Comments on: Watch and record HD TV on your Mac — now in Canada!

By: Leslee Herzer

Leslee Herzer — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:27:19 +0000

I’ve found that the best way to find the latest and top TV or DVD player is in Amazon’s bestseller lists. They are updated daily and show the most popular products in each category and the lowest price from a bunch of sellers. I have gathered the Television and DVD lists here – http://eco-as.com/amazon-tv-bestsellers/

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 14 May 2010 23:49:23 +0000

Lee, i have to confess that I gave up on the Hauppauge and went back to a PVR from our cable provider. The channel changing issue IS going to be a dealbreaker for you though, unless you have an active firewire port on your cable box that will let you change channels via firewire.

By: Lee

Lee — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:56:39 +0000

I neglected to mention that we have a Mac Mini and until recently were using eyeTV 3.1 with an Hauupauge WIN250Plus.

By: Lee

Lee — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:55:12 +0000

Any updates? We Comcast Cable customers here in San Francisco just lost all the free, clear QAM broadcasts of local affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS, etc.). They are all now only accessible through the use of a Comcast digital cable box (which you must RENT). The HD version has component out cables, as you describe, so we are thinking about the Hauupauge HD PVR; however, we were worried about (1) changing channels on the cable box, and (2) the jerkiness problem with live TV–a problem that keeps popping up on forums. Has a firmware update on by Hauupage remedied this problem? I’m reluctant to buy yet ANOTHER box if it’s going to require still more workarounds, etc. Please let us know how it’s going!

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:02:41 +0000

That could work, Jake. We’ve had mixed success with cable splitting; our signal isn’t always strong enough. But the main downside is that we’d lose the ability to watch ALL TV through the Mac, which was the goal — sitters, grandparents etc have complained about the whole input switching hassle. Also it’s nice to be able to hit pause while watching live TV.

By: Jake Carlson

Jake Carlson — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:28:27 +0000

Have you tried splitting the a/v out of the cable / satellite box? One signal would go to the computer and one to the display, enabling you watch in perfect real time on the display and leave the computer lagging / stuttering / whatever issue there is? I ask because I have an HD-PVR and am contemplating getting cable or satellite and want to hook up a similar solution.

By: Dan Hansen

Dan Hansen — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 08:52:51 +0000

Your experiences jib pretty well with the results I’ve seen from my “TV on my Mac” project” over the past week.

You are lucky you did not head down the MythTV path. I spent two or three days working with both pre-compiled binaries and compiling/debugging the source code myself and at the end I was just frustrated. i have snow leopard 10.6.2 and the source has “carbon” in it which means it has to be compiled 32 bit – so my idea of just using support libraries from the 64 bit version of mac ports just went out the window as soon as I saw those compiler complaints. I could (with effort) get the 32 bit to compile on the system but it did not work very well at all – I got the same results as using the pre-compiled binaries that D. Snider produces – and those results were very good for me. So it was a net bust.

You just scared me away from the eye-tv solution. $300 to $600 dollars (eye tv + the tuner) and you still get bad live TV. why bother?

Making me look into sling box or the like. trying to decide if it is worth it.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:33:14 +0000

So glad to hear that the Wii input actually works! I’m hoping to try that next. And while you’re at it, check out Remote Buddy (http://www.iospirit.com) which lets you use that Wii remote as a remote on the Mac itself!

By: Dethe Elza

Dethe Elza — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:18:38 +0000

We don’t watch TV, but I got an EyeTV so we could hook our Wii to my son’s iMac and that works great. As an added bonus, I should be able to digitize our VHS home movies before they completely deteriorate (if they haven’t already).

Now we’ve been able to completely get rid of the TV and bulky TV centre that dominated our living room (so we are free to be dominated by the computer desk and iMac). We’re also able to plug our (music) keyboard through the audio inputs of the EyeTV until I find a MIDI -> USB cable, so we were able to get rid of a bunch of bulky stereo equipment too!

I did end up buying some Harmon Kardon SoundSticks to finish the conversion of iMac to media centre, but now the setup is pretty sweet, if a few more cables and controls than I would like.

By: Fine HD » Alexandra Samuel » Blog Archive » Watch and record HD TV on your …

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:20:56 +0000

[...] Read More : Alexandra Samuel » Blog Archive » Watch and record HD TV on your … [...]