Is there a way to watch regular network TV on a Mac?

[DHart]

I have a MacBook 2.2GHz and HP LP2465 24" monitor. The Mac is connected to the internet by Airport Express which is connected to a cable modem.

I would like to be able to watch regular TV channels in a window on the Mac. I believe this can be done, but I don't know how... can anyone direct me on how to make this happen? Would I need to have my regular television cable brought into my office and connected to an outboard box of some sort or can the TV signal come through the internet cable to the cable modem to Airport Express to my MacBook?

 

[tersono]

Take a look at Elgato's site.

 

[DHart]

tersono... thank you for that! Looks like an awesome product. Looking forward to getting going on this as I spend many hours at my mac and having some TV going at times is quite nice. I could always bring a TV into the room, but this looks like a more elegant solution, unless it taxes my system heavily and bogs things down.

 

[robbieduncan]

tersono... thank you for that! Looks like an awesome product. Looking forward to getting going on this as I spend many hours at my mac and having some TV going at times is quite nice. I could always bring a TV into the room, but this looks like a more elegant solution, unless it taxes my system heavily and bogs things down.

Unless it's an HD source (with an HD capable Elgato product) it's pretty low on system resources. I have two PPC Mac Minis with Elagato tuners for Freeview (UK over-the-air digital TV). One is using an EyeTV 410 which has a hardware MPEG solution, the other is using simple USB EyeTV that uses the CPU of the host machine. Neither use over 50% of an ancient PPC G4 CPU: on a MacBook that's like 5-10%...

 

[DHart]

Thank you. This forum is SO awesome! I am very thankful for the wealth of information sharing and wonderful people here. Fantastic forum!