by Taylor Sharpe
Taylor_Sharpe@acd.org

Consumer TV junkies have been raving about products like TiVo®. TiVo is a digital video recorder that you hook up to your television similar to a VCR. Also, like a VCR, it lets you record television shows and its programmable. However, unlike VCRs, TiVo records to a hard drive. This allows a lot more flexibility. For example, you can watch one recorded show while recording another show - try that on a VCR - It can't be done. Also, TiVo has a service that allows you to use the TV to choose shows by a menu selection process. It also allows you to search for shows and select them for recording. However, probably the biggest benefit is the ability to quickly advanced thru commercials or other time segment of a show almost instantly. Users that get used to this feature virtually swear by it, including me!

TiVo was the first company to bring this to consumers and is very popular. A TiVo Series 2 unit is about $400 for the hardware and about $13 a month service charge, or flat one time fee of $249. Replay TV is their primary competitor and services are very similar.

Many computer users have observed that, basically, the TiVo and Replay TV units are small limited computers and wondered why their home computer could not serve both functions. Computer manufacturers saw this potential to expand the use of home computers to handle this consumer need. Numerous products had been released for the Windows platform including: I/OMagic PC PVR ($50), the AVerTV Studio ($90), the Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 ($149), the Pinnacle Bungee DVD ($199), the ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500 DV ($249), and the Nvidia Personal Cinema ($299).

However, until last months MacWorld in New York, there was not a product available for the Mac. But El Gato made their entry into the this market last month with the release of EyeTV for the Mac for $199. The hardware provided by El Gato is a little silver box. In the back, you can either plug in your cable TV coax connector or you can plug in RCA AV connectors, the later used if you want to capture video from a VCR or DVD. The silver box then connects to your computer through a standard USB-1 port.

Much to my misunderstanding and disappointment, there is not a video out on the unit. This means you can only watch this on your computer monitor unless you buy another device to put the composite video out to your TV. Fortunately for me, I have two monitors on my computer, making viewing much more convenient while I perform other work on my computer. If you really need video out, the Hollywood DV-Bridge will do this for you through your firewire port. But it costs about $250. Granted it does lots of other things if you wish to perform video editing. But it isn't inexpensive. Some of the Windows products competing with EyeTV such as ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500 DV and Nvidea Personal Cinema have video out without having to buy an additional product like the Hollywood DV-Bridge, making them much less expensive solutions.

One big advantage of the computer solutions is that the TV channel listings can be obtained over the internet. Since most computers already have an internet connection, this means you do not have to pay extra for such services. No additional monthly fees is a big plus over non-PC competitors such as TiVo and ReplayTV. EyeTV connects to an internet service called TitanTV, which can be found at www.titantv.com. You have to first setup your preference to tell them what cable company or dish you use and your location. But it was very easy to setup. To select a show, all you do is click on the show in your web browser and up pops a window giving a summary of the show and then you select the button to record the show. Very easy! You can even tell programs to repeat every day or every week. Unfortunately, there isn't a choice to repeat only on weekdays or only on weekends. Hopefully El Gato will improve their software to give better repeat options. Also, TiVo has an interesting option on their menu program to select every show that has a particular actor in it. That would be a nice feature for El Gato to add to EyeTV.

EyeTV version 1.01 records the shows in MPEG-1 format. Some of the Windows versions use the MPEG-2 format. But that is a software issue and hopefully EyeTV can be updated for new MPEG versions by El Gato in new releases of their software. A typical one hour show takes up about 650-1000 megabytes. So you need to make sure you have a hard drive with lots of extra hard drive space. Or you might consider buying an additional hard drive for your computer to store the shows. One last feature, of which I haven't tried, is to burn the shows to a CD. That way you can take it to another computer to watch TV.

The MPEG-1 video compression does loose some quality. But it appears to be very minimal and has not been a disappointment for me. One big short coming is that I miss having a remote control. However, you can buy the Digital Media Remote Control for $49 from Keyspan. Lastly, there are limits to the USB bandwidth. I have found that running EyeTV, my Harmon/Karden speakers and Griffin Technologies audio-inputs is way too much for the standard USB on the Mac. So, I have ordered an Orange MicroCard with 4 USB-2 ports and 3 Firewire ports and it cost $99.

In summary, EyeTV is an great product and I give it a 4 out of 5 Apple Corps rating. While there is room for improvement, this is just the first release and I am very impressed. EyeTV is available at the El Gato web site for $199.

 

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