Elgato EyeTV Hybrid TV Tuner Review

As far as aesthetics go, the EyeTV Hybrid Mac USB TV (2009) is the best hybrid thumb tuner yet. A smooth body with rounded edges and a fingerprint-free coating of silver and gray paint is left unsullied by plastic extrusions or vent holes giving the clear impression that this is a Macintosh product. The topside is accented by a small, clear piece of plastic near the USB plug that covers the IR receiver for the bundled remote control. Surprisingly, Elgato chose not to incorporate an LED indicator, which is good because my room suffers from enough light pollution as is.

Because of the thumb-sized package, the tuner is perfect for laptop users on the move and comes with its own smoked plastic cover for the USB plug. Other goodies included in the box are a video breakout cable, remote control and USB extension cord for freeing up adjacent USB ports and reliving stress on the laptop. Sadly, no miniature antenna was included for portable viewing of OTA stations. The breakout cable provides inputs for S-Video and Composite (red/white/yellow), taking good measure to keep the red and white audio inputs separate so a 3.5mm Y-adapter is not needed for hooking up audio.

What Makes a Hybrid
Analog broadcasts are all but dead in North America thanks to the DTV switch. Of course, analog NTSC video still holds a place in our hearts, or at least in our basic cable packages and set top devices, which is why I'm overly reluctant to recommend a digital-only tuner to readers at this point. What's more, with analog encoding it's possible to hook up a VCR using the composite video input and digitize VHS tapes in a pinch, though I wouldn't recommend this for transcoding wedding videos or other high-profile tapes. I'll explain why in the Recording Quality section below.

But move over analog! Digital is the wave of the future with over-the-air ATSC broadcasts offering both standard and high definition programming in picture-perfect quality without the static. On top of that, there's the added benefit of multiple sub-channels from a single broadcaster and the ability to see every last clogged pore on anchors' faces during the evening news. Isn't technology great?! To pick up ATSC broadcasts you'll obviously need an antenna, so I highly recommend that you check out the AntennaWeb.org website to see what stations are available in your area and then use that information to determine what type of antenna to buy. HDTVAntennaLabs.com provides a thorough listing of every HD antenna under the sun with user reviews and average ratings to help you along the way.

As ATSC is for over-the-air (OTA) digital broadcasts, Clear QAM is for viewing digital cable channels that are unencrypted or "in the clear". These channels vary between cable providers and regional cable offices, but in most cases are limited to retransmissions of what would normally be available over-the-air anyway along with the Music Choice channels. So why does ClearQAM matter? You can receive high definition broadcasts without manually switching from the cable line to the antenna, and can potentially receive even more channels than would be possible with an antenna in a bad reception area. You may even get channels that aren't broadcast over-the-air, such as Discovery HD Theater. Yes, for some reason my cable company doesn't encrypt that one... WOO HOO!

Using an Xceive XC5000 tuner chip, the EyeTV Hybrid Mac USB TV tuner is compatible with NTSC analog and ATSC/ClearQAM digital broadcast formats so you don't need to buy multiple pieces of hardware to get the best of both worlds, hence the "hybrid" branding. Don't mix up your terms though, a hybrid tuner is NOT a "dual" tuner, so unless you buy a second EyeTV-compatible tuner you won't be able to view or record multiple stations at the same time regardless if they're analog or digital. Using two tuners at once is still considered a beta feature and is currently unsupported, but you may wind up lucky and get it to work for at least viewing. Personally I was able to watch two live 1080i-encoded HD streams just fine on my 2.0GHz Core Duo Macbook using the EyeTV Hybrid Mac USB TV and an older Pinnacle 800e stick, however when I switched either of the tuners to analog (both use uncompressed video) I quickly encountered an error message stating that I've run out of USB 2.0 bandwidth.

Intuitive Software Interface
The EyeTV software has seen many changes since Elgato first released their EyeTV USB tuner back in 2002. What's remained constant throughout these several years however is the simplicity of the interface, the large amount of detail large revealed to power users and just how well the program is integrated into major applications such as Quicktime and Toast.

Setup is a breeze involving little to no manual effort and it doesn't take a geek to figure things out. The first time you run EyeTV, a handy assistant will walk you through the process of software activation and the creation of a TVGuide.com account, then proceeds to auto-tune your input sources and download relevant program schedules. All in all the process is very quick, though there's plenty of time to grab a cup of coffee or two while it searches for channels. The only snag I encountered here was none of the ClearQAM digital cable channels were identified by name or mapped to scheduling information, requiring me to manually preview each channel before assigning it to an EPG channel.

EyeTV Hybrid's setup asssistant.

Auto-tune detection for my analog cable signal was spot on with nothing missing from the lineup, and ATSC OTA detection was just as solid if not slightly overzealous. There were a few channels listed that did not have adequate signal strength to acquire a lock-on, but were just in range that slightly repositioning the antenna allowed me to pick up the station without having to input it manually. In the event a station isn't detected however, EyeTV makes it very easy to add that station by channel number or frequency. (Use Wikipedia's entry for your city or AntennaWeb.org for this). When selecting the channel or frequency to be added, signal strength and quality bars will appear and optionally speak aloud to you the current signal strength to help aim the antenna. A smaller signal strength meter is also present in the on screen display (OSD) once the channel has been successfully added in case you need to reposition the antenna at a later date.

You can manually add new channel through this.

While we're on the subject of reception, I have to give credit where credit is due to Elgato for their improved TV reception. Color me surprised, but after some side-by-side testing with a Pinnacle 800e tuner that has the same Xceive XC3028 chip used in older EyeTV Hybrids I've come to the conclusion that this is not some bogus marketing claim. With my directional amplified antenna properly alligned, the older Pinnacle unit appeared to get slightly better signal strength than the 2009 EyeTV Hybrid Mac USB TV, but by intentionally pointing the antenna in the wrong direction by a few degrees the difference is night and day. The older Pinnacle unit showed nothing more than a black screen, yet the 2009 EyeTV Hybrid USB TV was able to acquire a lock on the digital TV station with only some minor artifacting present. This pattern held true for several TV stations.

The EyeTV program window in its current form is made to mimic the iTunes interface, with one large panel dedicated to content next to a sidebar for switching between libraries, playlists, favorites and "smart guides". Depending on the view selected, relevant buttons populate the top portion of the window for quick access to commonly used features such as scheduling and export. Buttons for revealing advanced options such as how many recordings to keep before deletion are exactly where you'd expect them to be in the intuitive interface. There's also an on-the-fly search box in the top right corner for finding programs and channels that acts just as the iTunes or Spotlight search box would.

Controlling the Telly
Using time-shifting, it's possible to pause, rewind, and fast forward television captured by the EyeTV Hybrid USB TV just like you would on a TiVo. Shortcut keys for skipping back and forward in configurable increments makes instant replays and commercial skipping a snap, and everything else we've grown to love about DVRs is also present including Picture-in-Picture (both live and pre-recorded) and a robust On Screen Display.

Picture in picture.

The On Screen Display (OSD) is a 10' interface primarily intended for use with the supplied EyeTV remote control although it is also compatible with the Apple Remote. Here you can access the timeshifting controls, channel and program information, signal strength, see what's playing on a different channel, view the full-blown electronic program guide, bring up past recordings and more - all from the comfort of the couch. The supplied remote works well for this and offers direct control for advanced functions with a single button, although I find myself drawn more to the Apple Remote since it is also compatible with Front Row. Speaking of which, there's a free plugin I use called PyeTV that enables access to EyeTV directly from the Front Row menu. With this in hand, the Mac is one step closer to being a full-fledged media center.

On-screen menu.

On-screen EPG.

Unfortunately automatic commercial detection and skipping is not present; commercials must be manually edited out by hand unless you use a 3rd party plugin. Thankfully, EyeTV has a built-in utility to remove the ads, and it works great. By marking the start and end of commercial segments, these bits can then be permanently chopped out. A "fine" checkbox enables fine-grained control for selection of the black frames to avoid accidentally clipping out even a second of the TV show.

Commerical editing.

Because the EyeTV Hybrid USB TV tuner does not employ the use of a hardware MPEG-2 encoder, input lag is at a minimum although still enough to be noticeable. The time-shifting function itself will add roughly 1.5 seconds of input lag to whatever you're watching, so plan your New Year celebrations accordingly. ^_^ Turning off time-shifting in the Device Preferences will reduce this to a few milliseconds, though even that may be too much for use with a video game console. Flipping through channels is near instantaneous; it feels at least three times faster than any Digital Cable box I've used in recent years.

Setting up a set top box on EyeTV Hybrid.

Subscribers to satellite television and digital cable tiers will need to work a little harder in order to receive their encrypted channels on the EyeTV Hybrid USB TV. It's possible to connect a set top box to the tuner using the supplied breakout cable, but in order to automatically change channels it's necessary to purchase an IR Blaster that EyeTV knows how to interact with. As of April 2009 there are only two compatible infrared packages; both are online exclusives and the cheapest costs $50. My fingers are crossed for the day that Elgato is able to integrate support for the various MCE remote kits sold for Windows Media Center since those can be found everywhere and run less than $30.