Review: Elgato EyeTV 500

nsayer writes "My wife and I just took delivery of an EyeTV 500 - Elgato's brand-new box for U.S. over-the-air digital television. Elgato makes PVR hard- and software for Macs. With the 500, HDTV reception and recording functionality has arrived for the Macintosh." Pudge reviewed the original (USB, NTSC) EyeTV nearly two years ago; read on for the rest of nsayer's review of the FireWire-based 500 model (first mentioned earlier this month). The 500 will play back both standard and high-definition digital signals, but only broadcast, not cable.

The package is simple. The 500 comes with the box itself, which is slightly larger in all dimensions than a paperback book; an IR remote control and batteries; a CD; a quick-start card; and a standard 6-wire FireWire cable. The back of the box has antenna-in and -out jacks (the purpose for the antenna-out jack is unknown. As delivered, it has a plastic cover on it), two FireWire jacks and a DC power input jack (there is no power supply, um, supplied, and DC power input is optional. They do not recommend you plug bus-powered devices into it if the EyeTV device itself is bus-powered). The front panel has a window with the IR remote control receiver and a status LED. The box is light for its size and liberally perforated with ventilation holes, but in extended use I couldn't detect any heat.

The installation procedure is simplicity itself: You connect an antenna to the antenna jack, you connect the FireWire cable between your computer and the box, you insert the CD into your computer and drag the EyeTV application from the CD to your Applications folder (or anywhere else you want it). The first time you start the EyeTV application, you'll get a setup wizard that will ask about your EyeTV hardware, discover it, and begin the auto-tune procedure.

This is the first place that EyeTV stumbles ever so slightly: The purpose of the auto-tune procedure is to fill in the channel list used for the channel up and down buttons and for the channel list drop-down menu. It takes a couple of minutes to complete, but the first time I did it, the EyeTV missed a station that I knew it should have found. When I repeated the procedure, it found that one, but missed a different one. Finally, the third try yielded 28 streams (I have a good outdoor antenna in Santa Clara, CA, aimed at the Mt. Sutro tower). Elgato should add some way of manually adding or deleting channels (I don't really care about non-English language and home shopping channels).

The other thing to keep in mind is that this receiver is designed strictly for over-the-air reception, and for good reception, you'll very likely need a good outdoor antenna. If you get cable TV, then this isn't for you.

The software integrates well with TitanTV.com, which provides program-guide information. You can click on shows on the TitanTV web site and watch the EyeTV tune to the correct channel or set up to record the show. Recording shows is more or less on a timed schedule basis - it's not quite up to the standard of a TiVo season pass. But the software does poll Titan for schedule changes (if you allow it).

Once you've recorded a show, an iMovie-like editor lets you locate the commercials and cut them out, although the job of finding and marking them is a manual procedure. Once you've marked them, you can compact the show, which permanently removes the marked sections, reclaiming the disk space they were taking.

And speaking of disk space, the CPU and hard disk requirements for digital TV content are enormous. 1080i shows can take potentially 20 GB per hour. An episode of CSI:Miami, after being compressed to 41 minutes, takes 11 GB. A 41-minute episode of The Tonight Show takes 8. Simply displaying these streams at full size in a window takes about 75% of the available CPU of my wife's 1.6 GHz single-proc G5. I wouldn't recommend buying one of these for a machine less powerful than that. The software will scale the image down if it needs to, so it won't outright fail on lesser hardware (and you will be able to access multicasted streams), but the big selling point of this box is being able to watch 1080i shows at full size on your 23" cinema display. If you want to do that, you'll need some serious processor muscle.

All in all, I give this product a big thumbs-up. Digital TV will truly revolutionize broadcast television over the course of the next few years just the way color did for our parents and grandparents. At $299, the EyeTV 500 is a great way for Mac owners to get started without spending a lot, but still enjoying all of the benefits (and breathtaking pictures) Digital TV has to offer.

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Thanks to nsayer for this review. Have an interesting review in mind? Slashdot welcomes feature-length submissions.

TiVo

[webword]

What about marketing efforts? What about documentation? If this isn't user friendly (usability is king!) then will this ever take off? What is the market perception going to be? Basically, what is the *business* behind the EyeTV 500? Bombs away!!

Massive HD Space

[thedogcow]

This setup could be very cool with an attached 23 or 30 inch Cinema Display...

As far as HD space goes, could one use the newly discussed h.263 codec that was presented at WWDC to compress the movies into smaller file sizes?

Too expensive

[hackstraw]

$300 is too much to pay for a tv tuner and mpeg encoder.

Considering the price of a real TV or a PVR in the same ballpark price that do the similar (or more functions), I don't see the justification for the expense. This is another example of where computers impare normal functioning of human logic.

iMovie-like editor?

[green pizza]

Why not just encode the SD material into DV25, which the MacOS loves. Then users can just use iMovie to edit. Why do devices like this insist on shipping with software intended to reinvent the wheel? I would love a simple PVR for my PowerBook, but I don't need editing features, I can use iMovie for that.

Re:Too expensive

[MikeXpop]

It's very good if say, you have a laptop and want to record directly onto the computer for viewing later at another location.

I can tell you from experience plane rides are much more enjoyable with all 3 seasons of Family Guy.

This isn't the device I want

[green pizza]

I want a souped-up ReplayTV.

I currently have a DirecTivo, basiclly a two-tuner Tivo with built-in two-tuner DirecTV reciver. It's great... but it can't record my local TV. Now, DirecTV will be adding a few of my city's local channels to their broadcast in 2005, but not all of the channels.

What I really want is a box with about 5 inputs and 2 outputs. I would like it to switch between my VCR, DVD player, generic DirecTV box (or two), and tune local TV stations. HD capability would be nice too. Add in PVR/timeshifting features and the ability to control said devices. Software upgradability would be nice, perhaps in the future it could learn how to control my future DVD player/recorder to burn to disc some of the shows I have recorded.

I basiclly want a PVR that's also the hub of my home theater. I want to keep discrete components (use my TV as a display, use my audio reciever as an amp, etc) but I need some sort of switching/recording hub to control it all.

An HTPC is an interesting concept, but until it can handle multiple channels of video I/O, it's not of much use to me.

Re:Too expensive

[Anita Coney]

I don't know where you live, but in the US HDTV tuners generally cost more than 300 bucks.

The cheapest I could find on Amazon was $299.87, but it did NOT allow you to record and edit what you watch.

Most HDTV monitors sold are just that, monitors. They do not include HDTV tuners. And even if your HDTV TV comes with a built in HD tuner, you cannot record HD content.

I'm not saying that Elgato has the best deal, buy it certainly is a good deal.

The best deal is ATI's upcoming HD version of its AIW series, which will only cost about 200 bucks. It comes with a remote. And if you have an ATI graphics card in your PC, you could use ATI's component video out adapter to connect your computer directly to your HDTV monitor.

Re:Too expensive

[iwadasn]

I don't know about that. My computer monitor is vastly better than my TV (which I don't have). I have one of these converters (the cheaper $199 one), and it works great. You tell me where I can get a 17 inch TV + Tivo + DVD burner for $200, praytell.

In addition, the little tiny box takes up much less space than a TV + TIVO + DVD player/burner.

In addition, being able to use the space on my hard drives (about 400 GB now) for either computer stuff, or TV stuff is also quite an edge. And I can share out the TV shows over FTP or windows sharing, or whatever. It's just nice to have everything in one place.