eyetv strictly as a tv tuner

[brett]

i want to watch tv in my home office dammit. and i know the tv signal is on my cable internet cord sitting right next to me plugged into my router -- i pay for the tv coming out the living room! -- heh.

ok. do you see? i have cable tv (living room) and internet (office) from the same provider. but i don't want to buy another tv for the office -- i want to use the spare 800mhz g4 cube / acd 15" that sits here. i will split the office cable into tv and internet useage.

so i'm thinking to get the eyetv 200. i really do not need it to record. at all! i have a networked replay tv (vbr!) for recording and dvd-ing in the living room. i just want to watch some tv in the office.

how does the eyetv200 fare strictly as a tv-tuner, watching live analogue-over-cable tv? in person. is there some other alternative i should be looking into to turn my cube into a tv?

tia.

[sdm]

Good question.
Two thoughts come to mind.

1. for the same price as an eyeTV you could buy a 20" tv.

2. I was reading about eyeTV on their website and kept noting it said that it picks up free-to-air signals. Well how about analog cable signals or digital cable signals? I don't have an antenna on my house - noone in my neighborhood does - noone in the city probably does. Everyone buys cable or satalite TV. So can anyone answer this? I really like the idea of an EyeTV, as long as it can accept the signals from my cable provider.

--sdm.

[tbannon]

I just bought an EyeTV 200 about two weeks ago. I ordered when they were on sale, El gato occasionally drops the price (lowest I've seen is $249?) so check the site every once in awhile if you are looking to buy.

I'm happy with it so far, though I haven't done anything but watch TV with it so far.

First off, let me comment on your two points:

1. Yeah, its not cheap. Miglia makes an X-compatible PCI tuner card which does software-based MPEG2, MPEG4 recordings for about half the price of the EyeTV 200. Skip the recording option and I think price drops below $100. For a TV tuner only get something else and save $.

2. It works on cable. You may be seeing info on the EyeTV 500 which picks up free-to-air HDTV. The 500 DOES NOT work with standard coaxial cable. I don't know if there's some way of making it work, but El gato says no. They really need to make the distinction between the 200 and the 500 clearer. The 200 is what you need for regular free-to-air broadcast (antenna), cable, or satelite. Scrambled analog or digital cable and satelite signals have to pass through the usual converter box before going to the EyeTV 200.

A few things I don't like about the unit.
1) Its plastic. Yuck, it looked nice, I thought it was going to be aluminum. Oh well.
2) I've split my cable several times before it goes into the EyeTV (for cable modem, ect). I probably need to buy a signal booster to use the EyeTV. Picture quality is not always great on the EyeTV though its fine when the same section of coax is hooked up to a regular TV. Its better some times, and I'm sure its due to the fact I've split the cable so many times. The EyeTV requires a stronger signal than most sets, El gato addresses this on their website - along with alot of other questions, very detailed support section. Not a big deal, just something to be aware of.
3) The EyeTV program appears to record a few mins of live TV by default. This is nice if you want to skip back a bit or pause a program, but on my G4 933 I have noticed a slight lag if I'm doing alot of other work at once. I didn't see an obvious way to turn this off, though I didn't search for one yet either. I really think my setup should be able to handle this anyway, so maybe I have some tweaking to do. Again not something I have checked out yet.

Things I do like about it:

1) Firewire powered. No big bulky adapter or even an extra cord. Firewire, cable connection and that's it! You can use an AC adapter (not included) if you want to hookup additional Firewire devices to the EyeTV's 2nd Firewire port. And you do have L/R audio, composite, and S-Video inputs, I just haven't used them yet.

2) Having the remote is nice. Not the greatest remote in the world, but better than those little credit card sized ones.

3) Hmm umm it matches my Quicksilver? I want to be able to say more good things about it but I just haven't used it enough yet!

So far all I can talk about is its tuner function, which is not really what you're shelling out the extra cash for. Its meant to be a Tivo on the Mac without the subscription costs. I guess I'm finding out I don't watch enough TV to care about recording shows! I bought it to use as a TV-tuner with the possibility of occasionally recording some TV. What I really liked about it was the hardware-based MPEG2 encoding feature which seemed equal to or superior to ADS Tech's Instand DVD for the Mac. So I've got the possibility of making quick DVDs out of VHS tapes or TV.

Tom