Figure 5 shows that you're recording an HBO show. How is this possible? I can't see how this would work for me, as I need a cable (Comcast) converter box in order to receive HBO and other premium-tier cable channels.

How does the EyeTV 250 know that you are a paying subscriber to these premium channels?

Thanks
Phillyfilm

Not only can you record TV, you can set the amount of time pre and post recording session in order to get the full program, even if the timing is not exactly to the hour. And, there is an edit function where you can cut out the comercials and any other pre/post show video that you do not want in the recording. Export to toast, burn a DVD (with more than one show per disk), and you have the whole series. Why buy the Box Set when you can make it yourself!

Quote

Guest wrote:
Figure 5 shows that you're recording an HBO show. How is this possible? I can't see how this would work for me, as I need a cable (Comcast) converter box in order to receive HBO and other premium-tier cable channels.

How does the EyeTV 250 know that you are a paying subscriber to these premium channels?

I wish I knew... I don't have a converter box in the office -- just a raw coaxial cable. And the EyeTV doesn't get any of the other paid tier programming. Pan's Labyrinth and Curb Your Enthusiasm, for example, came from HBO.

It _might_ be that HBO shows up on Channel 79 and/or 98 while all other premium programming is on channels with three digits but I'm not sure of even that. All I know is that it works for me and I hope Time Warner doesn't see Figure 5 and do something nasty.

Regards,

Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus
Raconteur, wordsmith & consultant
http://www.boblevitus.com

HBO, surprisingly, must be an unencrypted channel in your viewing area (which is very very rare). Or it could be that HBO happened to be in one of their "free week" trial periods when they unencrypt the channels long enough to let non-paying subscribers get a sense of what HBO is like.

Normal users of this EyeTV device should not expect to be able to record premium channels! If this device had S-Video inputs or composite inputs (which I don't believe it does) then you could theoretically connect your cable box into the device to record premium channels, but even then it would be in Standard definition, even if you have digital or HD.

For those interested in HD content you will have to connect an antenna and you will only get those over-the-air channels that are broadcast in clear QAM (NBC, ABC...). An even better solution is the HDHomeRun device for recording clear QAM channels in HD without an antenna, and you can beam wirelessly to any computer in the house

I guess I should also mention that the HDHomeRun will only tune those clear QAM channels though. So you'll still need to keep your other tuner to get the other channels you want. Still worth it though, imo. Plus then you can watch one while recording the other

Quote

Guest wrote:
Figure 5 shows that you're recording an HBO show. How is this possible? I can't see how this would work for me, as I need a cable (Comcast) converter box in order to receive HBO and other premium-tier cable channels.
Thanks
Phillyfilm

Earlier this year when I had analog HBO I could tune to it on my TVs without a converter box. They stopped that broadcast, and others, when they went to digital broadcasts and required a converter box.

I have an Elgago Hybrid and this is how it is set up:

Cable in from street -> splitter to other places in the house -> converter box -> Elgato ->iMac

I have to tune using the converter box in order to have the Elgato Hybrid display it on the iMac. If didn't want premium/digital content I could just take the cable to the Elgato Hybrid and watch analog programing on the Mac. You can also use an antenna with the Elgato products

It is not just for watching cable or atenna broadcasts. I had a client who wanted me to digitize a home movie and gave me a DVD. Instead of using Handbrake or something to get the movie I played it using an external DVD player and captured it using the Elgato. I went from the audio and video out of the DVD player into the Elgato. It would also work with VHS tapes.

As Dr. Mac mentioned it can take a long time to burn video. I bought an Elgato H264 Video Encoder. This is a USB dongle that processes the encoding instead of having it done using the Mac's, it has considerably sped up the process

Quote

Sir Harry Flashman wrote:


Earlier this year when I had analog HBO I could tune to it on my TVs without a converter box. They stopped that broadcast, and others, when they went to digital broadcasts and required a converter box.

In analog cable systems, the premium channels are unscrambled with a filter placed in the feed to your house. The filter may be in the box on your house or at a street hub. With digital cable, the unscrambling is done in the converter box. Be sure that the cable company removed the filters, as they can degrade your signal and make connections less reliable. I was having problems with my Comcast cable modem dropping offline. A Comcast technician found that the signal strength was barely acceptable. When he opened the box on my house to check the strength there (to see if there was some problem in the house wiring), he found that the old filters were still in place. When he removed them, the signal strength went up quite a bit. I've not had a dropout since then.

Quote

gslusher wrote:

In analog cable systems, the premium channels are unscrambled with a filter placed in the feed to your house. The filter may be in the box on your house or at a street hub. With digital cable, the unscrambling is done in the converter box. Be sure that the cable company removed the filters, as they can degrade your signal and make connections less reliable. I was having problems with my Comcast cable modem dropping offline. A Comcast technician found that the signal strength was barely acceptable. When he opened the box on my house to check the strength there (to see if there was some problem in the house wiring), he found that the old filters were still in place. When he removed them, the signal strength went up quite a bit. I've not had a dropout since then.

I did a self-install of my converter boxes so there may indeed be a filter in the box where my cable comes in to the house. I occasionally have problems. When you turn on the converter it is tuned to channel 1 which is this incredibly annoying tout for OnDemand. Why in the hell it can't remember the previous channel is probably some decision at marketing. Anyway, frequently when I select a channel from 1 to whatever the box crashes. It might be running Windows or it may the signal strength.

Thanks, I am going to open up the box and take a look.

Update: There is no filter on my line, but the coax is nigh unto 30 years old and may be getting bad. The box on the street by my house splits the cable to serve four homes and I see that the cable has been replaced for two of them, there is one unused line and that terminal does have a filter. I will probably give them a call late next week; I am on deadline, but today I am waiting to hear back from the client. I dread the thought of moving the stuff in my garage to get at the conduit where the cable comes in from the street.

I've been a long time and happy owner of EyeTV's 200 unit and regularly record 'basic' cable shows. I've talked with Elgato support about adding an IR mouse (also referred to as an IR blaster) to interface with a cable box. This is, I believe, what you guys are looking at needing. How it works: You plug your cable line to a regular cable box receiver that you get from the cable company. Then from the box you plug it into your EyeTV 200 or 250 via SVHS cables or RCA cables. Then plug in one end of the above mentioned IR mouse into the EyeTV unit and attach the other to the front of your cable box near the IR receiver. When you change the channel on the EyeTV box it sends the channel change request to the cable box thru the IR mouse and changes the channel. This allows the cable box to decode the protected channels like HBO, Cinemax etc. They said to me that this is currently in the works. Bob, it might be nice, since I'm sure your in their good graces after writing this glowing review, if you could confirm this.

Thanks indeed, Dr. Mac, for this article! Everyone at Elgato is very excited about it.

EyeTV already supports external IR blasters. See the FAQ for details:

http://faq.elgato.com/index.php/faq/more/507

You can also set this up to receive unprotected channels with EyeTV's built-in tuner, and protected channels using the cable box'es analog video output.

Florian
Elgato Systems

The HDTV quality of the OTA picture provided by EyeTV 250/Eye TV Hybrid on any intel mac is STUNNING.

You need a good Terk or Winegard antenna and the local specs from antennaweb.org for the mapping of digital OTA signals in your area.
In the NYC area of my home its important to choose an antenna that receives frequencies in the "RED" coded section of the digital freqency pie chart (its sounds hard but its pretty easy if you pick the right antenna for your area). Here, its also important to choose one that pulls in reflected signals due to all the buildings. The "Square Shooter" by Winegard is a good rooftop option, but if your all about the easy, the SS-3000 ( http://www.winegarddirect.com/ss-3000/winegard-ss-3000-antenna.asp) is the best indoor apt/condo option.
It really pulls the distant signals in well and with the signal strength meter in the preferences section of the Eye TV you can play with it like a digital divining rod (and its nothing like the old days of ghosting/fuzzy analog rabbit ears, once you pull the digital signal even slightly more than 50% you get a perfect picture!)

Honestly, whether you have HD service from cable or satellite (who compress the digital signals of many or most HDTV to squeeze more channels into their limited bandwith, unlike the local OTA broadcast that by law must be lossless and uncompressed), you will be amazed how the untouched, lossless HD OTA picture POPS on your Intel Mac's LCD. I burned some of Ken Burn's 'The War" off Thirteen HD (each hour of HD uses about 10 gigs of hard drive space) onto my Macbook and the quality is nearly beyond words and as good as the blu-ray box set that isn't even available yet. And don't forget to buy an optical audio cable to connect your intel mac to your AV receiver b/c the 5.1 OTA audio signal is quite boss as well.

Good luck Doc, I think you might have to do another whole article after you try this!

Cheers,

Johnny HDseed

The Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus seems like a good whizbang, but I don't want to have to watch TV on my Mac. I want to be able to watch on the digital TV while I use my Mac for other things. Is this possible?

Quote

Anonymous wrote:
The Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus seems like a good whizbang, but I don't want to have to watch TV on my Mac. I want to be able to watch on the digital TV while I use my Mac for other things. Is this possible?

What do you want to watch on the TV? If you want to watch digital cable or satellite, then get the converter box from the cable or satellite company or a TV with a digital tuner. You don't need EyeTV.

If you want to see movies, etc., that you've downloaded on your TV, you can use an Apple TV or a Mac connected to the TV. (There are quite a few articles around about doing this with a Mac Mini.)

That's assuming that the question was serious.

Hi,

I am having problems making DVDs with it. I want to use iMovie HD and iDVD which they say you can do. I have ended up with bad jitter in close-ups and scenes with motion on the finished DVDs. (There are no signs of jitter before the DVD is finished.) They are currently looking into it and while I think they have good customer support, it is taking a long time to get this resolved.

Sure, I could use the supplied Toast to make DVDs but I don't like the Toast menus. I need to have text menus since most of my DVDs will be of music videos, I'll need to have each video accessible on the menu with some text to differentiate them. The Toast Basic provided doesn't allow that, as far as I know.

I think this is a great product. I just wish they could get this problem worked out quicker. I have written them about it so let's see what happens.

Cheers,

John L

I'm using the Elgato Hybrid with my Mac and while it is working well, the quality of the video isn't good. I've tried adjusting all the software settings, but it looks considerably worse than my (old) TV and doesn't seem to match the great comments this product has gotten on website reviews. It's not stuttering (the video is smooth) but it is grainy and not sharp - like it's low resolution. Something is wrong; is there a way to figure out whether I am in fact getting all the performance out of this (compare it somehow to the pictures you guys get)? What are factors that impact quality here? I'm in North America, using Comcast coax cable with a 17" Titanium laptop running 10.4.10.
Also, I have Comcast cable - if I switch to an "Eye TV 250 Plus" instead of the Hybrid, can I get the HD channels, and in that case, will the quality be even better (larger window, sharper image)? In that case, do I need a cable box from Comcast to access the high-number HD channels (830 etc.)? How will the Eye TV 250 Plus change the channels on the cable box?

Mike

I can't speak to your other questions but the most important choice you can make to determine quality within EyeTV 250 + is the Quality preference under Devices. That determines how EyeTV encodes things. I have, but am not sure you have the same options, the choice to chose between high, standard, long play and extended play, not including any custom settings I may want to use.

Obvious for 250+, might not be available at all with the Hybrid.

Cheers,

John L
(I didn't post this twice did I? If so, please forgive me. Something unexpected happened. If I can delete it, I will.)