Looking for a Cheap ATSC Tuner. Advice?

[KichigaiMentat]

Hey all. I'm a Radio/TV/Film major, and as such I'm something of a video geek. I had a MythTV setup, but with my aunt and uncle switching to Verizon FiOS, that's no longer too useful.

Long story short, I'm looking for an ATSC tuner for my MacBook Pro, but I'm not too interested in the ones at the Apple store, where the cheapest card is $129. Meanwhile on NewEgg, there are USB ATSC/QAM tuners as low as $30 (with a good rating)! The hardware isn't too complicated, all it has to do is pick up the multiplexed signal and pass it on to the computer to write to disk, no decoding necessary. The problem is I don't know if any of these are compatible with Mac OS X, or if any software exists that will talk to them in Mac OS X.

I suppose it would be preferable if I could find one that could talk to my iBook G4. The basic plan would be to set the thing aside somewhere in my room when I'm at college (nice and small), and have it record shows for me, then watch them on the MacBook Pro. Recording streams takes like no CPU power, so I don't see why it couldn't work.

Anyway, any advice or experience people have on this would be most appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Traeger2591]

I am also interested in purchasing one of these. Any replies of people with experience would be great.

 

[live4ever]

I just got an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid from OWC for $89 - in came with EyeTV 3 software.

Check out Miglia as well (TVMini HD+ ships soon).
http://www.miglia.com/products/tv.php

 

[KichigaiMentat]

I just got an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid from OWC for $89 - in came with EyeTV 3 software.

Hmm, that's still a little outside my price range.

Check out Miglia as well (TVMini HD+ ships soon).
http://www.miglia.com/products/tv.php

Looks like Miglia only makes DVB products, which would be useless here in America where ATSC is the standard. I didn't see the TVMini HD+, but if that does ATSC, I'm interested.

I did more digging on NewEgg, and I seem to have come up with this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815100040R
The AVerTVHD Volar MAX USB TV Tuner. $42. I'm a little leary, though, because it has no reviews. It seems to require an Intel Core Duo CPU (which is fine with my MBP, but rules out using my iBook as a DVR, unless I find some other software).

This one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815100040) runs $60, but it seems to be identical. Has a 4/5 rating average from four reviewers. Apparently the included software for OS X sucks (mostly EPG problems), but hey, better than nothing, and a lot cheaper than the Elgato solutions.

 

[live4ever]

Hauppage 950 is same hardware as the Hybrid (but it looks to be not much cheaper).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116034