I'm a college student. When I come home for the summer, I get Comcast digital cable. When I'm at school, I get basic cable. I use an Apple PowerBook, and would like to be able to watch all of the channels I get at home, when at home, and all of the channels I get at school, when at school. I also would like as much recording functionality as possible, especially at school, where most of my watching will be done via scheduled recordings.
I've looked into all of the Elgato products, and there are a number of products that appeal to me. The EyeTV wonder is sold at a reasonable (albeit a tad expensive) price, and it fullfills my TV watching needs. As for recording, it doesn't have any hardware compression, and really taxes the processor. The EyeTV 200 solves this problem with built-in compression, but I certainly can't justify spending $330 on a TV tuner, when I've never even been much of a TV watcher. Both products also have a huge flaw: They are not equipped to handle digital cable. In order to watch the digital cable that I get at home, I need to leave the TV tuner at channel 3, and connect it to the cable box. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but the software can't change the channel on the cable box, so the recording functionality is severely impaired.
The EyeTV 500 might solve the digital cable problem, but other problems arise. First of all, it only supports digitally unencrypted cable. Assuming that Comcast provides unencrypted cable (...and while that seems stupid to me, unencrypted cable must be pretty common, or the product wouldn't sell...), it seems that I wouldn't be able to watch the basic cable at school (unless I'm mistaken in my understanding of the system). That's just unacceptable, especially at $350!
On Elgato's website, I also came across the Plextor ConvertX PVR, which comes with Elgato's EyeTV software. It seems exactly like the EyeTV 200, except it's USB instead of Firewire. And $100 less! So far, this seems like the best solution, but I still have my issues with the digital cable at home.
If, at home (with digitalcable), I wanted to automate recording of basic cable channels, and I had either the ConvertX or the EyeTV 200, would I be able to plug my coaxial cable directly into these tuners? Would I receive basic cable if I didn't use the digital cable box, or would I receive nothing? This makes a difference to me, because if I can automate recording when I feel like it, and plug in the cable box when I want to watch HBO and such, then this setup might suffice. If not, it would still suffice, minus automated recording at home.
Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Am I misunderstanding how these things work? I'm very new to this whole TV tuner thing, so I could easily be making mistakes. Any help with figuring out answers to my questions, and suggestions for other ways to go about this, would be most appreciated!
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