I was wondering if anyone is running a TV tuner into their Mac Pro and if so what kind it was and how much do you like it. I live in an apartment and one roommate just moved out which meant I had to move my tv out of my room so I no longer have a TV in my room but I would love to be able to watch TV in my room again and I thought it would be just a good idea to get a TV tuner so I didnt know if anyone had any thoughts on them.
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TV Tuner on Mac Pro
- Thread starter UTball
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Eye TV on 15" MBP or 17"MBP
Does Eye TV display the picture on the whole screen or is it only partial. I have a Toshiba qosmio with a built in tv tuner and the picture is not displayed on the entire screen. There is about two inches on each side that are not used. So on a 17"MBP would it be the same? What about a 15"MBP? Thanks for any replies as this will help my hopefully soon mbp purchase between the 15" or 17"!!!!
Does Eye TV display the picture on the whole screen or is it only partial. I have a Toshiba qosmio with a built in tv tuner and the picture is not displayed on the entire screen. There is about two inches on each side that are not used. So on a 17"MBP would it be the same? What about a 15"MBP? Thanks for any replies as this will help my hopefully soon mbp purchase between the 15" or 17"!!!!
Any tuner allows full-screen viewing. You're thinking of aspect ratio. If the aspect ratio is not the same as your screen, you will inevitably have black bars. The EyeTV software allows you to compensate for this a bit, so it's as good as you're going to get. But 4:3 footage doesn't scale perfectly to a 16:9 screen, which I think is what you're talking about. For this the 15" and 17" screens are functionally identical.
EyeTV is definitely the way to go in a Mac. The more interesting question is the hardware that you are going to attach.
EyeTV works with a number of different technologies and brands. You get DVB-S, DVB-T, DVB-S2 (HDTV) and DVB-C. If you have decent providers the DVB-S2 is obviously the hottest technology. As all satellite tec it needs a dish but that is well worth the hassle when you look at the massive number of signals that you get.
The best connection technology is Firewire. That way you have a unit that will go on any Mac and will be rock solid in terms of signal. Digital Everwhere does the HW units that EyeTV relabel for their own DVB-S2 model. They make good stuff. Firmware updates usually only work in Windows which can be done with Bootcamp.
EyeTV works with a number of different technologies and brands. You get DVB-S, DVB-T, DVB-S2 (HDTV) and DVB-C. If you have decent providers the DVB-S2 is obviously the hottest technology. As all satellite tec it needs a dish but that is well worth the hassle when you look at the massive number of signals that you get.
The best connection technology is Firewire. That way you have a unit that will go on any Mac and will be rock solid in terms of signal. Digital Everwhere does the HW units that EyeTV relabel for their own DVB-S2 model. They make good stuff. Firmware updates usually only work in Windows which can be done with Bootcamp.
I've got an EyeTV Hybrid (USB Stick) tuner that works great on my Mac Pro, although it apparently is a rebadged Hauppauge.
I have a EyeTV 500 and two Hybrids and they work great. No problems recording and playing back up to 3 programs.
As for the aspect ratio question:
Older tv programs will be in 4x3. If you have a widescreen monitor (usually 16x10 or 16x9) you will get black bars on the sides of the video in fullscreen mode.
New TV prograsm will be in 16x9 widescreen and will have black bars on the top and bottom if you have a 4x3 monitor and little bars on a 16x10 monitor (like the Macbook screens).
Yeah, you can stretch or crop the image to remove the black bars, but I prefer to see the whole picture as is, so I keep the black bars when I watch stuff.
As for the aspect ratio question:
Older tv programs will be in 4x3. If you have a widescreen monitor (usually 16x10 or 16x9) you will get black bars on the sides of the video in fullscreen mode.
New TV prograsm will be in 16x9 widescreen and will have black bars on the top and bottom if you have a 4x3 monitor and little bars on a 16x10 monitor (like the Macbook screens).
Yeah, you can stretch or crop the image to remove the black bars, but I prefer to see the whole picture as is, so I keep the black bars when I watch stuff.
Thanks for the replies about the screen sizes, aspect ratio, and black bars. It makes sense and was really helpfull! Now I have to save the money for a new MBP and get away from this Toshiba Qosmio PC crap!!!
How do you have multiple devices plugged in and used?
I just installed a second one and keep getting out of USB bandwidth.....
Well, the 500 is a firewire device. And I have a Mac Pro and have two USB separate buses, so each hybrid is on a separate bus.
Might want to try changing the ports you have the tuners plugged into. Use System Profiler to see the different high speed buses to see when they are on different buses.
I have a 2008 Mac Pro and it seems all the external USB connectors are on the same bus
Which Mac Pro do you have?
Strangely enough, the Bluetooth controller is all by itself on another bus....
Looks like I'll be buying a card to expand USB for my mac...
Cheers!
Well, the second link was right - it worked on a front port.
Too bad I like a clean look so I bought a USB expansion card known to be compatible with Snow Leopard - Sonnet USB.
EyeTV (and tuners in general, I would say) is more about the software than the hardware. I think it may be the only game in town for OS X software that works with a tuner.
Great device but mine just croaked after a year or so.
I am resisting buying another one since they are ATSC and ClearQAM only and can't tune analog cable channels.
I have a 2008 Mac Pro and it seems all the external USB connectors are on the same bus
Which Mac Pro do you have?
Strangely enough, the Bluetooth controller is all by itself on another bus....
Looks like I'll be buying a card to expand USB for my mac...
Cheers!
I have a 2009 MacPro. Odd that they didn't have separate buses onj the 2008.
I had these three tuners working on my od G5 (dual 2.3GHz) without any problems except HD playback wasn't 100% smooth if I had too much else going on. Don't have that issue any more.
Update:
Doesn't work anymore - the software kept crapping out with insufficient bandwidth errors after recording one show.