The EyeTV software works pretty much the same as it does with theĮyeTV Hybrid (2010) ( ), with a few notable differences. The whole process took less than 10 minutes. The EyeTV Setup Assistant did a fine job walking me through the process of hooking up the hardware and configuring it to work with my receiver, picking my TV provider and channel lineup, and testing the IR blaster to make sure everything was working right. The Setup Assistant helps you make sure everything is working fine. That might mean using a laptop or having a very long USB cable running across the floor. Because you connect the EyeTV HD to a set-top box, you’ll obviously need a Mac within USB-cable range of one TV in your abode. Mac Pro/iMac PPC/MacBook Pro/Mini Mac OS X (10.4.I tested the EyeTV HD with an H20 HD receiver from DirecTV, connected to a newĬore i5 2.53GHz 17-inch MacBook Pro ( ). These devices are recommended to people with less powerful machines since they handle the demanding encoding process themselves. "EyeTV 200 supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 hardware encoding.", see This can be contrasted with the EyeTV 200 and 250. Since the encoding process is quite intensive it places much higher demands on the computer's CPU and possibly memory. ) to MPEG format so the host computer must handle this task. This is because the EyeTV hybrid does not have a processor which can convert the YUV ( The EyeTV software encodes this YUV into MPEG-2 or MPEG-1, and the speed and quality of that encoding is entirely dependent on the power of your Mac.". "EyeTV Hybrid features an analog NTSC or PAL TV tuner that lets you watch live TV directly on the Mac, in the uncompressed YUV format. This is not the case with an analogue TV signal. This requires relatively little processing power on the computer since it is just a matter of grabbing the data from the device and writing it to disk. When recording from a digital source using an EyeTV Hybrid (and most other digital TV devices) the digital information that makes up a digital TV broadcast is sent directly to disk. Not be an issue either-unless you have poor reception. Handle hi def content with no problems, analog should I don't use an analog source but I imagine if it can (now there is now a $20 rebate for American/Canadian purchases of it made before June 30th - has me wondering if a new model is being developed.) If your priority is recording (analog) over just watching TV, the Eye250 is probably the best choice. hardware encoding allows quality/useability with less powerful Macs. good for watching analog broadcasts, digital via included breakout cable. okay for recording video but quality/useability is dependant on your Mac. good for watching analog and digital broadcasts. The Mini's 'laptop' hard drive is (obviously) not as ideal for DV recording as a desktop 7200RPM one although I'm confident that it would still be up to the task.Įssentially, from my experience with the Hybrid and from the literature that I've read For one, your system will not be pushed as hard. I haven't used the EyeTV 250 so I can't make a recommendation from personal experience but my understanding is that because the 250 performs hardware encoding as opposed to requiring the Mac to do it via software - performance should be noticeably better. In the latter case, a hardware encoding solution is preferred. My understanding is that the hybrid is a good solution for watching televison, less ideal for recording. On that note, even a core duo iMac with 2GB of RAM experiences the odd glitch with the EyeTV hybrid. With a traditional 5400RPM laptop hard drive, the performance will suffer more compared to, as an example, my iMac's desktop 7200RPM drive. If you run out of physical memory, your Mac will turn to VM which will will slow things down. I haven't monitored how much memory EyeTV uses over an extended period of time but it seemed to grow the longer it ran/recorded. The OS will use at least half of that not to mention the extra memory use via the Intel graphics chip. I wouldn't trust 512MB total RAM to be enough for everyday use, never mind multimedia. The other issue for Jay is whether 512MB of RAM is up Transmitter such as a wireless network station orĬordless phone is causing intereference for the EyeTV Just a thought - is it possible that a radio
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