[Macworld]

Post your comments for Expo: Elgato offers new EyeTV Hybrid here

[flybynight]

Will it still work with the free TitanTV service, or do you have to use the paid service now?

[Schneb]

I don't like paying subscriptions. I like the way EyeTV works right now, just as it is.

[miseenplas]

What a lackluster offering from El Gato. They seem to be sitting pretty on their laurels rather than attempt to truely innovate anything that has been offered by them in the last three years. Adding an FM radio? You've got to be joking.
Check their forums, you'll see that their Eye TV is riddled with software bugs(back from EyeTV 3.0) that the staff seems to dismiss and even rudely respond. Addressing a simple issue of their product continually crashing when simple editing is attempted escapes them.
Instead of serving up marketing fluff, fix the issues that have plagued your users and offer us something substantial.

[montgomery_burns]

Still waiting for PCI Express products for the Mac Pro so I don't have to stick on a bunch of USB devices. I would like to see a PCI Express card with dual tuners.

[Howmanoid]

When are we gonna get a satellite TV tuner? Now that I'd get excited about. One of those and a nice new Mac Mini.. Bye, bye Winblows Media Center!!!

[zarmanto]

I was a bit concerned about the new Macrovision EPG as well, so I did some digging: They are reportedly going to continue to support TitanTV as before, according to an employee's post in their forum.

And an observation unrelated to that: there is one other noteworthy feature addition which is not mentioned in the article... ClearQAM support. This means it'll work with the (unencrypted) digital signals used by some cable providers. The previous EyeTV Hybrid did not support ClearQAM -- but other vendors devices have supported it for awhile now, at least for Windows users. What I want to know is whether or not EyeTV 3.1 will finally be compatible with the new version of the Pinnacle PCTV, which also supports ClearQAM -- and at half the price of the EyeTV Hybrid, I wouldn't mind buying one to use as a secondary tuner for dual-recording and picture-in-picture, once I'm sure that EyeTV fully supports it...

[pumpkinwhite]

Can one record analog signals in mpeg4 or divx using this device? As far as I know, the old one could record analog signal in only MPEG-2 format. This takes too much hard drive space. Elgato's eyetv 250 offers on-board decoding, but that too offers only MPEG-2. The format takes up twice the space as MPEG-4 or DIVX formats. I currently have miglia's tvmax, which can record in mpeg4 and divx. But sometimes it doesn't play nice with eyetv software and I end up with corrupted recordings. I would love to switch to an elgato offering if I could record in a format better than mpeg2.

[webraider]

zarmanto said:

And an observation unrelated to that: there is one other noteworthy feature addition which is not mentioned in the article... ClearQAM support. This means it'll work with the (unencrypted) digital signals used by some cable providers. The previous EyeTV Hybrid did not support ClearQAM -- but other vendors devices have supported it for awhile now, at least for Windows users.

No, This is not True. Both EyeTV Hybrid and EyeTV 250 Plus were updated LAST YEAR to support Clear Qam. It was in fact exactly a year ago as they posted both products at a special price. They added clear Qam support just before MacWorld Expo 2008. The only new addition this year is FM radio, a new EPG Guide in the latest version of EyeTV Software, and Toast Basic is now included. You can still compare the 2008 and 2009 models on their Tuner's page. Even if Elgato drops direct support for Titan TV (which they haven't done yet), I'm sure we'll be able to do it via the web.

You can see the specs of the older EyeTV hybrid at this link:
http://www.elgato.co...roduct1.en.html

You'll notice the ClearQam support which it didn't have when it was first released but was added last year, but you'll notice the lack of FM Radio Tuner.

[hayesk]

miseenplas said:

Check their forums, you'll see that their Eye TV is riddled with software bugs(back from EyeTV 3.0) that the staff seems to dismiss and even rudely respond. Addressing a simple issue of their product continually crashing when simple editing is attempted escapes them.

Uhm... I read their forums all the time and find them to be quite helpful and never rude. I think you are confusing "rude" with "not the answer I want to here." I also haven't had any problems editing - perhaps the fault is your computer. You also haven't tried 3.1 yet, so perhaps they have fixed many bugs.

What I find odd is that you seem to be suggesting that Elgato not work on anything new until they fix your particular issue. Hmm... it'd be kind of difficult to stay in business if that's all they did.