Playing HD TV on a Mac

T

Thank The Cheese

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I've been saving for a Mac Mini and an EyeTV 500 for a while. Now that I am getting close, I decided to email Elgato to ensure the EyeTV 500 was the right choice. To my surprise, they responded with this:

The EyeTV 500 might sound perfect, but we are no longer selling that product and it wouldn't have worked for you, as it's NTSC and not PAL, the system used in Australia.
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That's a real shame, because I really love my EyeTV 200 and felt the 500 was the prefect solution. I get the feeling digital copy protection is what killed the EyeTV 500.

So now I'm left wondering what my options are. Does anyone know of a good HD TV solution for the Mac? A solution that would allow me to use Australian Digital HDTV signals directly would be nice, but I don't mind buying a separate HDTV set top box if I have to.

Any suggestions appreciated :)
 
I found the TwinhanDTV Alpha MAC DVB-T, which claims it does HDTV upto 1080i, but it looks a little dodgy. Firstly it spells Mac as though it's an acronym (surely a Mac developer would know better than to call it a "MAC"), and the box art is veeery shifty indeed. Apart from the obvious design flaws, it has a big fat apple logo in the middle, which I'm pretty sure is not sanctioned by Apple.

Anyway, still looking :)
 
well, you stick with elgato and get an eyetv hybrid. i just got one, and its really nice. only draw back is that its software encoding, not hardware. but than i don't think that a mini is the best for hd tv. an imac would be better, but a mac pro would be best. even a g5 would do hd tv better than a mini, imho.
 
i'm not sure why you think a g5 would be better at hdtv... just a feeling?
 
sinclair_tm said:
well, you stick with elgato and get an eyetv hybrid. i just got one, and its really nice. only draw back is that its software encoding, not hardware. but than i don't think that a mini is the best for hd tv. an imac would be better, but a mac pro would be best. even a g5 would do hd tv better than a mini, imho.
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THe EyeTV hybrid does not support HDTV -- it just upscales standard def (though it does do a good job I must say). It is a great device, i used one for a few days last year, but aside from the portability it doesnt offer me anything my EyeTV 200 does not.
 
what do you mean doesn't support hdtv? it says right on the webpage i linked:
Bonus for Australians: Do you plan to use EyeTV Hybrid with a Dual PowerPC G5 or an Intel Core Duo processor? Then enjoy watching 720p or 1080i HDTV (MPEG-2) in addition to the other digital television standards.
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i have one and it recieves broadcast hdtv channels that my 250 never sees. i just can't use all the hd features on it because i only have a g4.

as for the g5 vs mini, like eric said, the g5 has the speedier hard drives/interface/beefy vid card and mondo ram that make video editing a breeze.
 
All I know is with HD movies (legal Quicktime downloads) on my Mac took a lot of processor power (about 135% power on a Dual G5). I then bought a new 23 HD display and those same HD files only took up 35% processor power.

The moral of this story is if you need HD video on your Mac, get a HD display. Your Mac's processor will be thankful if you get a HD display.
 
Video hardware really sucks on the mac.
Searching through ebay there are stacks of usb video devices but all for the PC.
They could all write a driver for the mac but obviously can't be bothered.
I gave up trying to find a hardware mpeg2 encoder at a reasonable price for my mac.
Elgato charge like wounded bulls.
So I went back to my PC and bought a mpeg2 hardware encoder at a 1/3 of the price of Elgato's.
Another way to do it is buy a PC USB video device that's compatible with EchoFX's VideoGlide OSX.
Basically it's just OSX drivers that work with PC USB video devices and you pay for the drivers.
IMO the drivers should be free from the manufacturer but if they can't be bothered writing any than VideoGlide is the only thing left.
 
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