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Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus TV tuner with MPEG 2 encoder
The ideal DVR kit for low-horsepower Macs?
We tried it out first on a 1.83GHz Core Duo-based MacBook Pro and recorded a standard-definition composite-video feed from a VCR. Firing up Mac OS X's own Activity Monitor as well as EyeTV, we found that with the Hybrid, watching the feed consumed 18-20 per cent of the CPU's resources. Press the Record button saw that figure leap to 95-100 per cent before settling down to around 65 per cent.
Elgato's EyeTV 250 Plus: digital TV straight to disk
We saw no such leap with the 250 Plus, with recording this time consuming 35-40 per cent of the CPU's time.
It's clear from the numbers that the MacBook Pro has plenty of processing horsepower to manage the encoding - provided it's not being expected to do other CPU-intensive tasks at the same time. But simultaneous web surfing, email checking and such like shouldn't pose any problems. If you own a faster, Core 2 Duo-based Mac the extra headroom your processor has for non-video tasks will be greater still.
To be fair to Elgato, it admits as much. Its website reckons any Intel-based Mac or a Power Mac G5 should be plenty powerful enough to handle real-time video encoding on its own, with greater or lesser room for other, simultaneously run tasks too.
We wanted to try the 250 Plus on an older machine, to gauge what kind of difference it makes, but alas our at-hand 12.1in PowerBook G4 is only equipped with USB 1.1 ports, and the Elgato product requires a USB 2.0 connection.
Fair enough, but that limits even further the number of machines that might find the 250 Plus' hardware acceleration helpful. Perhaps a dozen models released between late 2003 and late 2005.
EyeTV: the software
Elgato's EyeTV 2 software is, for now, the Mac-based DVR application to beat - and one that's rather better looking than a fair few Windows-only apps out there too. We looked at EyeTV 2 in detail when we reviewed the EyeTV Hybrid tuner, and we'd suggest you take a look at that review - here - if you want to know more.
For now, though, it's enough to say that EyeTV provides the full range of DVR features, from tuning through to setting up favourite channels lists, scheduling recordings based on electronic programme gudie - it comes with a year's subscription to a number of online EPGs - and the ability to pause live tv.
It also comes with handy export pre-sets for Apple's iPod and AppleTV devices, automatically adding video files to your iTunes library.
The version of EyeTV that comes with the 250 Plus is accomanied by a copy of Toast Basic, a cut-down version of the popular Mac DVD and CD burning tool, so it's ready for archiving content to disc.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
