MAC TV
I first doubted that a TV tuner/recorder for my computer would be a good idea. I
don’t like TV very much and don’t watch it on a regular basis. So what good
would it be to watch TV on my computer? I had seen systems like this in the past
and I wasn’t impressed at the time.
The EyeTV 500 by Elgato Systems is an
external digital TV tuner box you connect to an Apple Macintosh computer through
the FireWire 400 port. As I write this at a local Starbucks, I am watching a
Nova program that I recorded in high definition. My G4 PowerBook with 512MB ram
and a 1.25 GHz G4 processor is adequate to record, playback, encode, and convert
the video recorded by the EyeTV 500. As a Macintosh user and systems
administrator, I was interested in this product, although I must admit I
wondered what the market was for it. After all, most people have a DVR or VCR
and prefer to watch TV on big screens or at least comfortably squashed into
their couches, not perched in front of their computers. Fortunately, you can do
both with this unit.
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Elgato’s EyeTV 500 doesn’t come with a wall wart-type AC electrical power
adapter, even though there’s a connection for one on the back of the unit.
Instead, you can power the device off of the FireWire cable that connects to
your Mac. |
This product does what it is designed to do very well,
and is nearly perfect. The only problem I could detect was an occasional loss of
synchronization between the audio and the picture, apparently a result of
frequent disc access during playback, which causes too much competition for the
poor little disc in my laptop. I did not notice this when I tested the device on
more powerful computers. Setup is easy and is done in several easy-to-manage
steps. The box hooks up to either an HD antenna or digital cable, but you are
limited to the unencrypted, free channels only. EyeTV 500 does not work with
analog signals, analog cable boxes, or satellite dishes.
Unpacking the
device—a light, silver, plastic box about the size of a large paperback —I was
at first surprised it does not come with a power adapter, although there is a DC
plug on the unit. I found out that the device itself can be powered entirely
through the computer’s FireWire port, which is a great convenience. The antenna
I hooked up to the device was bigger and more unwieldy than the EyeTV 500
itself. The most difficult part of the installation process was waiting while
the software did an exhaustive scan of all the broadcast channels in use. When
it was done I was astounded by the number of channels the little box could pick
up in the standard- and high-definition digital television formats. The viewing
window changes sizes to reflect the different aspect ratios and resolutions when
switching between the different formats. I found my 15-inch PowerBook screen
ideal for the aspect ratio of HDTV, which at native resolution almost entirely
fills the screen with a sharp digital picture that reveals what a poor cousin
traditional NTSC TV is. The software allows you to watch live or recorded
programs at small size, half size, normal size, and maximum size.
