Fun with an EyeTV USB (from 2002)

[Amethyst1]

Today, I received an original "EyeTV USB" from 2002.

First, a few pictures of the package and the device itself:

The first light indicates whether the device is powered on; the second light indicates the source being captured and the third light briefly lights up when EyeTV initialises the device.

It can only receive analogue TV which is no longer available in Germany, but the RCA inputs allow using it to digitalise old video tapes etc.

The software: EyeTV 1.0 only supports this particular device and is also the only version to run on Mac OS X v10.1.5.

For a quick test, I used my 1.33 GHz 12-inch PowerBook running Jaguar. CPU utilisation while displaying a PAL video source at full size was about 25% for EyeTV 1.0.7 and 20% for WindowServer. It remains to be seen how this fares on my 400 MHz PowerBook G3.

(Source blurred for copyright reasons.)

 

[Slix]

Awesome! I didn't realize these existed for hardware and software so old! I imagine you could record something like an N64 or Sega with RCA inputs being used? That's neat. Maybe I should get one of these.

 

[Dronecatcher]

You might want to look here too:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/eyetv-on-powerbook.2043885/

 

[bobesch]

Today, I received an original "EyeTV USB" from 2002.
It can only receive analogue TV which is no longer available in Germany, but the RCA inputs allow using it to digitalise old video tapes etc.
The software: EyeTV 1.0 only supports this particular device and is also the only version to run on Mac OS X v10.1.5.
For a quick test, I used my 1.33 GHz 12-inch PowerBook running Jaguar. CPU utilisation while displaying a PAL video source at full size was about 25% for EyeTV 1.0.7 and 20% for WindowServer. It remains to be seen how this fares on my 400 MHz PowerBook G3.

Great you could dig out that precious of a first version of eyeTV!
I've also got (a later version of) eyeTV-hardware for PPC and tried out streaming/capturing video from my iOS-device and accidentally got a clue how to recover some of my old SVCDs too using my old PPC hardware. Good fun.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-video-stream-cheat-project-about-imovie06-howto.2042289/

 

[Amethyst1]

Awesome! I didn't realize these existed for hardware and software so old! I imagine you could record something like an N64 or Sega with RCA inputs being used? That's neat. Maybe I should get one of these.

You could record an N64 or other gaming console with RCA outputs but the original EyeTV records MPEG-1 video at 352×240. So, you'll probably want a newer device, such as an EyeTV 200 or 250 which can record MPEG-2 video at a higher resolution for better quality. On the other hand, low-res MPEG-1 is great for playback on slower machines.

Great you could dig out that precious of a first version of eyeTV!
I've also got (a later version of) eyeTV-hardware for PPC and tried out streaming/capturing video from my iOS-device and accidentally got a clue how to recover some of my old SVCDs too using my old PPC hardware. Good fun.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-video-stream-cheat-project-about-imovie06-howto.2042289/

Yes, I'm glad to have spotted it. In fact, your thread inspired me to look for an EyeTV 200 or 250 as well since I have a couple dozen of Hi8 and VHS tapes “waiting to be digitalised.” I've used a stand-alone DVD/HDD recorder for this purpose so far but its internal hard drive is getting full, so I'll have to consider my options.