Elgato EyeTV HD - 1080i Component TiVo Capture for Mac
For years, trying to watch programs from your cable or satellite set top box on your Mac is quite a challenge for most mouse potatoes. While Mac USB TV tuners mostly come with S-video and composite for analog video input, they don't have IR blaster that relays signals from the tuner to the set-top box, this makes scheduled recording across different channels near impossible. Those tuner dongles are also incapable of capturing HD content; this just makes the whole experience even less appealing. Here comes Elgato EyeTV HD. The external bus-powered USB box (not a dongle) isn't your average USB tuner; in fact, it doesn't even contain a TV silicon. Enclosed inside the EyeTV HD is H.264 encoder that captures in real-time analog audio from two-channel stereo jack and analog video from either component or composite input. This is how EyeTV HD got its name as component can carry 1080i signal. An IR beamer is located on the back to change set-top box channel on the Mac. Lastly, the USB encoder box works in conjunction with the bundled software to convert source simultaneously into iPhone as well as iPad-friendly format on the fly. With the free iPhone companion apps, you can even watch live TV on the said Apple mobile devices. We suppose $200 isn't too much to ask for a bridge between TiVo and Mac; a H.264 encoder; and software that streams live broadcast to an iPhone.
