Watch, pause and rewind full screen television directly on your Mac.
Record TV shows on your Mac’s hard drive. Schedule recordings in advance, or set them up remotely over the Web with the help of a built-in, searchable program guide.
Convert VHS tapes into digital files with the help of an easy-to-follow guide.
Connect game consoles to your Mac and enjoy zero latency play.
Export recordings to an iPod in one easy step, or set recordings to export late-night shows to your iPod® automatically - while you sleep.
Product DescriptionEyeTV 250 will completely replace your VCR, storing hours of your favorite TV shows directly on your hard disk for you to watch whenever you want. EyeTV 250 comes with a breakout cable for S-Video and composite RCA video connections. At just 4 x 2.5 x 1 and 136 grams (less than half a pound) with a clean, Mac Mini style enclosure, EyeTV 250 fits beautifully and unobtrusively into your Mac work and play space. EyeTV 250 is perfect for conventional analog cable TV or aerial/antenna reception. Simply connect the co-axial cable to EyeTV 250, plug EyeTV 250 into a USB 2.0 or 1.1 ports on your Mac and start watching TV. EyeTV 250's built-in hardware encoder compresses audio and video signals to MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 formats, freeing up your computer's processor for other activities. This also means that you can record high quality video even with a less powerful Mac. MPEG-2 is a premium-quality video compression standard, which is the basis for DVD and digital television. Capture video from a VCR or camcorder and create digital copies of your personal videotaped memories on your Mac and iPod. Connect a game console and enjoy zero latency game play Create digital files from old videotapes using the VHS Assistant System Requirements - EyeTV 250, Macintosh computer with a PowerPC G4 (500 MHz or higher), G5 or Intel Core processor, 256 MB of physical RAM (512 MB recommended), built-in USB 2.0 port for higher quality recordings and for Game Mode, Mac OS X v10.4 or later, 589 MB of disk space required for one hour of recorded TV (Video CD setting), an internet connection is required to use the optional Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
What Others Say
GREAT!!!!!
I have a Mac Pro and digital cable TV. My Eyetv is GREAT; it picks up the TV signal ahead of the set-top box and plays on my Mac. It accepts a camera feed and a VHS feed, too; just plug in the video cable(s) and click to select the new feed. Click to record, adjust channel and volume. Easy to replay or export to Quicktime for editing. NO problems at all!
Eyetv 250 pretty good overall.
Positives:
Set up is very quick.
External remote control convenient (although you have to push the buttons pretty hard).
Pretty good picture quality.
DVR works as well as other models I've used.
Negatives:
Not much in the way of (non-electronic) instructions. It would be nice to have a few trouble-shooting items handy without having to load the whole manual.
Often have to exit program and restart if it's been off for any length of time ("wake up" issues). This may be due to something I did incorrectly when installing it.
I live in a moderately large city, but it couldn't provide the promised digital channel guide based on any of the local zip codes. However, the web site link carries ... Read More
Reliable PVR for the Mac
The Elgato EyeTV 250 took less than 5 minutes to get up and running on my Apple Mini which I use as my Personal Video Recorder (PVR). That included the time to open the book and ignore the directions which was fine in my case, but I would suggest a quick read through if you are not a hard core or experienced geek. The unit and software has been absolutely reliable, no crashes, no weird behavior etc. But, the software compared to Windows software like SnapStream is very crude. The menuing is not intuitive and not friendly in some aspects. For Snapstream, you press R to record, for EyeTV you have to use two keys, the "Apple" key and the R key. When you want to watch a show, you have to find it in the library unless you manually made a play list and ... Read More
Way too much static
Setup was quarky because the software doesn't tell you to restart but I had no sound at first and a horrible picture so I restarted. After restarting my mac I had sound but picture was really bad. It reminded me of the rabbit ears that we had on our tv when I was a kid. Picture had lines and it rolled and even lost connection a few times. Definitely not watchable. So I packed it up and sent back to Amazon.
Awesome product
Great little device for watching TV and especially for importing VHS tapes into the Mac. I use it as a TiVo recording movies from HBO, etc. With one click they are recorded and transfered to iTunes and synced with my iPod for viewing on the road.
