[Uriel]

OK guys. I'm starting to get addicted to more and more shows on t.v. (Namely Heroes and Lost) so I'm looking into saving some cash and getting an Eyetv.

My question is which one should I get? I'm pretty knowledgeable in tech, but one area I know nothing about is over the air HDTV. I know the hybrid can do it but that's about it. How does it work? How reliable is it? What do I need etc?

I have an Intel Core Duo Macbook Pro 2.0. So I can handle either.

RIght now it seems like I'm down to weighing these issues.

Hyrbrid

Plus: HD overair (if this will even work for me), smaller size, a bit cheaper

Negative: software compression

250

Plus: Hardware compression, doesn't require a giant thumb drive sticking out of my laptop.

Negative: No HD

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Especially past experience or any helpful info of over the air HD.

Thank you.

[Uncle Skeleton]

I have the Hybrid, and it works ok. I have the cheapest evar HDTV antenna, and I usually get about 1 short (less than a second) signal corruption per hour (I've only had it for about a month though). As I understand it, you can also use a normal rabbit-ears style antenna, but I don't have one to confirm or deny.

You'll be pleased to know that the software compression issue only applies to analog input. If you're interested in HDTV, it's compressed by the broadcaster and no compression or processing at all goes on in your house (antenna, eyetv or cpu). The reason they list higher system requirements for HDTV is purely for playing it back.

I was a little wary of the analog software encoding as well, but it's pretty decent. It encodes in all keyframes, and there are 2 quality levels to choose from (I use the higher quality setting). The first few seconds of the recording are terribly pixelated, but after that it really settles in and the quality is near perfect from there on out. The image degredation is certainly far less than the fuzziness I notice from it not being HD