macnews said:
Can someone please explain to me how EyeTV and El Gato compare to TiVo? First, I haven't used either but from my understanding:
TiVo is like a vcr with a hard drive. You are watching your tv and record it to a hard drive. Than you pay TiVo a monthly fee to be able to access a TV guide type of feature to record shows - yes?
Pretty much.
The thing to remember is that a TV is basically a audio/video device (screen + speakers), coupled with a tuner that receives TV signals, tunes to different channels, and puts the video on the screen and the audio through the speakers.
TiVo intercepts the TV signals and provides you with a programming guide interface that lets you see what shows are on, what's coming up, and lets you record shows that are on now or in the future from this interface. It basically removes the whole "how do I program this damn VCR" problem. It's the program guide interface that is really the useful part - the information about what shows are on and what shows will be on in the near future. That's why you have to purchase a subscription (monthly or lifetime) - you're paying for this information. The hard drive aspect is pretty much immaterial; they could use tapes or whatever as long as you could mark the recorded shows so the TiVo knew what they were. That's the benefit the hard drive provides, it lets TiVo record extra information about what you've recorded so you can easily retrieve it.
Modern digital cable service includes the program guide interface, so people who don't have TiVo don't see the benefit of paying for a TiVo subscription, they just want to be able to record their shows from this interface.
So cable companies now offer DVR as an additional feature, where you get a cable box with a hard drive in it and you can record shows straight from the program interface, just like a TiVo box. You'll also likely pay an extra monthly fee to your cable company for this feature, just like TiVo.
So why bother with TiVo? Well, they've since added "TiVo to Go", where you can connect your TiVo box to a network and get your recorded shows off the box and into your computer. From there you can edit them, archive them, whatever, provided you have software for doing so (I'm not sure what they offer as part of the service, but there's a lot of user-made software I've seen)
Now forget all that for a minute and imagine you're a college student or an apartment dweller and you don't have a lot of room. You've got a computer with a screen and speakers of its own. A TV is just a screen and speakers with a TV tuner. If you can add a TV tuner to your computer, you don't need a bulky TV and you save some space. Elgato's products solve this for Macs, and various solutions have been offered for Windows PCs for a long time, too - the main benefit being that you can watch TV on your computer.
In recent years as hardware has improved, they now let you record shows on your computer, too, and provide program guides (the information about what's on and when), etc. So they kinda do the same stuff that TiVo does, including the "TiVo to Go" stuff that Cable companies aren't about to let you do.
So when people say they want a "TiVo" Mac mini, they're not just asking for something that can record TV shows like a VCR. They're looking for program guide information, and the ability to do something with the shows they record beyond just watching them.
On top of that, advanced cable boxes and other DVR devices have two TV tuners, so you can tune one to a certain channel and record it, and tune the other to a different channel and watch that one. This further removes schedule problems because you don't have to "miss" a show just because it's on at the same time as something else you want to watch. Of course, if there are
three shows you want to watch on at the same time, you're up crap creek without a paddle.
So if Apple wanted to create an Apple-quality (simple, easy, good) Mac mini DVR, it would have to have a TV tuner so it could access different TV channels, a simple program guide interface that knew what channels you had, a way to record them, and a way to let you interact with them easily and do stuff with the recorded shows. A bonus would be two TV tuners to let you watch and record stuff at the same time.
This is extremely unlikely.
First, different countries do TV differently, so Apple would have to make different minis with different types of TV tuners for different areas of the world.
Second, Apple would have to have a way for you to tell its program guide interface what channels you get.
Related to that, a lot of people do have cable service, which is pretty much an external TV tuner of itself. If you tune your cable box to one channel, that's what your TV gets. So if you hook your cable box to your imaginary Mac mini, that's what channel it gets. Unless your mini is given a way to tune the cable box, you can't schedule recordings on your mini unless you also remember to program your cable box to switch to the proper channels ahead of time. Elgato basically suffers the same problem; unless it can tune your cable box, you have to program both in order to record anything.
Which, by the way, is why I don't see the point of TiVo anymore. If one has digital cable or satellite, it's better to have the DVR stuff built-in. The only benefit is being able to get your recorded shows onto a computer and do stuff with them.
I guess if you don't have cable (I know a lot of people don't, it's more in cities that everyone would have cable), TiVo makes sense because it does what cable now provides with over-the-air signals. It's kind of like cable for people who don't have cable.
But I digress... So basically, whether you have cable or not, TiVo makes sense if you have a separate TV and computer. Elgato EyeTV makes sense if you want to watch TV on your computer screen. Both give you a program guide and let you record shows, and with TiVo-to-Go, both let you interact with your recorded shows, archiving them or whatever.
