Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)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.
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Box Contents: EyeTV 500, software and PDF documentation, FireWire cable, IR remote, 2 AAA batteries, Quick Start Guide
EyeTV 500 lets you watch, record, pause and rewind standard and high-definition television (HDTV) on your Macintosh. Delivers both free-to-air channels via digital antenna and free channels via digital cable. An integrated online TV guide (EPG) gives you control of your TV schedule, allowing you to program TV recordings to happen automatically even when you are not present. EyeTV will completely replace your VCR, storing hours of your favorite TV shows directly on your hard disk for you to watch whenever you want or archive to DVD. HDTV represents the future of television broadcasting, providing interference-free reception and remarkable digital picture and sound quality. EyeTV supports HDTV multilingual programming and Dolby Digital sound. EyeTV 500 receives free over-the-air ATSC television, the next generation digital broadcast television standard that is the future of television. The North American free over-the-air (ATSC) and digital cable markets are thriving, and prime time HD content is becoming increasingly available from the major US broadcasters. View television on your Mac like never before! Requirements -Macintosh with a PowerPCG4 (500 MHz or faster) or G5 processor. 1080i HD features require dual G5 processors / 256 MB of physical RAM (512 MB recommended) / FireWire port / Mac OS X v10.3.9 (or later) or v10.4 (or later) / 8 GB of free disk space required for one hour of recorded HDTV / QuickTime 6.5 / An Internet connection to use optional online TV guide
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