[jmelrose]

I'm interested in getting eyeTV to make my just-shipped 20" 2.1 ghz iMac a TV/media center for my kitchen/desk area, and make it one-stop-shopping for my music, photos, and video.

I am planning to import all my CDs in Apple Loseless, and photos will take care of themselves, but the TV-input and EyeTV in particular is where I would be glad to get thers' input.

Has anyone used eyeTV? What did they think?

I have Comcast Digital Cable. I need a Motorola cable box in order to get the digital channels. Should I be using the digital eyeTV box? The HDTV? If I don't use the box, I can still get all the channels of basic cable. I don't get how these eyeTV boxes work, if I can use eyeTV to replace a box provided by my cable company... it seems like that shouldn't work.

Am I able to watch TV with eyeTV without recording it?

Any chance eyeTV can get plugged into Front Row as an option? Does eyeTV work with a remote?

Is there any turner/recorder software/hardware that might work better than eyeTV, in people's opinions?

Thanks for anyone's input on this.
JMelrose

[TailsToo]

Read about it here: http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file...184277b4c675af

[jmelrose]

I appreciate it Tails, but I'm looking for other users who can give me more than elgato's propaganda on it. I'm sure they've got oodles of nice things to say about it, I want to hear "the dirt" also, and I'm also looking for other options that people are having success with. Nothing AGAINST eyeTV, but I like to get lots of opinions before I invest in a piece of hardware like this... unless it's made by Apple, then it's a knee-jerk reaction purchase.

Thanks!
Jmelrose

[Kevlar]

What do you want to know about it?

[westrock]

Originally Posted by Kevlar

What do you want to know about it?

Possibly, the questions he asked

Check this Elgato thread over at AVS Forum. The thread is pretty old and shows the progress of the system. I think there is some firmware version issues towards the later pages. Probably want to check the forum that thread resides in....lots of other cool stuff including Front Row (ya lucky bastad! )

[vinster]

I have an eyeTv 200 and use with a Mac mini, Sharp Aquos 32" widescreen LCD TV and Hughes DirecTV HD box. I'm happy with this setup.

If I could do full-screen HDTV playback with the mini, I'd think about the eyeTV 500, but I have developed a way to re-encode high-def programming (recorded by the eyeTV 200 in 4:3) back to its 16:9 aspect ratio.

The eyeTV software is very good and integrates with Toast Titanium.

The only thing I don't like about it is I need to set up both the DirecTV box and eyeTV software to record unattended broadcasts, however, I don't see a way around this unless TV service providers open up their technology for eyeTV to integrate into their devices.

Oh, and one other thing, I'm actually happy that this is not an Apple-branded solution. Elgato makes a great product and I'm pleased to see hardware / software solutions from 3rd parties developed for the Mac platform.