Intel Mac Mini and Eyetv Cinergy T2

[GlynJones]

Well got fed up of waiting weeks for Apple to send me an Intel Mac Mini duo so I went and bought one from a local Apple specialist.

This really is a fantastic bit of kit. Only had a quick play but already got front row streaming my music and photo’s from my Powermac.

The reason I have bought one of these is to use as a media centre. I’ve also purchased an EyeTV Cinergy T2 for Freeview TV. The problem is that when I watch a TV program the CPU fan kick in and it’s like a jet taking off.

I though that digital terrestrial was in mpeg format so should not need decoding. Am I wrong in this assumption? Is it because in the Eyetv software settings I have the picture output set to progressive rather than the default? Is that forcing a decode process or putting extra strain on the CPU?

I have the latest universal binary version of the EyeTV software 2.1.

Also should the little box be this noisy when the box is being thrashed?

Any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GlynJones]

Well after a bit of playing around yesterday I discovered it's not the encoding, as it doesn't need to, as the source is already MPEG2.

The problem is playback using Progressive output. To be fair to Elgato it does say this is heavy on the CPU. The other modes are not really acceptable but the noise doesn’t seem that noticeable now. My partner thought it sounded ok as she is used to the background noise of the washing machine, as that always seems to be on ... LOL

Also as this is the first release of the Universal Binary code then I'm sure that Elgato will tune the software to be more efficient.

Hope that helps anyone else.

 

[generik]

Yes, it is a great piece of kit.

What did annoy me though is when I am watching something from the playback buffer and a scheduled recording starts, I lose the contents of the current show that I'm still watching.

Quite an issue for me as I have a huge buffer (~10GB) that can hold approximately 3 hours of programs