best TV to MAC solution?

[alexandr]

What is the best solution to watch, record and edit (analogue) TV-signals on a PowerMac G5??

I've been looking into several solutions, but I feel that I have led myself a bit astray - does anybody have any comments or views on this?

my use / needs will be the following:

• I want to watch TV in FULLSCREEN on my 23" cinema display
• I want to be able to record, and maybe do small edits(clean cuts) without changing application. native editing kind off..
• I would like to be able to save files into different formats directly, depending on their use. important stuff to go MPEG2, non-important recordings MPEG4/divx
• Scheduling would be nice
• Saving programs/program-numbers, meaning I won't have to do a search every time I want to watch TV
• Remote Control - not very important, but a bonus

I've been looking into theese solutions, mainly from either Miglia or Elgato;

• Miglia EvolutionTV [ http://www.miglia.com/products/video...ntv/index.html ]
• Elgato EyeTV 200 [ http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=products_eyetv200 ]
• ConvertX PVR PX-TV402U [ http://www.plextor.be/products/px-tv...VR%20PX-TV402U ]
• Alchemy TV DVR internal card [ http://www.miglia.com/products/video...dvr/index.html ]

my favourite is the EvolutionTV, but since it is brand new (started shipping 15th of March) I know no feedback.
I have heard alot about Elgato products, but feel their products is a bit dated, and I feel the Evolution TV offers more for the money..

Both the boxes have an advantage over the Alchemy card, since it will use alot of CPU-resources, while the other two are external solutions with their own power/cpu etc..(or have I gotten it completely wrong??)

something which also confuses me is that(the EvolutionTV) states "Max viewing size: 720x576 (PAL), 720x480 (NTSC)" - but this isn't nearly fullscreen, so will it be able to do fullscreen?

Also, will there be any noticable difference between a system which runs USB 2.0(the Miglia-box) over a FireWire-system(Elgato)? Is FireWire the way to go?

Would anyone like to share their 2 cents, experiences, views, comments or whatever? And if there are other (better) solutions, please, don't hesitate to point me in the good direction..

cheers,
alex.

[padishahemperor]

I've heard EyeTV is good, I'm planning on doing a similar thing, there is a remote which works with it too, evidently you can do timeshifts as well as pause, record etc.

BUT I agree EvolutionTV looks more impressive, so I may choose that too if I can pause and rewind live TV.

[alexandr]

i've read up a bit since my last post, and the eyeTV 200 has gotten som very good reviews. and it does include a remote, which the EvolutionTV doesn't. and it is FireWire-based, which makes me more convinced. the last firmware-update apparently included support for MPEG4-conversion, which is good.. but i find it quite pricey.

then again, i've read a couple of reviews about the Alchemy TVR-card, and comparing prices this one has kind of won me over a bit.. only concern is that it will use quite a lot of system/cpu-resources.. can anyone confirm this? i haven't found out wether it has got its own cpu on the card or not, so i might be very wrong worrying over this..
i used to think the card wasn't strong enough to do fullscreen(don't know where i got that impression..), but i've been proven it will..

so i might check out the Alchemy card, get a cheap one second hand of ebay and see if it matches my needs, before eventually moving on to something stronger like an external box..

but i would still like your comments, please keep them coming.

and maybe someone might be able to answer my biggest concern - will any of theese alternatives be able to do fullscreen on a 23", 1920x1200-screen?

alex.

[thendis]

something which also confuses me is that(the EvolutionTV) states "Max viewing size: 720x576 (PAL), 720x480 (NTSC)" - but this isn't nearly fullscreen, so will it be able to do fullscreen?

Unfortunately TV is only broadcast at this size (720x576 in EU and AU, 720x480 in US), and when you view a TV show (or DVD) on a computer screen - which has a much larger resolution - you have to streatch it. There is no product out there that can give you a "true" full screen, because it isn't broadcast in that resolution to begin with. It won't look as good as on TV (because TV resolution, of course, matches those mentioned above, so it doesnt have to stretch the image), but it will still look good.

serves you right for buying such a kicka** cinema display! :P

As for FireWire vs USB. From what I've heard, firewire is best for large, streaming data like what would be used in these products, whereas USB 2.0 is best for big chunks of data. So, in other words, firewire would be best for TV to Mac solutions. At the end of the day, though, it probably wouldn't make a difference in this particular case. After all, they wouldn't make it in USB if it could't handle it.

Hope that helps those issues anyway. Not sure about the rest!

I was looking at the EyeTV 200 - but was wondering, if you buy the 40GB model, can you later replace the HDD with an 80GB+?

[aicul]

I've tested the EyeTV solution using USB. There was no problem with the data streaming. However, the overall works of EyeTV was a little inconsistent.

The real show stopper was particular to where I live. I recieve both PAL and SECAM mdoulated TV. EyeTV manages both, but passing from one to the other is a no go.

Just wish Apple would include a TV line-in on their macs.

[chornbe]

The problem with including a tv line in on every unit then becomes native support for PAL/NTSC/SECAM/HD, etc. Then you have all the oddities associated with a "media center" computer; namely block data with streaming data. They're handled quite differently at the HAL level. Large buffer hard drives (32mb, etc) with fast spindles (10000rpm) are ridiculously expensive and are really only useful for streams, where as block data-oriented drives with faster access time that can afford smaller buffers and lower RPMs are better "bang for the buck" and work in 99.9% of the computers out there. You start multitasking on a media machine that's not intended for it and you see the problems pretty quickly. Then people will start demanding tv tuners with simply bring a lot of their own problems - size, rf interference, heat, extra cabling - and they'll want dedicated multi-channel IO for mixing, etc... A good non-computer video processor starts at $1500. Would you want the price of every Mac to start $1500 more than they currently do? Not me. I'll take that most desktop computers simply aren't cut out for media processing and allow the specialty boxes, add ons, software packages and dongles where necessary. Market modularity and all that...

[John S. Hansen]

I have used EyeTV 200 for several months, and could not live without it.
The time-shift and programmed recording is very nice - and you can easily edit the ads out of your favlrite show (i.e. BBCs: TOPgear ).

[chornbe]

PS... I should mention I'm watching this thread with great interested as I've got oodles of VHS and 8mm tapes I want to get onto DVD and am hoping a good, inexpensive solution that works over firewire and will run ok on my iBook is forthcoming. I've tried several different PC-based options and the only one that really worked good for the money was the Dazzle USB 2.0 DCS 150 (my PC didn't have firewire) but if you've ever done video processing in the Windows world, you know what an abortive POS market subset that is. Between the 32498720587204 different codecs, IO troubles in Windows, cheap drives in most low-cost PCs (not that my Dell p4 1.8ghz was a 'budget' back when I got it), etc., it made for a frustrating experience. I'm hoping to have better luck in a more narrowly focused platform like the Mac.