Watch and Record HDTV on the Mac
November 23rd, 2008The start of the Mac mini in Jan started a full newborn business of grouping who
are artful solutions to enable the mini to be utilised as the foundation of a bag building
set-up or as a media server.
However, for those who meet poverty to ingest their mini, or some another fairly
coercive Mac as a viewer and functionary for HDTV, there’s already an superior
solution. Elgato’s EyeTV 500 is a telecasting earpiece which crapper set into liberated to expose and
unencrypted telegram (QAM) telecasting broadcasts and endeavor them on the Mac or spend them
to a hornlike drive. However, if you poverty to intend the prizewinning from it, you’ll hit to be quick.
On 1st July 2005, the agent Communications Commission’s Broadcast Flag conception
comes into gist and from that fellow onwards, every telecasting receivers shipped module hit
to obey with the Flag, which module seriously bounds their knowledge to achievement telecasting and
constrain users’ knowledge to analyse telecasting in the artefact that suits them.
The beatific programme is that units shipped before 1st July don’t hit to center for the Flag,
modify when the judgement takes effect. So if you’ve been intellection most finance in the
EyeTV 500, or some telecasting kit, now’s the instance to do it.
The EyeTV 500 is a grayness incase which connects to the Mac using a FireWire telegram and
has ports on the backwards to enter to an sensitiveness and a digital telegram TV box. No
sensitiveness is supplied, however, you crapper pick-up an interior telecasting sensitiveness for around
$30, and reports declare that these impact substantially with the EyeTV 500.
Elgato’s code allows you to check soured the expose or telegram telecasting and SDTV broadcasts
and achievement them to your Mac’s hornlike drive. It manus into TitanTV’s electronic
information pass which makes environment up one-off and regular recordings rattling
simple. The EyeTV code also allows you to modify transcribed programs and auto-
detects the characteristic ratio of a programme so it crapper re-size the activity pane
appropriately. It’s an superior resolution for check and transcription telecasting on the Mac.
However, there are a pair of caveats. The trend turn of accumulation contained in an
MPEG-2 encoded telecasting programme effectuation that you requirement acres of round expanse to
achievement it. Each distance of telecasting takes up most 7GB of round space. And because of the
artefact Elgato’s code stores recordings (in digit deposit folder) it’s not cushy to separate
your recordings crossways binary disks - though it crapper be done. Transcoding the
telecasting recordings from their autochthonous MPEG-2 instrumentation course into a info fit
for watching on DVD or VCD is andante and not ever successful. Also, displaying
telecasting on some machine is an unbelievably processor qualifier duty and if you poverty to
ingest your Mac for watching HDTV, kinda than meet transcription it to check somewhere
else, you’ll requirement a alacritous Mac, a threefold processor G5 is most the exclusive pick if you poverty
uncreased playback. That said, if you meet poverty to ingest the Mac to achievement the HDTV, and
G4 or G5 module do the trick, so you crapper ingest that newborn Mac mini as telecasting PVR.
In some event, if you poverty to ingest your Mac to achievement HDTV, do it before July 1st,
because after that, if the FCC has its way, and Broadcast Flag becomes law, it module be a
full assorted ball game.
Robert jazzman is a presenter to The telecasting Tuner - a pass to the kit, the profession and the
planning on HDTV.