Gates
promises, ElGato and Mac deliver... ElGato
EyeTV 200 e EyeHome: a real breaktrough in Digital TV and Mac. by Settimio
Perlini and Walter Mandorino
January 11, 2004
Elgato
presents EyeTV 200 and EyeHome: a new strategy for TV and digital media
on Mac.
As you may have seen on reports from Comdex, Microsoft has announced
future products to bring digital media on TV, with the right version
of Windows XP and set top boxes called "extenders" you can
browse trough you PC hard disk and see the contemnt on your TV.
While we have to wait 4 or 6 months to get products on the shelves or,
better, inside our homes, a relatively small firm has already accomplished
this result with its own set top box and standard Mac OS X (no strange
extension required) computer like the one you may have bought in the
last 24 months.
The deutsch-american company showed at Macworld Expo two outstanding
product for the Mac platform to bring the TV inside Mac OS X desktop
and to bring the Mac files on TV: EyeTV 200 (a TV tuner with Firewire
interface and Mper2 compression) and EyeHome software.
While the first isn't so revolutionary, provided it's an evolution of
ElGato's EyeTV USB with faster interface, higher quality compression
and s-video input similar to many (incompatible) products you can find
on the windows side (based on USB2 interface): the second is a real
breaghtrough in the way TV, Mac and digital media can interact.
(click on the images to see a bigger version)
Eye
TV 200
As we said EyeTV 200 it's the evolution of the first device commercialized
by El Gato more than one year ago, EyeTV USB, with a lot of new features
and outstanding quality.
It acts like a TV tuner and a PVR, recording signal coming from the
aerial plug on the rear o some analogic source that could be the videocomposite
or supervideo output of your VCR or Satellite Receiver or old videocamera
in PAL or NTSC versione.
The Eye TV 200 sports audio, video (composite and supervideo) inputs
and a Firewire output to the Mac with an Mpeg2 compressed signal of
the same quality of the transmissions you receive from satellite or
you see on your DVD player, far better than standard MPEG1 compression
you can obtain with EyeTV USB and better than HiQuality setting you
have with the former device.
You have also better resolution, higher bit rate at the price of more
space occupied on your Hard drive and the prize of directy mastering
the final result on you DVD recorder trough applications like Toast
Titanium and/or freeware like Sizzle.
Sostantially you have a PVR device that works with the Mac Hard drive
as its media for recording.
The price, fixed only for USA at the moment is 349 US dollars. But...
check below...!
ˆ
the "old EyeTV USB and the new EyeTV 200: USB interface and
MPEG1 compression for the first, Firewire inteface and MPEG2 compresion
for the second.
ˆ
EyeTV 200 has the standard ElGato software interface but is also
a PVR for recording from any analogic source.
ˆ
See
the pictures on the back (the photo is a little blurred): you can
connect also standar satellite o terrestrial TV tuners to get a
"ready to Toast" Mpeg2 archive.
EyeHome:
your Mac on TV via ethernet or wireless connection
The real revolution is EyeHome a truly new combination of hardware
and software that has no comparison in Mac devices and is one of the
most genial set top boxes we have seen to date.
It is a "digital media player", how Elgato calls it.
Pratically it's a device you can connect to the input of your Home Teather
or TV System and receives the digital content from a Mac via Ethernet
10'/100 or wirelessly via Airport Extreme (IEE 802.11g)!
Who has a Mac network at home or a simple Mac (even a low cost iBook)
can plug the ethernet cable to EyeHome and see every digital content
has been recorded on the internal hard drive or broadcasted with the
standard iApple like the internet radio stations in iTunes.
And you
can select them directly on TV with the standard remote control that
comes with the device.
The Mac acts as a real "media center" controlled by EyeHome
with no strange media extension or a particular versione of the System
so that that almosto all the Macs sold in the last two year can work
with this device
You can watch and listen to:
- video/audio recordings made EyeTV 200 from TV or analog sources(remember
it's a PVR!)
- movies of any kind (Quicktime, Divx...)
- Music (MP3, AAC, AIFF, WAV of course)
- Photo - pictures
- Internet services
Let's make a review of the contents available
The recordings from Eye TV can be made on any El gato model like: EyeTV
USB (tuner mpeg1), EyeTV 300 (satellite Mpeg2), EyeTV 400 (digitale
terrestrial Mpeg2), EyeTV 200 (tuner mpeg2) or analog source eventually.
A list of all the recordings available on Mac's hard drive is shown
on the TV screen and you can sort it anyway you want it: alfabetically
or even for its' duration.
EyeHome searches inside the "Movies" folder of your Mac and
let's you the choice.
You can have every kind of movie you mac can play: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4
and DivX are in the list.
As for the music EyeHome uses iTunes' Library and can play any sort
of playlist, show iTunes video effects, select songs by artist and
genre.,..
and search for single songs.
Photo are showed from (guess...) iPhoto Library!
Also in this case, thanks to the organization of the iApp you can find
in any Mac you can see single pictures, a whole library and make
slideshow
starting from every album with the ElGato application.
Imagine combining the new iPhoto 04 with large library capacity with
the simple browsing trough your television set: your family life on
TV
without browsing trough several CD and DVDs...
As for the Internet services with EyeHome you can have accesso to particular
contents readied for the devices like internet-Radio (via iTunes) or
news site but also to Safari bookmars!
The deep integration with Mac OS X and its Apps and the standard structure
of the system directories does the rest.
Last but not least, the connections: the input comes from your network
so that you can connect an hub or a switch or a single Mac via internet,
or via Aiport Extreme (IEEE 802.11g)
You can connect the device to your Home Theather- TV Set - HiFi with
these outputs:
- composite video
- stereo audio
- SuperVideo
- Scart (for the european market)
- audio optical output
The price for the USA will be 249 Dollars, very competitive indeeed.
Il will be available at the end of the January in USA and a month later
in Europe.
Can you wait till then?
