Hi everyone
So given some of the discussion on here about the Eye TV, which one do people recommend. I'm wanting one that can recieve, and record television. Initially I was thinking about digital, but the Eye TV wonder, which does analogue, is cheaper, and could double as an interface for connecting my VHS video recorder and archiving tapes onto the computer.

I have a few questions:

1) the main question which Eye TV do people recommend?
2) Why is it that say at Streetwise the 410 is $479 and other stores (won't name them) quote you $699? (approved apple resellers in Melbourne).
3) will a 4200 rpm hdd be ok with recording TV?
4) can you use iDVD to export and burn recorded eye tv 410 or whatever programs? They seem to say you need Toast Titanium, which currently I dont have.

Ok, thanks for any help you guys can give me.

Glen

The EyeTV 200 now supports hardware MPEG-4 encoding, which is going to be a little easier on your system for both space and performance. It's fairly expensive though, and is analogue.

If you are after free to air HDTV, then the 410 is the only option.

all the elgato products are great.
i have the 200.i chose it so i had the option to hook up foxtel via rca to it.

if you decide you dont need that then go for the 410

Thanks guys. Used to have the Nebula DigiTV for PC (USB Version) fantastic device but want the equivalant for my powerbook.

Glen

1. I have an EyeTV 400, now the 410. You use the the 400 series when you need to receive free to air (or pay with 410) digital tv with a firewire equiped mac..

2. I bought mine from Streetwise.. almost a year ago.. when they sold them for $600 or so.

3. The EyeTV 400 is plugged into my AlPB 12.. 867Mhz.. Recording SD digital TV does not impose much of a load.. Playing SD digital TV does.. as for HDTV that's a huge stream of bytes and even more cpu cycles (for play back) - The EyeTV takes care of encoding,
writing to disk is the easy part..

4) I don't have a DVD burner so i can 't anwser that question.. More recent version of the
EyeTV software allow you export programs with various formats.. (including idvd)..
There's an FAQ on the El Gato site.. which might give you a few hints..
[I've got about 50GB of Inspector Montalbano on disk at the moment]

The EyeTV is great.. the only problem is that i appear to have crashes related to the
driver - I'm running 10.2.8 - i'm waiting for 10.4 to appear before re-salary packing a new
AlPB12 and buying an 20" lcd.. The crashes could also be related to a problem with
the RTC - battery may have gone flat..

If you buy a digital receiver you should (?) be prepared to fork out another $400 ? to have your external tv antenna "tuned"/replaced for digital tv.. My external antenna is
hopeless, luckily i've been able to get away with the little antenna that came with the
unit. It sits out on my balcony and is enough to receive 3 of 5 stations regularly and a 4
on a good day.. Digital TV reception is only ever 1 or 2 options.. a signal or no signal !.

If you haven't looked at a digital TV.. I suggest you have a look at one.. Digital TV reception
is fantastic (when you can receive it).. the only down side is that you get to see the skin pores of the news readers..

spot..

just installed a Dvico DV plus into a friends PC and the Digital picture was great, he paid $187 for it and you can also connect a VCR or analog cam corder to it but I didn't see any software for a mac when I was updateing the drivers for it so I don't know if it was compatible with mac's or not.

the Dvico DV plus does work with mac's all you need is iTele and the multimedia drivers. http://www.defyne.org/dvb/driver.html

why not consider the eyetv wonder usb 2.0. i see it's coming in sometime next week, selling for about $250 or so from streetwise. it's a newly announced product where elgato worked with ATI for this one.

Yeah I like the look of the Eye TV Wonder, they're advertising it on streetwise now. and it has analog inputs too which could be useful as well.

Hey Glenmorrow,

Just thought I'd try shed some light on the price difference for Elgato products between Streetwise and Apple Resellers...

Streetwise are an Authorised Apple Reseller themselves. They are also the main (only???) distributor of Elgato products in Australia.

a) Because they sell the products direct to retail themselves, they (understandibly) sell the items wholesale to other authorised apple resellers at a higher price than they purchase them for themselves - obviously they'd rather sell an EyeTV to you themselves, cos they make more profit that way than selling it to a reseller whose going to sell it to YOU anyway. Once the other reseller slaps their (arbitrary) chosen profit margin on it, you end up paying a crapload more than if you bought it directly from Streetwise.

B) Aside from point 'a' you'll find that when it comes to non-Apple hardware, most resellers will often be over the top when it comes to how much they try to make off relatively 'low demand' items like PVRs, that they seldom actually keep stock of (mainly cos they only make around 8% profit on most Apple hardware)

It's a chicken-and-egg sitch... if they don't think they'll move very much of a given product line, they won't keep it in stock (it eats into their cashflow). But if they don't keep it in stock and promote it, how can they hope to move it?...