Opinions on using 23" Cinema Display instead of TV?

[jennneal1313]

Hello everyone!

Rather-newbie-to-Macs here, so please bear with me.

I have a Mac mini hooked up to my 23" Cinema Display, a 17" G4 Powerbook, a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, a decent 27" flat screen TV, digital cable and a DVR/TiVo-ish box.

I'm thinking that the cinema display is so amazing that using the TV is a waste of time when I could be drooling over my cinema display.

I've heard of the EyeTV to use my cinema display to view and record TV, but are there better/cheaper options available? Are there seamless ways to use my display as the monitor for my Powerbook when at home and also watch digital TV?

On a side note, I seem to be a bit slow here, but I cannot get iDisk to sync the way I want it to; I want to have my Powerbook reflect (mainly document and desktop) changes whenever I sync, but only my laptop shows up in the list of sync devices, so I'm assuming the problem is somehow connected to that.

THANKS!

[fryke]

There are TV tuners you can hook up directly to LCD displays. Then you don't get the recording stuff, though. It'll simply make your LCD display a TV. I don't know about those items' prices, but I'd prefer the eyeTV any day. Even when you _don't_ want to record TV shows, it's still nice to be able to have a TV window somewhere on your large desktop while browsing the web, working on other stuff etc.

[Lt Major Burns]

yes but is there an alternative to eye TV that does the same sort of thing? i don't like the idea of a monoploy...

[ex2bot]

Eye TV is apparently the best at this point, but look at

http://www.macmerc.com/articles/Mini_Media_Mac/327

Doug