Product Description

EyeTV 250 Plus is a hybrid TV tuner for the Mac with a powerful hardware encoder for higher quality recordings and smaller sized video files. EyeTV 250 Plus receives both digital TV (DTT, or Freeview) as well as analog TV, and offers a complete solution for converting videos from VHS tape to DVD-Video.

Product Details

• Brand: Elgato
• Model: 10020780
• Dimensions: 7.75" h x 2.50" w x 9.50" l, 3.00 pounds

Features

• Watch, pause, and rewind free over-the-air HDTV, Clear QAM or analog television on your Mac.
• Record TV shows and export videos to your iPod, Apple TV, or iPhone.
• iPod Assistant to convert analog video to iPod/iPhone/Apple TV formats
• Includes Roxio Toast 8 Basic disc burning software and EyeTV 3 software.
• Records high quality video and frees up your processor for other activities.

Customer Reviews

Just What I Needed
This worked for me right out of the box. It does not come with an antenna, but I bought a cheap HD antenna from Radio Shack and it works fine. The Elgato allows you to view local OTA analog and HD channels. Personally, analog does not look great on the computer, but the HD channels have crystal clear video quality. I bought this mainly to watch football games from my home office. As an additional benefit, I was able to use the Elgato to digitally record some old video tapes from a Hi-8 camcorder.

dead and without diagnostics
I installed the product, and the software said that there was no signal. There is no assistance to find a problem. I swapped cables just in case, but still "no signal".

It's (almost) perfect!
It was a breeze to hook up and get running on my Mac: plug in the device, let the setup run to scan for channels, define the recording directory, etc. The software is mostly trouble-free, but has a few minor glitches that I've gotten used to.

One is a one-time annoyance: linking the channels to the TitanTV program guide. It's a little more tedious than it needs to be. The second problem is an ongoing thing: occasionally, when it wakes up to record a program it doesn't seem to "see" the signal from the antenna and i get a blank recording instead of a show. If you're "catch-up" watching (watching a show while you're recording it) it will yank you out of your show and into live tv when the recording finishes, and you have to go back and find your place to continue watching the recording. Finally, it seems to eat up more CPU time than it should, even while it's not (apparently) doing anything. However, El Gato seems to be very committed to software maintenance and enhancement, and the EyeTV software has improved even in the short time i've owned it!

All in all, though, it's easy to use, convenient and a great alternative to those all-in-one DVR boxes, since you have so much control over scheduling, editing and exporting for later iPod viewing.