El Gato's mini-ATSC tuner -- Mac's only

by Matt Burns posted Aug 17th 2006 at 10:49AM

It was only a few weeks ago we spied the first ATSC tuner in thumbdrive form but it wasn't Mac compatible. El Gato, maker of the Eye500, has our back though and just announced the EyeTV Hybrid digital/analog tuner just for Macs. The tuner is in the form of a small thumb-drive that utilizes USB 2.0 to deliver analog or digital TV to your Mac. Just plug it and go. Well, you might have to use the antenna if you aren't in an area with generous NTSC/ATSC coverage. Or you the included break-out cables will allow you to plug in an old VCR, DVD player or game system as long as you covert the signal to coax. El Gato's EyeTV 2 software is wrote natively for OS X and will allow you to record in MPEG-2 -- that is if your Mac has enough power. The tuner is currently available for $150 on their site.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: Industry, OTA

Tags: dtv, el gato, ElGato, eye tv, EyeTv, hdtv, mac, os x, OsX, tv

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

siva @ Aug 17th 2006 12:11PM

Recording full HD is not processor intensive since the stream itself is in MPEG2 and it is just saved directly to disk. However, encoding analog video into MPEG2 will take some processing and that is what this article addresses I assume. Playing back HD is a different story since the MPEG2 streams have to be decoded and displayed. My dual processor Power Mac G4 (1.25GHz x 2) can do 720p fine but 1080i files drop frames like crazy. I am excited about this development. I think they might have dropped eyeTV 500 (over $300). The eyeTV hybrid is only $150. However eyeTV 500 can do clear QAM in addition to ATSC. The hybrid cannot do clear QAM. This would be nice for someone with a Mac Mini. Just plug in a hybrid on the back and your Mac Mini entertainment center just gained a tuner!! Cool.

Neutral

digason @ Aug 17th 2006 12:17PM

The TVMini HD has been out for several months already and has been Mac compatible.

miglia

Neutral

digason @ Aug 17th 2006 12:20PM

Oops, pasted the wrong thing the forst time (ie: not the url)

http://www.miglia.com/products/video/tvminihd/index.html

Neutral

siva @ Aug 17th 2006 12:49PM

TV MiniHD is $249.99. eyeTV hybrid is $149.99. TV MiniHD does clear QAM, eyeTV hybrid does not. Is that feature worth $100. Both use the same software (eyeTV 2). I already have a Sony HD-DVR with a 250GB HD and I don't have a computer fast enough to play full HD. If I ever buy a mac for entertainment, one of these tuners will go into it! Keep it up guys.

Highly Ranked

DaveH @ Aug 17th 2006 2:32PM

Typical El Gato: NTSC, ATSC, QAM - pick any two.

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