Eyetv Hybrid Analog Digital Tv Tuner For Mac

Package Contents: EyeTV Hybrid analog/digital TV receiver EyeTV 3 TV software for Mac (CD-ROM) Driver for Microsoft Windows 7 (CD-ROM) PDF product. TV tuners for Mac. Discussion in 'Apple TV and Home Theater' started by Cave. Watch and record analog and/or digital TV, including HDTV. Pause, skip, and rewind live TV shows. And living room Mac (tuner 0). I was able to enable/disable each of these tuners with the EyeTV Setup Assistant. Share Share on Twitter Share on Facebook. Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus Digital/Analog TV Receiver and Video Converter (10020780) by Elgato. Product Description. TV on the Mac with EyeTV 250 Plus, a hybrid Mac TV tuner with a. Avertv Hybrid Volar Max TV Tuner Kit for Windows MTVHVMXSK. By AVerMedia. $39.99 (1 used offer) 3.7 out of 5 stars 463. #hybridism - White Hashtag.

• Eyetv Hybrid Analog Digital Tv Tuner For Mac Download

Elgato knocks one out of the park with its newest offering: the versatile EyeTV Hybrid, a USB stick TV tuner capable of bringing to your Mac both digital over-the-air broadcasts (including HDTV) and analog TV from cable or a traditional antenna. Supported by Elgato’s mature and ever-improving ( ) scheduling software, you really can’t go wrong with this product.

The minimum requirements for the EyeTV Hybrid are a single G4 processor or greater and OS X 10.4. It’s a good thing that every Mac sold today comes with a dual processor, as the diminutive Hybrid leaves most of the heavy lifting up to the computer. Decoding 720P or 1080i HDTV programming, for example, requires dual G5 or Intel processors.

In addition, the Hybrid doesn’t have a hardware MPEG encoder like Elgato’s other PVR (personal video recorder) offering, the EyeTV 250, so your MPEG recording quality is dependant on your processing power. Users with a single-processor G4 computer can encode VCD (video CD) quality MPEG-1.

For the best quality MPEG-2 format, you will need to have dual G5 processors or better. Encoding at this quality used up 135 percent of my processing power on a MacBook Pro 1.83GHz Core Duo computer (100% of one processor and 35% of the second). The Hybrid’s tuner can receive both analog cable and free digital ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) signals. ATSC over-the-air broadcasts can be both standard-definition and high-definition. ATSC differs from traditional over-the-air broadcasts in that there is no static in the picture. If you have enough signal to receive a picture, it will be crystal clear. If you don’t have enough signal, you will see and hear nothing.

With ATSC, you can watch digital TV, even HD, anywhere you can get a signal: on the road, in a park, and even at the beach. Since the Hybrid is so portable, taking it on the road is definitely appealing, although you will need to bring your own antenna, as Elgato does not include one in the box. When you’re at home, you can easily attach a traditional cable to the unit to view and record analog video (digital cable needs to be viewed through the cable box). However, the Hybrid only has one coaxial input, so you can’t tune analog and ATSC at the same time. All recordings that the Hybrid makes, regardless of whether they originated as analog or digital, can be edited from within the included EyeTV application. This allows you to, for example, remove commercials.

From the application, you can also burn programs to DVD via Toast 7 (not included with the Hybrid) or export the video to your video iPod with a click of button (other export options are available). Elgato also includes an adapter video cable that allows you to hook up gaming consoles or other video devices to your Mac. You can also compress your home movies for DVD from your camcorder quite easily. The Hybrid has zero latency (lag time to account for image processing), so game playing on the Mac monitor is quite snappy and enjoyable. After many years of development, Elgato has a mature scheduling program with EyeTV 2.

The software works seamlessly with to help users schedule their recordings. In fact, you can remotely schedule recordings when you are away from home via TitanTV’s Internet interface, so you’ll never miss an episode of your favorite show. The EyeTV software now offers a full-screen mode that lets you navigate, schedule recordings, and play video with a supplied remote control or with Apple’s mini remote. It is similar in feel to the way Apple’s Front Row works. Macworld’s buying advice The EyeTV Hybrid has many benefits and few drawbacks.

It’s a clear winner—especially if you want to take TV viewing on the road. If you have a slower, single-processor Mac, however, the EyeTV 250 may be a better bet. Anton Linecker is a writer and video technical adviser living in Los Angeles.

The Good The included Eye TV 3 software offers easy-to-use DVR functions for Mac users and makes the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid a useful way to add TV capabilities to a computer. Compatibility with EyeTV iOS app allows streaming of TV and recordings to an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, and newly added AirPlay support makes sharing video streams even easier. The Bad Slow buffering from a computer to the iOS app makes it unwieldy for live programming. The iOS app requires a computer with the EyeTV Hybrid to be running and connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Input video cables are S-Video and composite only, and many digital TV and HDMI inputs won't be compatible. The Bottom Line If you're a Mac user who's been looking for a way to add live TV and DVR functionality to your computer, the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid could be the solution you've been waiting for.

However, in a world of ever-increasing streaming video options, you might find your needs for live TV recording to be ever diminishing. Visit for details.

Once upon a time-before Netflix, Hulu, and Slingbox-TVs and computers weren't great bedfellows. If you wanted to watch TV on your computer-say, an episode of your favorite sitcom, or a news report-you'd need a TV tuner or a video capture device. The Elgato EyeTV Hybrid ($149 list) is an example of the former: this USB stick isn't much bigger than a standard thumbdrive, but it's a full-on TV tuner, complete with a coaxial jack on one end. It's compatible with over-the-air HDTV and unencrypted cable. What it does, essentially, is allow you to watch and channel-surf live TV on that computer. And it does more than that, too-the Mac-compatible EyeTV software can double as a programmable DVR (recording shows to the PC's hard drive), and stream video to an Elgato app available on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. But, let's focus on the live TV function first.

TV tuner on a stick These days, computers and particularly iPhones and iPads are playing better than ever with TV content. Services like Hulu and Netflix offer large libraries of content, and cable providers are increasingly offering and for accessing streaming channels and on-demand content.

While a device like the EyeTV offers fewer restrictions-you're not restricted to streaming video within your home network, for instance-it also requires a small but awkward USB dongle to jut out of your computer. And the computer itself can't be mobile-you'll be tethered to a coaxial TV cable.

That setup seems more ideal for a desktop computer or all-in-one like the iMac, or a small TV-compatible companion like the Mac Mini. For the Mac Mini, the EyeTV could indeed turn your Mac into a pretty full-featured DVR. Even better, the program converts those recordings into iPhone- or iPad-ready M4V files. Some of that easy-share DVR functionality crosses over into the fuzzy land of piracy, but Elgato leaves that moral debate to you. A word of warning on those resolutions, though: when we used it with our iPad, Elgato recordings were (black bars on all sides), much like what we've seen on the SlingPlayer app.

While it's suitable for most content viewing, it won't leave fans of HD-quality content happy. Using the EyeTV on a computer Though the EyeTV Hybrid says 'Windows/Mac' on the box, buyer beware: the USB tuner stick's compatible software that's included in the box, called EyeTV 3, is Mac-compatible only. The disc wouldn't open on our Windows PC, and the EyeTV Hybrid USB tuner stick needed drivers downloaded from Elgato's Web site to be properly installed on a Windows PC. But, once we started up Windows Media Center, it eventually recognized the TV tuner and was able to find over-the-air stations, as well as record shows using Windows Media Center's built-in DVR functionality. It's hardly plug-and-play for Windows users, but it worked. However, on a Mac, it's a different, and much more pleasant, story.

Setup of the EyeTV on Apple hardware was pretty simple. Software can be installed from the included CD or downloaded straight from Elgato (a registration code is included in the box). You'll need to supply an or cable connection to the TV tuner stick, which in turn plugs into the Mac's USB slot. Then, the EyeTV 3 software begins mapping out channels. Using a standard UHF antenna, our EyeTV recognized over-the-air HD channels within seconds, and once setup was complete, we were able to channel surf with relative ease, using an onscreen interface or the included IR remote, which controls the USB stick. Users can also subscribe to a program guide with upcoming listings, courtesy of TV Guide. The guide listings look and function like those on a DVR, but subscribing to TV Guide only gives Elgato users a one-year subscription for free; after that, it's $20 a year.

Eyetv Hybrid Analog Digital Tv Tuner For Mac Download

The DVR software can be programmed to record and offers a fair amount of flexibility, but we're not wild about paying for the guide service. Recordings show up in an easily browsed library, saved as 'eyeTV' files that need to be opened in EyeTV 3. However, EyeTV 3 software will convert these recordings into iPad- or iPhone-ready M4V files at the press of a button. These files, at 1,280x720 or 852x480 pixels, get added automatically to iTunes' video library, but they can also be edited by other software.

An icon for Roxio Toast appears on the EyeTV 3 interface for easy export, but you'll need to provide your own copy-it doesn't come included. The EyeTV can access digital and analog programming, either from an over-the-air antenna or from a cable TV feed. Over-the-air is pretty straightforward-you can receive whatever digital (ATSC) and analog (NTSC) channels-you'd get on a standard TV using an antenna you supply yourself. Cable is a less straightforward proposition.

The EyeTV Hybrid doesn't work with a cable box (for that, you want the step-up box, which includes an IR blaster). Instead, it's designed to work only with the unencrypted cable channels that are available by plugging the RF coaxial cable directly into the EyeTV dongle-that includes analog channels and so-called Clear QAM digital ones. It works well enough-we were able to get most of our local broadcast stations in HD, plus a handful of decent cable channels like TBS.

But it was mostly community access channels, C-SPAN, home shopping channels, and Spanish-language networks. Don't expect to be pulling HBO or any other premium channels onto your PC, unless you have the rare cable system that offers these networks unencrypted (most don't). Alternatively, you could always experiment with the EyeTV Hybrid's composite and S-Video inputs (available via an included breakout cable). The EyeTV Hybrid will record any analog signal this way, including stereo audio.

It won't record HD video, however, and it's just a raw dump of whatever the source is (such as a cable or satellite box), without the ability to automatically change channels. The TV tuner stick is compact, but beware: we tilted the coax cable up and nearly cracked our tuner stick in half. It's cumbersome to keep plugged in on the average laptop, which is why we'd recommend it as a desktop/set-top computer solution only. It seems perfect for Mac Mini or iMac owners who are hungering for live TV recording and place shifting (live TV pausing) and don't own a DVR or a cable set-top box.

Streaming to an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch We tested the EyeTV app on an iPad, and found it worked pretty well, all things considered. The $5 app streams the live TV connection from a local computer over Wi-Fi, and even allows channel surfing.

It's a lot like the, with a similar quality of resolution. The app will also stream recorded shows on the EyeTV-connected Mac or PC in question. While the TV content was put into a narrow box that didn't fill the screen, it also streamed with some loss of frame rate, and at a delay from the live broadcast.