[John Corn]

Los Gatos, Calif.-based El Gato Software plans to launch the EyeTV in an effort to level the playing field between Macs and PCs. Hauppauge and Pinnacle Systems are among a handful of companies making either internal or external personal video recorders (PVRs) for PCs. But to date, there are few such products for the Mac.

Traditional recorders, such as TiVo or Sonicblue's ReplayTV, attach to a televison and appeal to consumers who record shows ahead of time and watch them at their leisure. More recently, however, manufacturers have started producing PVRs for personal computers. Sony, for example, ships several Vaio consumer PCs with a built-in personal video recorder.

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[jegrant]

From what I know of it, (being a Mac user who follows Mac news), this is a nice device. It connects via USB, and apparently contains a hardware MPEG1 encoder. This MPEG1 data is then sent to the Mac, where it can be watched, recorded, etc. In fact, with Roxio's Toast CD-burning software installed (think DirectCD on Windows), the user can directly burn the MPEG1 data to a VCD, provided the MPEG1 data was initially recorded at VCD data rate (there are a choice of data rates available).

The only real downsides are the USB connection, which some say is flaky, and the software, which is still very beta right now.

There is a web page with experiences from those who actually own an EyeTV at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/eye_tv_review.html - from my own reading of this page, it certainly appears that the software is, at this time, in a constant stage of improvement. I'd expect it to get much better fairly quickly - and then probably level off, once it is stable.

Something else is, if you want a remote, you must currently buy one separately. And, satellite receiver integration is less than optimal right now. Really, it would work best with analog cable tv or antenna at this point, but it does have connections for other video sources - the user would need to set up manual recordings in the software.

What I like is the non-DRM approach, of simply giving the user MPEG1 files, and then offering the VCD-burning function as well. Although if I owned this device, since I don't have a DVD/VCD player, I might simply convert the MPEG1 files to MPEG4 or another advanced codec so I could burn to CD and fit more video on one CD.

 

[TomCat]

Intriguing.

Anyone with experience so far?