EyeTV: TV, Mac Style!

Have you ever eyed one of those fancy Windows Media Center PCs that can watch TV and act as a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) and thought “Self, I wish I had a Media Center Mac” ?

Well, worry no longer because you can have it all, and more with EyeTV.

EyeTV, released by Elgato Systems is a hardware/software package. Elgato sells a number of different hardware tuners with a variety of different price points and features. Have a look before you purchase and see which one fits your budget. The smaller USB Key sized device is perfect for road-warriors but the larger devices include on-board hardware that makes TV editing much quicker - by doing the encoding on the device itself rather than leaving that to your CPU. If you plan to simply DVR shows to watch later, the smaller, cheaper device is fine. If you plan to encode shows for your iPod, AppleTV or to post to the internet (you do own the copyrights, right?) you are best served by one of the fancier models.

On to the software. EyeTV is a Universal application, ready to take advantage of your speedy Intel Mac. In my case, I used the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid, the USB Key sized model, $149 at the Apple Store Online or a retail store near you. I plugged a standard rabbit-ears TV antenna into its ATSC/NTSC antenna port, and I picked up all my local TV stations in brilliant HD. Your mileage may vary depending on how far you are from your local broadcast antennae, and you may need to get a more powerful antenna or even an outdoor, roof-mounted antenna.

EyeTV has a built in program guide powered by TitanTV allowing you to record any program you want straight to your hard drive, ready for viewing at another time. If you’re interested in archiving your shows, you can remove ads simply by right clicking on your recorded video and selecting ‘Edit’. In the following window you can skim through the recorded program, find the ads, and select them in the same way you would in iMovie. Once you have the ads highlighted, you select ‘Compact’ in the menu at the bottom and BLAMMO! Your ads are gone.

There are a number of other things you can do with your videos. The newest ability is one click AppleTV export! If you’ve got an AppleTV, this is a huge selling-point. You also have one-click iPod export, one-click Toast export or you can select your own options from a list of 27 formats, ranging from PSP to DV to H.264 (the format that the iPod and AppleTV use).

EyeTV does do an excellent job encoding video, but it can take a while to encode. If you want HD, you will honestly need Core Duo or better. If you have one of the fancier external boxes that does on-board recording, this will make your editing go much smoother.

All Elgato’s EyeTV units support HD Broadcasts and HD recording using ATSC antennas and will receive analog NTSC broadcasts until they are disabled.

Back to the hardware. Some tuners allow you to plug in external sources (component/s-video) which can be useful if you have an old camcorder, as you can record the tapes off, edit them, and burn them to DVD, or encode in any of the above formats. I prefer to hook up my Xbox and record Halo 2 matches for later review (and to make fun of my friends when I blow them up repeatedly!)

Also included is a full screen menu with Apple Remote integration. This is a brilliant feature, as you can control nearly everything from the other side of the room via a 10-foot interface, as with Front Row. You can view the TV guide, set it to record, and channel hop. If you aren’t a fan of the Apple Remote, or you need numbers for your channel surfing, Elgato does sell a separate, more conventional remote, though it’s also included in some packages.

A final note: if you do pick up an EyeTV, be warned; you would be well served to get an external HD to store your recordings on, as 1/2 hour uncompressed HD is about 1.5GB, and it easily racks up!

Overall EyeTV is a fairly easy-to-use app that allows you to watch live and DVR’d TV in HD. It does pretty much everything you could need it to do, and it does it well. Its full-screen menu, puts it ahead, as it is beautiful, and makes TV watching so, so good!

EyeTV is available with a tuner, starting at $149 from the Apple Store Online.