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EyeTV 250 Coming!

E

esaleris

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 18, 2005
317
28
Hey all,

I tried searching, but all I got were people with "250" GB hard drives with "EyeTV". But this is just something you need to know if you are thinking of a PVR project. The EyeTV 200 is being sold in only a few stores; so I went to the apple.com store and guess what?

Apple Store
Look on the right under "New Products..."

Looks like the EyeTV 250 is coming soon! 4-5 weeks, to be specific. Smaller form factor and a $100 price reduction? I'm doing this out to warn people so they don't shell out $300 for something that's gonna be replaced very soon - at a lower price... Sorry if it's old news...
 
That looks like a mistake on Apple's website. There is no mention of the 250 anywhere on El Gato's website. The product pictured is the EyeTV EZ. Although the price doesn't match. Hmm...
 
The Apple Store links time out after a while, so here's a copy of the page :)
 

Attachments

  • eyetv250.zip
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Though it looks like EyeTV EZ, they might have decided to use the same small compact design for their new product.
BTW I just checked the website and EyeTV 200 isn't currently available...so most likely it truely is a new product.
 
Arrg! According to xlr8yourmac, eyetv 250 is usb 2.0, not firewire (apple's website has the incorrect information displayed). It seems everything is switching from firewire to to usb.
 
I'm not sure I see what's different for example with my
EyeTV for DTT.
It is also USB 2.0
I love it - and it works a treat on my PB!
 
It's a analog TV receiver, digital is happening now. They should of made it digital.

Side question this is standard definition receiver how does the image look like on a 20" iMac?
 
Ah thanks.
Glad I've already got my digital version then!
I'm almost a late purchaser of this actually - have friends that have been using it for a long time.
 
ive been researching this a lot. and just purchased the eye TV 200. i noticed the eyeTV 200 was out of stock at apple stores, not listed online, and listed as "currently unavailable" on elgato's web site.

the 250 looks almost exactly like the available images of the EZ. and the few sparse descriptions available online lead me to believe the 250 is a digital version of the EZ. which means the 250 uses software encoding to record video. the 200 on the other hand has a built in chip that does the encoding on the external hardware so it does not eat up all of the processing power of the computer you have it hooked up to.

so maybe this means elgato is going to ditch the hardware based encoders! which means i should go out and buy a 500 which is the hardware based digital/HD set. for the day when digital HD cable is cheap enough for me to be willing to pay for it! heh.

hmmm i just found one description that said the 250 uses hardware based encoding . . .
 
I don't think they got rid of hardware encoding as they have to differentiate between the eyetv ez and the eyetv 250 or else they would be the exact same thing.
 
Well I did just get the EyeTV 200 and yes it was $300 but if they rid it of firewire, drop $100 of the price tag and make it analog then fine by me. If it's a better product, smaller form, and has all of the features mine has then I may be slightly bummed.
Either way I love my eyetv I am sorry I didn't get it sooner.
 
ziutek said:
Arrg! According to xlr8yourmac, eyetv 250 is usb 2.0, not firewire (apple's website has the incorrect information displayed). It seems everything is switching from firewire to to usb.
Click to expand...

Which is fine unless you happen to be using iMovie or Final Cut Express which only import from Firewire/DV sources. Seems almost silly for a Mac-oriented hardware company to be moving away from the one feature used most commonly by video capturing software on the Mac.
 
freiheit said:
Which is fine unless you happen to be using iMovie or Final Cut Express which only import from Firewire/DV sources. Seems almost silly for a Mac-oriented hardware company to be moving away from the one feature used most commonly by video capturing software on the Mac.
Click to expand...

...but the content is already imported by the eye tv, you simply import the footage from your hardrive in iMovie.
 
Asked Elgato about the 250

Hi all.

I asked Elgato about the EyeTV 250 situation with their website and Apple's website, and this is the response I got:

The EyeTV 250 has been prematurely displayed on Apple's website - the product hasn't officially been announced yet. It will be avaiable later in April, and our website should be changed soon to display information on this product. Currently, we are not able to release any information yet.
 
DeSnousa said:
...but the content is already imported by the eye tv, you simply import the footage from your hardrive in iMovie.
Click to expand...

True, but according to Elgato's site (updated today) it captures to MPEG-1 (notoriously bad with QuickTime) or MPEG-2 (not exactly quick or easy to import into iMovie). It may work just fine, but i'm squeamish at paying $200 (I already own a Canopus PCI card that does hardware DV capture) to find out. If anyone else feels adventurous and wants to give us all a review, I'd be happy to read it.
 
freiheit said:
True, but according to Elgato's site (updated today) it captures to MPEG-1 (notoriously bad with QuickTime) or MPEG-2 (not exactly quick or easy to import into iMovie). It may work just fine, but i'm squeamish at paying $200 (I already own a Canopus PCI card that does hardware DV capture) to find out. If anyone else feels adventurous and wants to give us all a review, I'd be happy to read it.
Click to expand...
MacWorld is usually pretty fast with reviews. It might take a a month or two though.
 
PrismaticRealms said:
Well, what do you know? Elgato has started shipping the EyeTV 250. Checkout their website for the info.
Click to expand...

Huh, no RCA input jacks by the looks of it - cable and Antenna only, so not suitable for what I want.

I just tried the EsKape MyTV.PCR (Hauppage) - the software is buggy, and made the fans on my PB go into overdrive. Emailed Tech Support about the bugs and attached a crash report and no reply in 5 days, so it's going back. I found an EyeTV 200 on Amazon and it arrived yesterday. So far so good, no apparent fan speed increase and the quality seems good from what I've seen so far. No bugs encountered so far. Altogether a better product than the MyTV, but twice the price.
 
I think it can take those signals.

Break-out the set-top boxes
EyeTV 250 comes with a break-out cable for S-Video and composite RCA video connections. So, EyeTV 250 is the right choice if you receive higher frequency channels, scrambled analog cable (premium) channels, digital cable, or satellite via a set-top box.
Click to expand...

Really, the only difference is that EyeTV 250 does NOT do MPEG-4 encoding...
 
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