digital-tier cable channels.
You can then take the captured MPEG2 transport stream and convert it to a standard MPEG file by using VLC's advanced output options in the file open dialog.
Now if someone can figure out how to send the MPEG transport stream back to the digital cable box for playback...
A few months ago, I stumbled upon this page which explains how to record and play back HDTV signals using free tools and a cable box.
:/
Regarding playback, VLC can *just* manage to play back HD 1080i recordings on my 1GHz TiBook (using the OpenGL playback option), so it sounds like it does not require the gargantuan system specs stated in the above article.
Now if only we could recieve HDTV in the UK.
Here's a working link. HDTV to a Mac
I/O DATA out of Japan makes a firewire TV tuner that is both PC and MAC compatible, for about 23000yen or so (maybe more?)
Only problem is that they don't sell it outside of Japan, and it's frigging impossible to get anyone to import electronics like computer components.
(link to previous critically acclaimed post).
It doesn't sound nearly as elegant as the ElGato solution -- they make good stuff -- but for a quick n' dirty geek HDTV recording hack, the example code Apple provides actually does work.
~jeff
The biggest problem right now with the HDTV stand-alone recorder boxes and computer HDTV tuners is that they cannot record from digital cable. Digital Cable uses QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) which means that it generates 4 bits out of one baud for encoding HDTV channels. Cracking that is the holy grail of HDTV recording and there are many users out there willing to put up lots of cash as an incentive for this happen. The point is over-the-air (OTA) HDTV is unencrypted and can be recorded for the time being using both stand-alone and computer equipment. Both satellite-based and digital cable-based HDTV use either QAM64 or QAM256 which cannot be tuned well by any equipment out today. There was a Dish 5000 reciever that could be hacked to output HDTV digital streams over firewire but the modulation on the network has changed so the box cannot decrypt the streams anymore for output. I would suggest waiting for the time being.
To qualify the above statement, DViCO makes the Fusion HDTV QAM PCI card for desktops which unofficially claims to tune QAM256 but it still has problems with QAM64. Link A simple seach at the AVS Forums should provide more information on current issues with the card. Lastly, for you laptop PC owners out there, Sasem makes a USB HDTV tuner which claims to tune QAM but is really only useful for OTA HDTV at the moment. Link ATI will be releasing an HDTV card soon but I am not aware if it has any QAM tuning abilities.
ElGato just released version 1.5 today that lowers CPU requirements for HDTV playback. I read reports of dual 866 G4 being able to play back a full 1080i stream.
The review was vague about being able to receive standard VHF and UHF over the air broadcasts. The online documentation also doesn't specifically indicate that it can receive them. And no Cable input? I mean come on, how is that useful. All the PCI based solutions provide dual antenna inputs. I could understand the lack of Cable based HDTV, but it should at least allow you to record and play standard def cable.