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Elgato's EyeTv Hybrid

I just ordered one, as a special offer ended today at the Norwegian Apple store. Have to wait for my new iMac to arrive though. Doubt my ibook can handel it.
We´ll se.
I don´t have a game console so I can´t try it out for you unfortunatly
 
Just ordered mine. Decided to go with it and not Sky+, seeing as I will only have Sky til im back at Uni a year from now. The fact this thing is analogue as well as digital means I can record from Sky as well as Freeview (or any other video source).
 
yoak said:
I just ordered one, as a special offer ended today at the Norwegian Apple store. Have to wait for my new iMac to arrive though. Doubt my ibook can handel it.
We´ll se.
I don´t have a game console so I can´t try it out for you unfortunatly
Click to expand...

My iBook handles it fine. The only issue I have with it, is that the screen saver kicks in. I ended up using a hot corner to disable it. Other then that, works fine. Recording stuff is a doddle.

I'm tempted to run it with my MacBook, though, as it integrates nicely with FrontRow.
 
IscariotJ said:
My iBook handles it fine. The only issue I have with it, is that the screen saver kicks in. I ended up using a hot corner to disable it. Other then that, works fine. Recording stuff is a doddle.

I'm tempted to run it with my MacBook, though, as it integrates nicely with FrontRow.
Click to expand...

That´s good news as I won´t get my iMac for a while. Hate to haave to wait to play with with my toys;)
 
Wooo it arrived! Less than 24 hours after I ordered it online at the Apple Store. Certainly beats my 1 month wait for the MacBook.

Im surprised I picked up 15 channels or so with the little aerial that comes supplied. The one everybody denounces lol. The quality was surprisingly sharp. But I am rescanning now with the roof aerial. does anybody know if the Front Row thing supports aliases? I plan to store TV on an external hard drive and not my MacBook
 
Project said:
Wooo it arrived! Less than 24 hours after I ordered it online at the Apple Store. Certainly beats my 1 month wait for the MacBook.

Im surprised I picked up 15 channels or so with the little aerial that comes supplied. The one everybody denounces lol. The quality was surprisingly sharp. But I am rescanning now with the roof aerial. does anybody know if the Front Row thing supports aliases? I plan to store TV on an external hard drive and not my MacBook
Click to expand...

That was quick, I´m still waiting. Not surprising as I live in Norway though:rolleyes:
Amazed that you got 15 channels using the small antenna
 
OK, this thing is great.

I have set up a number of scheduled recordings, that export to iTunes as soon as theyve done. They are then accessible via FrontRow, or can easily be synced to iPod. And because they are in iTunes they are then obviously discoverable via Bonjour, so all computers (windows or Mac) on the network can access those shows. *cough* iTV *cough* will be able to access them too, when it is released. Apple should bundle this thing IN iTV.

Its just so nicely thought out. Very very impressed.
 
Project said:
OK, this thing is great.

I have set up a number of scheduled recordings, that export to iTunes as soon as theyve done. They are then accessible via FrontRow, or can easily be synced to iPod.

Its just so nicely thought out. Very very impressed.
Click to expand...
Cool this is my next purchase for lil Mini. Have you hooked it up to cable yet?
 
Dont Hurt Me said:
Cool this is my next purchase for lil Mini. Have you hooked it up to cable yet?
Click to expand...

No, I dont have cable/Sky Digital yet, just Freeview (a free digital service in the UK... about 30-40 channels) I've ordered it though but the engineers wont be installing it til October 3rd.
 
Bought one for my Dad, he used a mains aerial and it works great! he lives in a great Freeview area also and got tons of channels.
 
Something that actually works!

I got my Hybrid today.
It looks just like the pictures and includes 1) the USB stick 2) a USB extension about 6 in long 3) Breakout cable with inputs of s-video, composite video and a 1/8 in line in. 4) adaptor for LR rca to 1/8 jack 5) setup cd with assorted pamphlets/ quickstart guide. I was expecting a small antenna but that didnt make t into the box.

The setup is relatively simple and no problems with titantv so far. The auto tune is normal speed and you can check a box to do a more thorough scan incase it misses a weak channel. You can also manually add channels and change the names.

For its limited resolution, sd looks decent on my 13" macbook but what i bought it for was the HD. I dont know if comcast sends out unencrypted HD like Cox does back home or if my university blocks it but i was unable to find any HD on the cable. It also may be the eyetv as there are only 3 settings for the type of input: Analog antenna(NTSC), Analog Cable (NTSC), and Digital Antenna (ATSC). I dont have a proper antenna right now so I am using an FM antenna pulled out of my reciever. For the most part the antenna works well. I can watch NBC and FOX mostly without interruption as the NBC tower is only 3.5 miles away according to Antennaweb.org but CBS and ABC are a little broken up yet only about 10 miles away. I am hoping that this will all be cleared up once I get a propper antenna. I read a post somewhere on a forum that he couldn't recieve the digital channels because they were "Encrypted" I also ran into the problem and wrote a ticket to customer service at Elgato but then i realised that it was because i didn't have a strong enough signal. Once i got the makeshift antenna positioned just right, the HD looks great on my 1280 x 800 screen and sounds as good as i could ask for on my bookshelf speakers.

The computer that i am using is a 13" Macbook with 2 Ghz and 1 Gb of ram. When i am watching HD in 1080i the processors are running at about 60% and the ram only has 10 mb free. Supprisingly the stats dont change much when i am recording. I recorded an hour long show on NBC and it took up about 6.03 Gb recorded to a .eyetv format. I tried to export it with an H.264 codec to reduce the file size to an estimated 3.3 Gb. After about 20 mins, I canceled the operation because i wanted to go back to watching HD and it didnt even seem to make a dent unless the progress bar was not working. While it was encoding, the processors were running at full force. This operation is probably best left to running overnight.

For my situation, this is as good as i could ask for but the ideal setup would be a large imac or mac pro with a 23" screen or larger for the full 1080i HD experience. It's only money.

I tried to write a very detailed experience with the eyetv Hybrid but if theres anything that i missed feel free to ask on this forum
 
Elgato sings praises about the zero latency with this for when you play a game system through it?
Have you a system to try running through it? I know a few of us would like to know your results. Lag or no lag? With their other systems they claim zero-latency because it lets the computer do the processing rather than the device itself, but people claim that the lag still exists.

Cheers!
gB
 
i have one also. i'm happy with it so far, except for the exporting.

i've recorded some HD content, but what's the best way to export them? without taking 5 days?

i have an intel imac 17" 1.83 ghz with 1.5 GB of RAM.*
 
Just got one.
V happy except for one thing.
Viewing in full screen, the apple remote "up/down" controls the volume but the "left/right" toggles between what is being broadcast live and scrubbing through the buffer.

Is there any way to use the apple remote with fullscreen so that it toggles through the channels??
 
For those wondering about gaming, I am wondering the same thing - I will recieve my hybrid in the next week and I will be sure to post a review about latency/video quality... here's hoping it will be good enough for soul calibur!
Any requests? I will hook up my gamecube and try both s-video and rca.
Check Back
 
Not as nice as Elgato EyeTV for DTT they released in the UK. I swear it's the PowerBooks little brother. Beautiful little thing.
I rather like Elgato. I was eligable to a free version 2 upgrade of their TV software and I remember thinking "Version 1 was top" then being blown away by 2. An even more so with the new on-screen menu! top guys.
 
kmichelsen said:
I got my Hybrid today.
It looks just like the pictures and includes 1) the USB stick 2) a USB extension about 6 in long 3) Breakout cable with inputs of s-video, composite video and a 1/8 in line in. 4) adaptor for LR rca to 1/8 jack 5) setup cd with assorted pamphlets/ quickstart guide. I was expecting a small antenna but that didnt make t into the box.

The setup is relatively simple and no problems with titantv so far. The auto tune is normal speed and you can check a box to do a more thorough scan incase it misses a weak channel. You can also manually add channels and change the names.

For its limited resolution, sd looks decent on my 13" macbook but what i bought it for was the HD. I dont know if comcast sends out unencrypted HD like Cox does back home or if my university blocks it but i was unable to find any HD on the cable. It also may be the eyetv as there are only 3 settings for the type of input: Analog antenna(NTSC), Analog Cable (NTSC), and Digital Antenna (ATSC). I dont have a proper antenna right now so I am using an FM antenna pulled out of my reciever. For the most part the antenna works well. I can watch NBC and FOX mostly without interruption as the NBC
Click to expand...

Even if comcast sends your locals unencrypted, the eyeTV hybrid won't be able to get it since it does not have a QAM tuner. QAM is used by cable not ATSC. ATSC is only for OTA. eyeTV 500 had a QAM tuner, but they got rid of it in the hybrid !
 
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