[PHoynak]

I was considering getting a TV tuner for my Mac. I plan to get a PowerMac G4 with a Superdrive "someday". Is it possible to take the saved video (tv shows) from EyeTV and turn them into dvd's when I have my G4? Would iDVD do it or would I need something else?

[GORDYmac]

You can make High Quality MPEG 1 video with EyeTV, but it's only 320 x 240--half the size of standard TV. These MPEG files should drop in iDVD easy enough, but it won't look as good as TV.

EyeTV also allows you to use MPEG 1 for creating VCD's (Video CD's) which are playable in most DVD players. Again, the resolution is 320 x 240, and the limit is one hour of video. The VCD MPEG is lower quality than the High Quality noted above. This may be the best option since DVD-R's are still relatively expensive, and the resolution is low for a DVD.

HTH.

[Weezer]

Ive had an eye tv since it was first announced at macworld, and I love the little guy. Im in college, so its extremely handy to just program it to record shows that I can watch when I have some free time. I always use the high quality option, which produces pretty nice results. You can defintely see some quality loss during scenes of high action while in full screen, but if you watch from a few feet away, as opposed to where you sit normaly, you cant see the differences. My friend across the hall has the ATI all in wonder, which does have a nicer picture because there is no compression involved, but I would trade the minor quality dropoff anyday for the easy recording options. Also, with the watson plugin, watching and recording shows is extremely easy. The most annoying thing about the device is the channel change times, which is about 1.5 seconds on my 933 G4, 768 ram.

[PHoynak]

Would I be better off with the one made by Formac? What I want to do now is record my shows, store them on my firewire hard drive, burn them to cd (as VCD) and eventually burn them to DVD when I can afford a Mac with a DVD-R drive. Is this my best bet?

[G4ME]

The Formac uses Firewire and I think its isn't as compressed 640X400 or somthing, but its 400 bucks.

I will buy a PVR for my G4 when they get one that has MPEG-4 encoding and such so it will have supper high rez, 1024X768, and still fit an hour on a VCD.

[GORDYmac]

Just to clarify, VCD is 320(ish) X 240 with MPEG 1. SVCD is a 480 x 480 and MPEG 2. DVD is 720 x 480 and MPEG 2. No standard video is 1024 x 768, AFIAK.

[G4ME]

the why the hell is HDTVs rated for 1024i, I had it understood that is means that the rez is 1024X768, same as the DVD format.

oh well, I am guessing its the way it is encoded, at a higher rate so there isn't picture loss at higher rez, cause when I play a DVD and my monitor doesn't change rez.

[Nebrie]

I am looking at EyeTV vs Formac too, the thing about the Formac seems to be that everyone hates their drivers versus EyeTV which seems to be a decent piece of software now.

[joe]

Originally posted by G4ME:
The Formac uses Firewire and I think its isn't as compressed 640X400 or somthing, but its 400 bucks.

The Formac studio has real time DV compression in hardware - the same format the DV camcorders use. To get an idea of how much room that uses - here's the QT movie info from some of my Studio captures:
720*480 - 3.6MB/s
640*480 - 3.5MB/s

So if you plan to capture a lot of video, you'll need a large hard drive - or a DVD burner. Formac has a link to their Davideon DVD burner in their Formac Studio software......joe

[G4ME]

you can always compress that using MPEG 4 and get it even smaller and still have the same rez, you can't go the other way and blow up the Eye tv format and get the same quality.

I would use the Formac as a PVR and keep what I wanted and compress it and burn it on to a CD if I really wanted it, and just trash the rest.

[G4ME]

Originally posted by joe:


The Formac studio has real time DV compression in hardware - the same format the DV camcorders use. To get an idea of how much room that uses - here's the QT movie info from some of my Studio captures:
720*480 - 3.6MB/s
640*480 - 3.5MB/s

So if you plan to capture a lot of video, you'll need a large hard drive - or a DVD burner. Formac has a link to their Davideon DVD burner in their Formac Studio software......joe

you confused Bits with Bytes

big differance

heres the actual compressions


Type of Video Service Data Rate

* Movies (VHS quality) 1.152 Mb/s
* News/Entertainment 3.456 Mb/s
* Live Sports Event 4.608 Mb/s
* 16:9 Wide Screen TV 5.760 Mb/s
* Studio Quality Broadcast TV 8.064 Mb/s
* High Definition Television 14.00 Mb/s
* Audio or Data Services Data Rate
* Monaural sound 0.128 Mb/s
* Stereo sound (L + R) 0.512 Mb/s
* Digital Data 9.6 kb/s

Its 8 bits to a byte so thats actually .72MB/s

so for a 30 min show it will take up 1.296 gigabytes not to bad

[joe]

Originally posted by G4ME:


you confused Bits with Bytes

Not exactly. As I wrote in my post above "here's the QT movie info from some of my Studio captures:" Essentially I took QT6 Pro's word for it. But from my experience, DV does take up a a lot of hard drive space. A quick check on my hard drive shows that a cleaned (commercial free) episode of Married With Children is 4.63GB. And that clocks in at 21minutes 54 seconds. HS - do we really watch that many comercials?!?! (almost 1/3 the running time of the TV show) Anyway, it's obvious that the DV format isn't as compressed as a DVD disc. Maybe that's the reason Formac's latest Studio software has a built in link to their Davideon DVD burner software?

However, the Formac Studio (and other DV converters) still save a lot of hard drive space. For comparison, I previously owned an ATi Xclaim TV USB. And even though it tops out at 320*240 resolution, the Xclaim does not have hardware compression. Instead, it captures raw 320*240 video to your hard drive, then does post compression using whatever codec you choose. The part that I wanted to emphasize is that my XClaim captured at the same 3.5MB/s that my Formac Studio does!!! Of course that's because of the Studio's hardware compression. You still have to compress both afterwards if you plan to keep a lot of video. If you just want to use it as a TiVO to watch shows you've missed and then record over them, then you might not need too much space afterall.

BTW, the slightly wider 720*480 capture was done using iMovie (not Formac's software). However, Formac's latest software Teviron supports both 720*480 and 640*480 as well as plenty of other lower resolutions and even wide screen. That's a very nice aspect of the firewire DV converters - being able to use iMovie or other software (FCPro). They can't change channels, but you can do that with Formac's software. When you quit, it leaves it at the last channel.

The latest Teviron adds a very nice scheduled record feature. You just pick the channel and time (point and click), and the Studio will record the show while you're out - just like a VCR. Also, it has s-Video and RCA line input and output. So you can capture your own video and edit it in iMovie, then send it back out to tape instead of having it take up space on your hard drive. Other firewire converters can do that as well. But if you also want a TV tuner, then the Formac DV/TV is the way to go. I'm VERY happy with mine!!! IMHO Formac hit a 9 out of 10 with the Studio DV/TV. To answer the original poster, you won't regret getting the Studio. regards....joe

[G4ME]

why not the perfect 10 out of 10? what was the short comings? software?

[joe]

Originally posted by G4ME:
why not the perfect 10 out of 10? what was the short comings? software?

It's not really a problem with the software, it has yet to crash or lock up on me (I'm running 10.1.5 on a dual 500 Cube). Also, the Formac Studio has way too many features and advantages over ANY of the USB devices (and maybe some of the PCI stuff). But there's always room for improvement

This 1st quibble is going to seem kind of minor. But there is one feature that the EyeTV has that I'd like to see in the Studio. And that's the integrated TV channel listings. I think the TiVO has something similar too (never used a TiVO). Of course, you can always cruise to the TV Guide channel and look up your own listings (by zip code). My Cable TV homepage does something similar. And there's always Watson.

This next one may also seem minor to some. But in addition to a TV tuner, the Studio DV/TV also has a radio tuner built in. There's even a separate radio antenna input on the back next to the TV antenna/cableTV connector. The radio tuner is supported in OS9, but not in OSX. I admit it's not really high up on my list. Still, it would be nice to have this feature working in OSX if only to one-up the competition.

Finally, the new Teviron scheduler program has a very nice preview window feature that doesn't work. The scheduler was only just released and is version 1.0. Given how frequently the software gets updated, I wouldn't be surprised if this was fixed at the next release.

That's it, and I'm really nit-picking to come up with this stuff. When you consider Formac Studio features that aren't emphasized on their site like instant channel changing (as fast as you can click), auto tuning cable and air channels, BUS-POWERED (personally tested on 2 G3 iMacs, an iBook under battery power, and a Cube), S-video and composite and stereo inputs AND outputs, 2 firewire ports, iMovie compatible (including editing), etc... then yeah, these do seem like minor quibbles. Maybe I should make that a 9.5 out of 10? Hell, let me just say I'm a VERY satisfied Formac Studio owner and the damn thing KICKS ASS!......joe

[Kenneth]

I have the Formac Studio DV/TV since Feb/2002. Overall, I give it 8 out of 10. I just got the thing back yesterday since I found out that the left RCA audio input was defected. There is no reason to drop the radio feature under X, please listen Formac! Firewire is way better than USB 1.1 for dealing with video. You need a G4 as well, this thing works fine on my TiBook/400, but not my iMac/500/66MHz bus. It also works well with iMovie, FCP, BTV in my setup. I heard that the European version (PAL) has a built-in speaker inside the Formac Studio DV/TV.

I'm wondering will it handle more than 125 channel? What if I switch from cableTV to Dish Network or those satellite TV system?

I don't like that idea that I have to connect both video and audio (L, R) in order to play audio. What if I connect it from the Hi-Fi?

[mrwalker]

Could you use either of these gadgets to play games from a playstation or nintendo cube on the screen of my G4 gube?

I live in the UK, do either device support UK TV or just US?

Thanks.

Mrwalker

[Kenneth]

Originally posted by mrwalker:
Could you use either of these gadgets to play games from a playstation or nintendo cube on the screen of my G4 gube?

I live in the UK, do either device support UK TV or just US?

Thanks.

Mrwalker

Formac offers the Studio DV/TV in NTSC for USA customers and PAL for Europe/Asia market. Technically, you can hook up any S-video or composite video device into this thing and view it on your Cube. The max. resolution you can get is 720 x 480.

These are the ports available on the Formac Studio DV/TV. (From left to right)


Audio connectors: Out(L), Out(R); In(L), In(R).
Composite video connectors: Out, In.
Accessory power outlet: Camera power out. (being covered in the above angle)

S-Video connectors: Out, In.
Radio antenna input.
TV antenna input.
On/Off switch (underneath the antenna input ports).
Firewire connectors: Out, In.
AC power adapter conector (optional)

[G4ME]

so its bus powered but there is an oitinonal AC adapter, is that extra or is it included? when I get the cash I will deffinalty buy one of these seems very nice and has so many advantages over the EYE TV

[Kenneth]

Copied from Formac.com
Power Supply
In general, Formac's studio line runs bus-powered. However some computers do not support sufficient bus-power, or other devices connected to the FireWire bus (e.g. iPod) reduce the power available via the port. For these cases we recommend a power supply with the following specifications: 36W/16V, 2.25A.

It costs $29.

BTW, on the front of the studio DV/TV, there are two buttoms and three LED indicators; mode selector, analog-to-digital conversion(orange), power indicator(green), digital-to-analog conversion(red), and the reset buttom.

[joe]

Originally posted by Kenneth:
You need a G4 as well, this thing works fine on my TiBook/400, but not my iMac/500/66MHz bus.

I don't mean to disagree, you've obviously had a problem using a G3 with the Formac Studio. But from 1st hand experience I'm certain a G4 isn't required. Example - I loaned my Studio to a friend with the original dual USB iBook (also 500/66MHz) for 2 weeks. He wanted to import from some VHS tapes he made. I loaded the software (Tevion / OSX) for him and had it working under battery power from the iBook Firewire port. Another friend with an iMacDV (500/100MHz) was able to use the Studio under OS9 with Formac's ProTV software. Also, I doubt there's a problem with your Studio since it works fine on your G4 Powerbook. Maybe you might want to have your iMac checked out?

What if I switch from cableTV to Dish Network or those satellite TV system?

You can use the Formac Studio with those, but you'll need to change the channels from the receiver or with their supplied remote. I started off with a digital satellite system (DirecTV) and only recent moved to regular cable - mainly because the cable broadband was cheaper. The satellite systems use a decoder box (receiver) that decrypts the digital signal from the dish. You have to insert what looks like a credit card with an on-board chip to turn on the dish and receive programming. They remotely enable the channels that you purchase by programming the card. In short, this is not a regular TV tuner or cable tuner. And the owners (Hughes???) are highly unlikely to release the tuner info as folks would be able to receive without paying. Yes, I know some have already cracked it. But there's no way a legit product like the Studio or EyeTV would support that.

However, there are 3 ways to connect your Studio to a DSS satelllite receiver:
1- channel 3/4 (OK quality - about the same as cableTV)
2- RCA/composite inputs (better)
3- S-Video inputs (best).

I used S-video and was able to capture at very near DVD quality with my Studio. I'm half tempted to go back to DSS partly because of the quality - and partly because my cable company doesn't carry TechTV - my fav at channel 354

I don't like that idea that I have to connect both video and audio (L, R) in order to play audio. What if I connect it from the Hi-Fi?

I didn't know about this. I wonder if it's a limitation of the hardware or the software? It's not too much of a problem for me as my Cube has audio outputs so I can hook up to a hifi if I want. Still, it would be nice to be able to use the Studio's audio ports alone - without video. Did you ask Formac about this?....joe

[joe]

Originally posted by G4ME:
so its bus powered but there is an oitinonal AC adapter, is that extra or is it included?

The adapter is not included. It's not usually needed unless you're using a lot of bus powered Firewire devices. What Mac do you plan to connect the Studio to?....joe

[joe]

Originally posted by mrwalker:
Could you use either of these gadgets to play games from a playstation or nintendo cube on the screen of my G4 gube?

Yes.

I live in the UK, do either device support UK TV or just US?

UK TV (PAL) is definitely supported with the Studio (Formac is in the UK). I'm pretty sure EyeTV has a PAL version in the works too.....joe

[G4ME]

Dual 500 G4 Power Mac, I know I can handle it I would just rather not have a ton of stress on the Power Supply, I already have way to many USB periphials, mouse, scaner, digital camera, Keyspan DMR, CDR burner (firewire) CF reader (firewire) ipod, plus i got plenty of out lets.

[joe]

Originally posted by G4ME:
Dual 500 G4 Power Mac, I know I can handle it I would just rather not have a ton of stress on the Power Supply, I already have way to many USB periphials, mouse, scaner, digital camera, Keyspan DMR, CDR burner (firewire) CF reader (firewire) ipod, plus i got plenty of out lets.

Outlets? I only use one. And I think I may be pushing the power supply in my Cube about as much as your Dual G4 Tower - maybe even a bit more. Aside from the power hungry ADC 17" Apple Studio CRT, I also have a Sonnet dual 500cpu (originally single 500), GeForce3 (was OEM Radeon), 100gig 7200rpm WD drive (was 5400rpm), and 3 (count'em) bus powered Firewire devices:
1-Formac Studio
2-LaCie 16x10x24x portable burner
3-Zip 250 with Firewire adapter
I don't bother with the Zip much these days since discovering 3" CDr/rw media No Firewire hubs either, the Zip is looped off the back of the LaCie burner. For USB there's a Logitech Optical mouse and 2 megapixel Canon digicam. But those barely draw any power. Well, maybe the Cube's USB speakers do - dunno. Oops - there's my HP930 ink jet taking an outlet. Better put me down for 2 then

I'd bet the power supply in your Dual G4 Tower could easily handle more than the Cube's. It wouldn't matter though. The Formac Studio just doesn't draw enough power off the Firewire bus to stress either of our systems. Seeing it run off a dual USB iBook on battery convinced me of that. regards......joe

[G4ME]

opps forgot also got the 17" CRT sutdio display via ADC and two hard drives, i know it can handle it , but right now its more of a cash flow problem then my power suply.

[PHoynak]

Would the Formac work with my Rev A iMac upgraded to 500mhz with a Harmoni card? Or is the system bus too slow? I am going to get a Powermac or new iMac someday. Funds and my wife are delaying me.....

[Kenneth]

Originally posted by PHoynak:
Would the Formac work with my Rev A iMac upgraded to 500mhz with a Harmoni card? Or is the system bus too slow? I am going to get a Powermac or new iMac someday. Funds and my wife are delaying me.....

That's what I'm using now. As I mentioned on the previous post, my experience on the Formac Studio DV/TV didn't work well on my upgraded iMac (256MB RAM). I think the major issue is the graphic chip (ATI RageIIc w/6MB SGRAM). I didn't test it under OS 9, only 10.1.5 and 10.2.x (new TiVeRon software). I'm getting the PowerMac to match it.

[joe]

Originally posted by Kenneth:
I think the major issue is the graphic chip (ATI RageIIc w/6MB SGRAM).

I bet you're right, the RageIIc seems like the obvious bottleneck. It can't be the bus. My friends iBook is a 500Mhz G3 with 66Mhz bus and slow (4800rpm?) notebook hard drive. And yet he was able to capture video at 720*480 @ 30fps using my Studio without a hitch......joe