TV Tuner on Mac Pro

[UTball]

I was wondering if anyone is running a TV tuner into their Mac Pro and if so what kind it was and how much do you like it. I live in an apartment and one roommate just moved out which meant I had to move my tv out of my room so I no longer have a TV in my room but I would love to be able to watch TV in my room again and I thought it would be just a good idea to get a TV tuner so I didnt know if anyone had any thoughts on them.

[jessica.]

I've ran an older Eye TV 200, it is great. they have better more updated ones now and EyeTV is the only route I'd go.

[gaps]

I've ran an older Eye TV 200, it is great. they have better more updated ones now and EyeTV is the only route I'd go.


Does Eye TV display the picture on the whole screen or is it only partial. I have a Toshiba qosmio with a built in tv tuner and the picture is not displayed on the entire screen. There is about two inches on each side that are not used. So on a 17"MBP would it be the same? What about a 15"MBP? Thanks for any replies as this will help my hopefully soon mbp purchase between the 15" or 17"!!!!

[TheStrudel]

Any tuner allows full-screen viewing. You're thinking of aspect ratio. If the aspect ratio is not the same as your screen, you will inevitably have black bars. The EyeTV software allows you to compensate for this a bit, so it's as good as you're going to get. But 4:3 footage doesn't scale perfectly to a 16:9 screen, which I think is what you're talking about. For this the 15" and 17" screens are functionally identical.

[maghemi]

I've got an EyeTV Diversity attached to my Mac Pro at the moment and it works a treat

[gugucom]

EyeTV is definitely the way to go in a Mac. The more interesting question is the hardware that you are going to attach.

EyeTV works with a number of different technologies and brands. You get DVB-S, DVB-T, DVB-S2 (HDTV) and DVB-C. If you have decent providers the DVB-S2 is obviously the hottest technology. As all satellite tec it needs a dish but that is well worth the hassle when you look at the massive number of signals that you get.

The best connection technology is Firewire. That way you have a unit that will go on any Mac and will be rock solid in terms of signal. Digital Everwhere does the HW units that EyeTV relabel for their own DVB-S2 model. They make good stuff. Firmware updates usually only work in Windows which can be done with Bootcamp.

[Tesselator]

I think the VERY best TV and movie "subscription" system for the Mac Pro is Vuze (http://www.vuze.com/app). :D

No extra hardware needed. ;)

[James9000]

Me too. Works great!

I've got an EyeTV Diversity attached to my Mac Pro at the moment and it works a treat

[matthewtoney]

I've got an EyeTV Hybrid (USB Stick) tuner that works great on my Mac Pro, although it apparently is a rebadged Hauppauge.

[mrhick01]

I have an eyeTV 250 Plus, it works quite well.

I have used with both a digital box as well as straight cable...right now I use it for the old-school analog band (1-99) and QAM digital local channels. Nice product for what it does.

[iVoid]

I have a EyeTV 500 and two Hybrids and they work great. No problems recording and playing back up to 3 programs.


As for the aspect ratio question:

Older tv programs will be in 4x3. If you have a widescreen monitor (usually 16x10 or 16x9) you will get black bars on the sides of the video in fullscreen mode.

New TV prograsm will be in 16x9 widescreen and will have black bars on the top and bottom if you have a 4x3 monitor and little bars on a 16x10 monitor (like the Macbook screens).

Yeah, you can stretch or crop the image to remove the black bars, but I prefer to see the whole picture as is, so I keep the black bars when I watch stuff.

[gaps]

Thanks for the replies about the screen sizes, aspect ratio, and black bars. It makes sense and was really helpfull! Now I have to save the money for a new MBP and get away from this Toshiba Qosmio PC crap!!!

[SilverL]

I have a EyeTV 500 and two Hybrids and they work great. No problems recording and playing back up to 3 programs.



How do you have multiple devices plugged in and used?
I just installed a second one and keep getting out of USB bandwidth.....

[iVoid]

How do you have multiple devices plugged in and used?
I just installed a second one and keep getting out of USB bandwidth.....

Well, the 500 is a firewire device. And I have a Mac Pro and have two USB separate buses, so each hybrid is on a separate bus.

Might want to try changing the ports you have the tuners plugged into. Use System Profiler to see the different high speed buses to see when they are on different buses.

[SilverL]

Well, the 500 is a firewire device. And I have a Mac Pro and have two USB separate buses, so each hybrid is on a separate bus.

Might want to try changing the ports you have the tuners plugged into. Use System Profiler to see the different high speed buses to see when they are on different buses.

I have a 2008 Mac Pro and it seems all the external USB connectors are on the same bus :(
Which Mac Pro do you have?
Strangely enough, the Bluetooth controller is all by itself on another bus....
Looks like I'll be buying a card to expand USB for my mac...
Cheers!

[rtrt]

a

[Plutonius]

I've got an EyeTV Hybrid (USB Stick) tuner that works great on my Mac Pro, although it apparently is a rebadged Hauppauge.

+1

[SilverL]

interesting - take a look at this
http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/Mac_Pro_0801/Articles/ProductDeveloperNote.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP90005242
shows all 5 usb ports and the bluetooth all connected to the same usb controller.
and this;
http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/HWTech_USB/Articles/usb_implementation.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40003902-SW1_1200331179
can't work out whether the EHCI provides support for only one device at a time or more than one at the same time.......

Well, the second link was right - it worked on a front port.
Too bad I like a clean look so I bought a USB expansion card known to be compatible with Snow Leopard - Sonnet USB.

[TheStrudel]

EyeTV (and tuners in general, I would say) is more about the software than the hardware. I think it may be the only game in town for OS X software that works with a tuner.

[yomibro]

I use a HD HomeRun from SiliconDust with EveTV, it's a dual tuner unit (can record two programs at the same time) and it works great.

[SilverL]

I use a HD HomeRun from SiliconDust with EveTV, it's a dual tuner unit (can record two programs at the same time) and it works great.

Great device but mine just croaked after a year or so.
I am resisting buying another one since they are ATSC and ClearQAM only and can't tune analog cable channels.

[iVoid]

I have a 2008 Mac Pro and it seems all the external USB connectors are on the same bus :(
Which Mac Pro do you have?
Strangely enough, the Bluetooth controller is all by itself on another bus....
Looks like I'll be buying a card to expand USB for my mac...
Cheers!

I have a 2009 MacPro. Odd that they didn't have separate buses onj the 2008.

I had these three tuners working on my od G5 (dual 2.3GHz) without any problems except HD playback wasn't 100% smooth if I had too much else going on. Don't have that issue any more. :)

[rtrt]

a

[SilverL]

Well, the second link was right - it worked on a front port.
Too bad I like a clean look so I bought a USB expansion card known to be compatible with Snow Leopard - Sonnet USB.

Update:
Doesn't work anymore - the software kept crapping out with insufficient bandwidth errors after recording one show.

[gugucom]

Firewire and FireDTV-S2 are rock solid. :cool::cool:

[handheldgames]

Ok. I'm going to step out on a limb as I haven't seen a better solution. I love my mac pro but.... Solutions are very limited here in my opinion. So...

bootcamp: windows 7 media center edition + ati ocur digital cable (HD) tuners. This gives you a full HD cable dvr.

I've never tried it in parallels or vm ware fusion. The last version I used was xp media center.

I'm a HD junkie And it's the best computer based solution that supports every channel. Not just a subset of the lineup that is broadcast free and clear.

With any solution you consider, find out what channels are broadcast in what format and compare that to what your targeted hardware supports.

Depending on your provider, your mileage may vary.