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BrianKonarsMac

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 28, 2004
1,102
83
Okay so I was looking at the EyeTV 500, which records HDTV to your mac. Does Firewire (i believe it uses 400) have the bandwidth to support uncompressed HDTV? Does anyone have any rough estimates of the GB per hour necessary for HDTV? Also, what format would it be saved in to provide an uncompressed picture? Now all i need is a loan for 15k to build my dream system, any takers?
 
12GB per hour

of HDTV content that's as it is transmitted, without any further compresion. I might be wrong but I believe it is already transmitted as MPEG-2. So, if you have an HDTV box with firewire and get it to work in copying the stream to your Mac, I think that's what you will need.
 
No, it's a 19 Megabit per second MPEG-2 transport stream, which comes out to just under 9 gigs per hour. This can contain one or more programs, either in SD or HD at the same time. I can't imagine what the bandwidth of an uncompressed HD file would be. Simply gigantic.
 
Adobe75 said:
No, it's a 19 Megabit per second MPEG-2 transport stream, which comes out to just under 9 gigs per hour. This can contain one or more programs, either in SD or HD at the same time. I can't imagine what the bandwidth of an uncompressed HD file would be. Simply gigantic.
There is no such thing as uncompressed HDTV. MPEG-2 is part of the standard.
 
does anyone have this eyetv 500? Is watching live HDTV as easy as having a 23" HD monitor, HDTV Cable box w/firewire and EyeTV 500? I don't think I'd do a ton of recording, but I'd be more interested in simply using my 23" HD cinema display to watch HDTV channels live. Any feedback from EyeTV 500 owners?

thanks!
 
Cadence said:
does anyone have this eyetv 500? Is watching live HDTV as easy as having a 23" HD monitor, HDTV Cable box w/firewire and EyeTV 500? I don't think I'd do a ton of recording, but I'd be more interested in simply using my 23" HD cinema display to watch HDTV channels live. Any feedback from EyeTV 500 owners?

thanks!
NO! The EyeTV doesn't allow you to record or watch any HDTV from a digital cable box or satelite reciever, only over the air HDTV (ABC,NBC,CBS) You can't record cable channels like HBO and ESPN, becuase those are broadcast in different frequencies and encryped (generally). Plus, over the air programming won't be that good if your local affiliates don't have their HD towers installed. The only station in may area that broadcasts HD is CBS, so I could only record one channel . . .
 
I see I see. Does it come with the antenna or do you have to buy an HD antenna separately? I wonder when they'll release a product for cable HDTV! Antenna broadcast is sort of the past, isn't it??

-cadence
 
Cadence said:
I see I see. Does it come with the antenna or do you have to buy an HD antenna separately? I wonder when they'll release a product for cable HDTV! Antenna broadcast is sort of the past, isn't it??

-cadence

I don't know if it comes with an antenna or not, but yeah, over the air is fine if you are in a metropolitan area, becuase at least you could watch and record network channels. But EyeTV can't record or tune in cable/satelite HDTV, which is lame.
 
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