Watching TV on a Mac

At 6:43 AM -0700 9/29/07, John Massengale wrote:
>What do I need to watch Time Warner digital cable on my 2006 24" iMac?

EyeTV. They ship you a box that talks with cable, broadcast, HDTV, etc.
Plugs into USB2, and Bob's your uncle.

Cheers,
RAH

On 29-Sep-07, at 9:43 AM, John Massengale wrote:

> What do I need to watch Time Warner digital cable on my 2006 24" iMac?

I just found the EyeTV from Elgato systems, which will allow you to
watch analog cable... as well as similar products from Miglia.

http://elgato.com/
http://miglia.com/

As far as I can tell neither company's products work directly with
digital cable in North America. There is a separate series of
products which works with DVB, which is a whole 'nother kind of
broadcast digital television.

Dave

>> What do I need to watch Time Warner digital cable on my 2006 24"
>> iMac?
>
> EyeTV. They ship you a box that talks with cable, broadcast, HDTV,
> etc.
> Plugs into USB2, and Bob's your uncle.

I use the EyeTV Hybrid, it plugs into my 24" Intel iMac and lets me
watch Over the Air HDTV, and record it. It will also work with cable
(if I had it). I do need a better Antenna (or at least aim it better)
to get better reception for HD.

--Joshua.

> EyeTV. They ship you a box that talks with cable, broadcast, HDTV, etc. > Plugs into USB2, and Bob's your uncle. A question about EyeTV and things like it. We have old Panasonic combination VCR/DVD players that have a "commercial advance" feature. When we tape "House," for example, and use the commercial advance feature, the machine will go back over the tape at the end of the hour and mark the commercial breaks. Later, when you want to watch the program, you rewind to the beginning, hit "PLAY," and the VCR plays the program and fast forwards through commercials. The feature works maybe 95% of the time, though there's the occasional program where it doesn't work at all. We live in an area where there's no line-of-sight reception and we use old-fashioned cable, not digital or HD, which I don't think will work with our Panasonics. Our cable company pushes digital and HD, and down the line they'll probably stop offering the kind of signal we've been using. I've asked the cable company and TIVO, and they both say they do not offer anything like commercial advance. They both say if you want to FF through commercials, you've got to do that manually. Now my question: Will EyeTV or anything like it automatically FF through commercials, either as a commercially available product or a hack? I don't think there's anything illegal about it, but believe that various commercial interests have effectively discouraged mainstream hardware makers like Panasonic and TIVO from offering hardware that'll do what I want, so that, if one's going to find it, he'll have to look hard for it. Dan Flaherty

At 7:59 AM -0700 9/29/07, R.A. Hettinga wrote:

>At 6:43 AM -0700 9/29/07, John Massengale wrote:
>>What do I need to watch Time Warner digital cable on my 2006 24" iMac?
>
>EyeTV. They ship you a box that talks with cable, broadcast, HDTV, etc.
>Plugs into USB2, and Bob's your uncle.

Some considerations--what else will your iMac be doing when you watch
TV? Will you want to watch any pay channels like HBO? On demand or
pay per view?

I have an older EyeTV unit that does fine with over the air HD but
doesn't seem to understand if I connect cable directly (and it is
supposed to) on a system that is now TW. For any extra fee service,
you need a digital cable box or an HD box. Not sure if cable box can
send HD output to the RF connection on EyeTV. EyeTV also supports
S-Video but that isn't HD. Computer monitors are very good at showing
how bad poor video is. Even DVDs can look bad if you try to fill a 24
inch screen running at 1920x1200 which is its native resolution.

I have an external monitor that has component video and DVI. Mac
connects to DVI and cable HD DVR to component. The DVR box is better
for recording since it can record two at once and doesn't require Mac
to do anything. With EyeTV, you can record or view one show at a time
but if CPU is tied up or you do something that requires a restart,
show is interrupted.

Only TV I frequently watch on Mac would be a stream or download.

--Jim

On Sep 30, 2007, at 5:36 AM, Dundas I. Flaherty wrote:

>> EyeTV. They ship you a box that talks with cable, broadcast, HDTV,
>> etc. > Plugs into USB2, and Bob's your uncle. A question about
>> EyeTV and things like it. We have old Panasonic combination VCR/
>> DVD players that have a "commercial advance" feature. When we tape
>> "House," for example, and use the commercial advance feature, the
>> machine will go back over the tape at the end of the hour and mark
>> the commercial breaks. Later, when you want to watch the program,
>> you rewind to the beginning, hit "PLAY," and the VCR plays the
>> program and fast forwards through commercials. The feature works
>> maybe 95% of the time, ......

We have an eyetv 250 and a vcr with commercial advance. The eyetv has
a user-settable preference that allows you to jump forward and jump
backwards. The default is 15 seconds forward and 7 seconds back. I
find this works quite well for skipping commercials.

The vcr, on the other hand, uses the gaps between commercials and
shows to determine which are commercials (it may use other criteria,
as well). Those sneaky advertisers and broadcasters have made changes
that cause the commercial advance feature to be much less effective.
I particularly don't like it when the show I am watching starts fast-
forwarding. I think the commercial advance feature is a great concept
but a poor reality.

At 2:36 AM -0700 9/30/07, Dundas I. Flaherty wrote:
>Will EyeTV or anything like it automatically FF through commercials

Not that I know of. However, the fast foward *does* work. :-)

Cheers,
RAH

--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rahibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

My EyeTV Plus 250 gets over-the-air HDTV, but does NOT get HD from my TimeWarner digital cable box. Elgato (the manufacturer) even states that on their website. Anyone know how I CAN get HD into my mac from my digital cable box?

At 4:21 AM -0800 11/24/2007, dogification wrote:

>My EyeTV Plus 250 gets over-the-air HDTV, but does NOT get HD from
>my TimeWarner digital cable box. Elgato (the manufacturer) even
>states that on their website. Anyone know how I CAN get HD into my
>mac from my digital cable box?

FYI:

You can't.

HD only comes out of a cable or sat box on component or HDMI cables.
All the other outputs from boxes are standard def.

You might be able to connect the cable from cable company directly to
the 250 but I doubt it will work.

The 250 will tune over the air HD or can get standard def from
antenna and s-video or composite output from your cable box.

<http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/250plus/product3.en.html>

--Jim

--

Jim Carr
jimcarrmac.com

On Nov 24, 2007, at 7:21 AM, dogification wrote:

> My EyeTV Plus 250 gets over-the-air HDTV, but does NOT get HD from
> my TimeWarner digital cable box. Elgato (the manufacturer) even
> states that on their website. Anyone know how I CAN get HD into my
> mac from my digital cable box?

You need to use either an HDMI or component video connection between
the cable box and your computer. I'm not sure which of Elgato's
devices support component or HDMI. HD is not available if you use S-
video or composite AV cables.

On Nov 24, 2007, at Saturday, November 24, 2007, dogification wrote:

> My EyeTV Plus 250 gets over-the-air HDTV, but does NOT get HD from
> my TimeWarner digital cable box. Elgato (the manufacturer) even
> states that on their website. Anyone know how I CAN get HD into my
> mac from my digital cable box?

you would need a tuner that can get Clear QAM channels. i think the HD
Homerun is the only tuner Elgato currently offers that will do this.
the first step is to determine from your cableco which channels they
transmit in Clear QAM. the over-the-air broadcast channels should be,
but premium and subscription channels probably are not.

>>My EyeTV Plus 250 gets over-the-air HDTV, but does NOT get HD from
>>my TimeWarner digital cable box. Elgato (the manufacturer) even
>>states that on their website. Anyone know how I CAN get HD into my
>>mac from my digital cable box?
>
>HD only comes out of a cable or sat box on component or HDMI cables.
>All the other outputs from boxes are standard def.

Not knowing anything about this, is there any reason why Elgato can't make an EyeTV HD that would work with HDMI cables?

John

On 25-Nov-2007, at 06:42, Jim Carr wrote:
> You can't.


And just to be clear, the reason you can't is because the content
cartel doesn't want you to. there is no technical reason this should
not work, but it is specifically disallowed by the media-mega corps.

They want to control every step of the process. I'm sure that in a
few years, where there is no more 'standard' def content, they will
start rolling out their no-tape flags, no fast-forward flags, and all
the other content-control stuff they haven't been able to force on
everyone yet.

Super Bowl LV, watch it live or don't watch it at all.

At 12:25 AM -0800 11/26/07, John Massengale wrote:
> >HD only comes out of a cable or sat box on component or HDMI cables.
>>All the other outputs from boxes are standard def.
>
>Not knowing anything about this, is there any reason why Elgato can't make an EyeTV HD that would work with HDMI cables?

The problem is quantity of data. A 1080i stream on HDMI is 1920 X 1080 pixels, 30 times per second, at 3 bytes per pixel or 186,624,000 bytes per second--nearly 178 megabytes per second. Doing any kind of near-real-time compression would require some very serious computing horsepower. My Firewire 400 connected external hard drive can't write much more than 25 MB per second.

Broadcast HDTV is very highly compressed--most channels use less than 19 megabits (BITS!) per second--often around 2 megabytes per second. No big deal to spool this straight to disk although it does add up to 8 gigabytes an hour.

I believe no one has mentioned Firewire recording. As I understand it, all cable companies in the U.S. are required to offer at least one cable box with an enabled Firewire port. Software is available (not EyeTV) that can tune channels with the Firewire connection and record the (compressed) stream. I'm not doing that and I don't live in the U.S.

I'm using MythTV under Mac OS X. I've read reports that Firewire recording works. It was a long, crazy-making process to get Myth up and running but it is an immensely better PVR than EyeTV. Very intelligent recording rules that find new episodes of your shows regardless of time slot moves, 2 hour specials, etc. Has sophisticated conflict resolution (records earlier or later airings, prioritize HD airings, etc) and uses multiple tuners to good advantage. Automatic disk management to delete only enough old recordings to permit the new one.

I get content over the air and through my cable provider. OTA, the major U.S. networks come in from Buffalo and the Canadian nets from Toronto. I'm lucky to be in one of the sweet spots for receiving digital TV. Digital versions of about 30 standard def channels are available on my connection from the cable provider. Few U.S. cable companies are this generous. The AVS forums (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/) are a good place to start to determine what is available in your area. Search for your local city and there is likely a long thread about what can and can't be received.

Craig

Quoting John Massengale <johnmassengale.com>:
> Not knowing anything about this, is there any reason why Elgato
> can't make an EyeTV HD that would work with HDMI cables?

It wouldn't fix the issue. It isn't the HDMI that would cause
problems, but the HDCP (high-definition copy protection i think) DRM
used on top of HDMI that would prevent Elgato from recording HDTV.
HDCP is supposed to negotiate a secure connection between the 2
end-points so that devices in the middle can't capture the video
signal. I don't think Elgato could get a HDCP encryption certificate
for a video capture device.

The TiVo HD and Series 3 suffer from the same issue. Any show my S3
records from an over-the-air HD broadcast channel (even though they
come from my cable company) I can download to my Mac. But shows from
HBO HD or Cinemax HD I can't.

This causes me some issues. Sometimes I just like to listen to movies
I've downloaded while I'm working around the house. I like turning the
TV off when I do this and listening through my stereo. On channels
recorded that require an HDCP connection my Tivo will frequently
shutdown the audio when it detects there is no HDCP connection anymore.

On 28-Nov-2007, at 10:33, Craig Treleaven wrote:
> I'm using MythTV under Mac OS X.


Wait a minute, how are you doing this?

Or do you mean your are using the MythTV GUI front end on the Mac
talking to a MytThV linux machine on the backend?

If the former, I am very interested in what you are using for tuners.
If the latter, I'm still somewhat interested, but that would be better
off list I think.

At 11:52 PM -0800 11/29/07, LewisGmail wrote:
>On 28-Nov-2007, at 10:33, Craig Treleaven wrote:
>>I'm using MythTV under Mac OS X.
>
>
>Wait a minute, how are you doing this?
>
>Or do you mean your are using the MythTV GUI front end on the Mac
>talking to a MytThV linux machine on the backend?
>
>If the former, I am very interested in what you are using for tuners.
>If the latter, I'm still somewhat interested, but that would be better
>off list I think.

No Linux here. I'm running Myth (both frontend and backend) on a 1.83 C2D Mini connected to my home theatre system. TV is via the dual-tuner HDHomerun. One tuner is receiving digital OTA via an antenna and the other is receiving clear QAM from my cable company. I'm using the antenna for HDTV; cable for the digital versions of some standard definition channels that aren't available over the air. The C2D is dedicated to the home theatre. I also run a remote client on another Mini, a 1.66 CD.

It is not well known that Myth runs quite nicely on the Mac. The only catch is that there are basically no analog tuners available--only digital. With the impending shut-off of analog in the North America, this seems like less of a problem now. Besides, I'm watching mostly HDTV. Myth on the Mac also supports firewire connections to cable company set top boxes.

I used to use EyeTV. They have never officially supported Canadian users but there used to be a way to get listings data for my local stations. That stopped on September 1 this year. I'd been aware of the work on Myth but that pushed me over the edge.

Dave Snider hosts Myth binaries for Mac OS X at:
http://www.thesniderpad.com//component/option,com_remository/Itemid,36/

HDTV is exceedingly nice--possibly sweetened by the fact that I'm not paying the cable company a dime for it! A couple of local stations use the full 19.2 Mb stream for HD and the detail is impressive. (NHL hockey, for instance--hey, I did mention I'm Canadian, right?!)

Myth is not perfect. It is intensely frustrating to try to setup and configure. I only use it for PVR functions; I haven't tried to use any of the other features. OTOH, it has been MORE stable than EyeTV for recording.

Craig

Actually, I'm interested in this too. Can you at least make the thread available elsewhere or add my e-addy to your cc list?

My 2 TIVOs are old hat and will not record HDTV so future expense is involved. mythtv.org tells about how to load up any processor, including MacTV and suggests the horsepower needed to do the processing.

In the long run, I want to unload the "500 channels but nothing on" rip-off companies and go to pay per use via downloads or direct over-air signal. ComCast is again raising fees $5 for 2008. Let's see they get $60/yr) and I get (that blank space = nothing).



[I'd encourage you to check out my article on video acquisition methods: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/9004> -Adam]



Thanks Mike Napa,CA

On 30-Nov-2007, at 06:31, Craig Treleaven wrote:
> I'm running Myth (both frontend and backend) on a 1.83 C2D Mini
> connected to my home theatre system. TV is via the dual-tuner
> HDHomerun. One tuner is receiving digital OTA via an antenna and
> the other is receiving clear QAM from my cable company. I'm using
> the antenna for HDTV; cable for the digital versions of some
> standard definition channels that aren't available over the air.

This is brilliant news. Makes me want to run out and get a new mini
and a HD dual tuner.

--On December 1, 2007 2:24:00 PM -0800 "LewisGmail" <gkremegmail.com>
wrote:

> This is brilliant news. Makes me want to run out and get a new mini
> and a HD dual tuner.

Not to discourage the sale of Macs, but if you know somene with a Tivo (not
sure if anyone with a Tivo can do this, or just those of us with Series
3/HD models) you can get a Tivo HD with product lifetime service for $700.
Or with 1 year of service for $400.

<http://www.tivo.com/HDgift>

The cheapest mac mini is $599 and that is only with an 80 GB hard drive.
Adding a 160GB hard drive (same as the Tivo) brings the price up to $750,
and you haven't included the dual tuners yet.

The mini can do somethings the Tivo can't, but the Tivo can use Amazon's
Unbox service for video rentals, something not yet available from iTunes
(price is still too high on many of the rentals IMO, i'm hoping iTunes
rentals will provide some competition). The concept of purchasing content
permanently from Unbox on a Tivo is kind of silly, but you can do it.

The tivo can record HD from over-the-air or cable (not satellite services
however) and it's dual tuners can record any combination of digital, HD, or
analog shows at the same time.