Mac Mini + EyeTV (+Boxee or Plex). Know anything about it?

[AlexisLG]

I'm looking at selling my (unopened) iPod Touch 8GB to a friend and factory restore my AppleTV and sell it (possibly preloaded with boxee) on ebay/craigslist and using $ to buy a used dual core intel mac mini off craigslist/ebay and connect it to my plasma. I've been trying to make boxee work on my appletv but there are just too many hurdles to get it to work effectively or at the very least consistently. Especially considering I have all of my media on my timecapsule, it's just too much for the AppeTV to handle. Not to mention it's HD limitations, etc, etc.

I don't mind downloading movie and tv show torrents. To be honest, my wife and I have gotten used to watching an entire season of a tv show back to back via boxee versus week to week as scheduled. I've been contemplating getting rid of our cable bill (minus the broadband, obviously) and using Boxee, Hulu, Torrents, ESPN360, etc to watch the majority of TV. Live sports is the only thing holding me back from making the switch.

My friend recently told me about something called EyeTV. Through google I learned that you get HD TV channels via antenna. How many do you get? Are you able to get ESPNHD and other cable channels?

Live Sports (Giants, Yankees, Knicks, Arsenal) are the only thing stopping me from making this switch. Is EyeTV the final piece to complete my plan of getting rid of cable and still get to watch sports?

Has anyone done this and care to share some words of wisdom with me or anyone else listening?

Any advice you guys can give me would go towards helping me convince my wife.

Thanks

 

[maghemi]

No. Eye TV is a free to air digital TV tuner. So what ever channels you get Free to air are the channels you will get with an EyeTV

 

[AlexisLG]

No. Eye TV is a free to air digital TV tuner. So what ever channels you get Free to air are the channels you will get with an EyeTV

With that said would it be better to just mod the appletv somehow in order to better run as a media server or should I go through with a mac mini? I'm speaking from a hardware point of view. Can the AppleTV handle HD content? Can it handle torrent downloading and sharing with a timecapsule? etc.

Is there anyone who's done this and can point me to a tutorial or post which shows their completed setup. The only thing I've found is a tutorial from engadget but it was from 2005 and obviously outdated.

Thanks for your help.

 

[maghemi]

Not sure if there is any info here on this forum, I'm sure there would be. But this thread over at mactalk would have everything you need to know.

More towards the end of that thread is where you will find more info about plex and so on.

 

[dyn]

No. Eye TV is a free to air digital TV tuner. So what ever channels you get Free to air are the channels you will get with an EyeTV

Unfortunately that is complete ********. EyeTV is from a company called Elgato that has more than just one product with the EyeTV branding. They sell the EyeTV software you can use for any of the supported TV tuners (even from other companies) and they also sell their own TV tuners which include the EyeTV software. One of their products is indeed for free to air digital TV channels as it is a DVB-T receiver. However there are also products that combine this feature with a analogue TV tuner such as the EyeTV Hybrid. With the Hybrid it is possible to see the free to air digital TV channels but you can also switch to the analogue cable which isn't free in most countries (hence the name Hybrid: it combines the two). Most other products they have do not have this DVB-T receiver and are not able to receive the free to air digital TV channels. They also have other products that are meant as a satellite receiver.

Just take a look at www.elgato.com to see what would meet your needs.
If you want to integrate Plex and EyeTV there is a possibility. If you want to know more about that you have to check out the Plex forums for the most up to date information about that.