Elgato 10020511 Eyetv 500 Digital Video Record

I have the EyeTV 500 hooked up to my Dual 2.0 Ghz G5 Powermac. I had trouble receiving HDTV over the airwaves, but that is because I am in mountain terrain far from the broadcast towers. When I can get a signal locked in, the picture is great.

However, with the newest software the EyeTV 500 can decrypt clear QAM. This means that if your cable company does not encrypt their HD channels, the EyeTV 500 can decode it. Oddly, you have to hook up the cable to the "antenna out" jack if you are goihg to try to decode cable HDTV. On my cable system, I get ABC, CBS NBC and Discovery Channel HD.

The picture quality is superb and recording is easy (but it takes many gigabytes per hour). I find myself wanting to watch TV on my Mac now because the picture quality is so good.

Playing back full HD requires a G5, but G4s can play it back at a lower quality and it still looks really goood.

Interestingly, recording itself is not processor intensive. It mearly dumps the data stream over the firewire port. But playback requires processing the data, which takes power. But in theory you could set up a recording station with an older mac.

What I now want is a set top box that can stream HD content from my mac and display it on an HDTV. Such a device exists now (the Roku Labs Photobridge), but I have a strong suspiscion that newer and better devices, possibly even from Apple, are around the corner.

Followup: The newest version of the software is a Universal Binary and is reported to run great on Core Duo Intel Mac Mini, displaying full High Definition content with no problems.

I bought the EyeTv 500 as a solution to my TV needs. Being a European in the US i miss very much widescreen broadcasts that i am used to there and so the HDTV option was the obvious. I have it running on a 20" 1.8Ghz iMac G5 with 1.26GB RAM and a 250GB HD (also another same external). I live in a ground floor apartment which has no external aerial hookup so i have indoor (rabbit ears) antenna plugged into it (i may get up on the roof later and see if i can patch into the antenna). The reception is not fantastic (though the strange thing about DTV signals it that you get no fuzz. it's a fantastic picture, but it can drop out for a few seconds at a time. it's not variable, it's either there and great looking or its not there.) The system requirements shouldn't really be so low. It really does require a dual G5. Unfortunately you can't live downsample the HDTV signal to a 720 or SDTV signal to suit your machine. HDTV signals are choppy. Not really an ideal viewing solution. Great if you have a dual processor G5 i'm sure. But for anything less, don't expect much. My solution is to record the HDTV programs (which is not proceesor intensive), then downsample and compress them (which still ends up looking better than a regular analogue US NTSC signal on a regular TV) and then watch the recorded downsampled programs.

Note: EyeTV software only records the unadulterated HDTV signal. If you want to compress or change format you can export it (in EyeTV) to another format. But beware this encoding take a long long time. Turning a 30 minute recorded program into a MPEG-4 640x360 movie (which still looks really good from a TV viewing distance btw) it will take 4 hours (on my system which ain't the slowest by far!)

To be honest with you i bought this unit to replace my previous solution of downloading bittorrents of HDTV recorded programs. These torrents have becoem less widespread due to certain file sharing law suits. I like to be able to watch only the programs i like. Most of the rest of american TV browsing i find to be depressing. I do have a solution in this. I now can replace these downloaded TV programs with a Legal alternative, however i now realise the work that the kind person who recorded those programs and compressed them and put then on the internet did.

Result: If you've got a dual processor G5 and a good antenna hookup then get one of these. If you've got a lesser Mac and need to have a widescreen program (as i do) then get one but know that watching live TV won't be so good, and you'll have to wait a while before you can watch your recorded programs (a similar time it might be noted was required to download a program over the web). If you want TV on your lesser mac and don't care so much about widescreen signals, then get one of the normal non-HDTV EyeTV tuners (the 200 i think?).

If your bugdet is not small.... fork out and get didicated hardware. i.e. a real HDTV and DVR. It may be much more expensive but you won't have to put in so much work to watch your TV programs!

I'm not disappointed. But i am very techy and very Mac oriented. I wouldn't recommend this to someone who doesn't spend so much time playing around with computery things. If you already have trouble programming a real VCR then purchasing one of these is gonna result in your having less hair.

hope this helped you. Sorry if i waffled.

Buy Elgato 10020511 Eyetv 500 Digital Video Record Now

unbelivabley easy to setup..almost plug and play....great picture and sound....very nice feature set.

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Don't have a TV but you do have a Mac? The EyeTV 500 is an HDTV PVR box that allows you to watch & record HDTV content on your computer.

This EyeTV 500 was hooked to a Comcast cable and I could watch un-encrypted digital channels (Clear QUAM).

The EyeTV 500 is a fully digital product. It does not have connectors for analog video it does have a composite video input port.

EyeTV 500 support closed captioning, and all aspect ratios are supported. The window size is adjusted on-the-fly if a channel switches from 4:3 to 16:9.

Another great feature, you can export EyeTV content to any format that QuickTime supports, such as MPEG-4 or DV. You can also save content as MPEG Program or Elementary streams.

Want Elgato 10020511 Eyetv 500 Digital Video Record Discount?

You will never know what wonderful is until you use that massive computer on your desk to gain control over the media that comes through your TV to your office or house. Amazing, what a wonderful product.