TV USB Tuner Card for PowerPC

[rjcalifornia]

Do you know about any TV USB Tuner Card for PowerPC?

No need to be HD, or get HDTV signal, not even recording capabilities.

I just need it to watch normal/regular/analog cable TV on my iBook G4 or Powerbook G4 (1.2 and 1.67)

Thanks!

 

[Intell]

EyeTV Hybrid can do it. I'm not sure about the newer ones, but the older black ones work just fine on PowerPC Leopard.

 

[rjcalifornia]

EyeTV Hybrid can do it. I'm not sure about the newer ones, but the older black ones work just fine on PowerPC Leopard.

Which EyeTV hybrid would you recommend? any links?

 

[Intell]

I have the 2009 version. I know older pre-2009 works as does the 2009. I'm not sure if the post-2009 models work with PowerPC Macs. You want to one that looks like the one on this page: http://www.elgato.com/en/eyetv/eyetv-hybrid I'd suggest getting one from eBay that has the EyeTV software code with it. That code is required to get the stick working and is $30(?) by itself. Any 3.x code can be updated to the latest version of EyeTV. There may be other non-Elgato USB TV tuners as well that are PowerPC compatible, I just don't know of any.

 

[11HipMacMobile2]

Did you manage to get a TV tuner card up and running? I'm curious about performance and wondering if it's capable of recording the feed.

Thanks

 

[happyfrappy]

If you can't find an EyeTV pre-2009, their Hybrid was based on the early(2007/2008) WinTV950(non-QAM)/Pinnacle 803e. Pinnacle & WinTV had sold a Mac version in silver-white plastic case with EyeTV Lite.

As far as performance, 720p is do-able on a PowerPC G4(1Ghz) and 480(SD) stations are the smoothest for playing/time-shift/recording. Recording/time shifting 720p will slow your Mac and you can't multitask without serious audio drops.

EyeTV 3.0.2 was the last slow(867mhz-1.25ghz) PowerPC G4 supported version for Tiger & Leopard--version 4 began using different encoding/decoding codecs and minimal G4 got bumped to 1.5Ghz. Keep in mind EyeTV 3 no longer gets free web updating guide service, you're stuck doing manual scan channel guide to pull info from each station which takes ~5 minutes every 6-8 hours.

If you have a modern PC, use Media Center with an export plug-in to MP4 Video--you can tweak the codec/output to play smoothly on a PowerPC