That said, no tiny aerial is going to match the pick-up a roof-top job can bring, at least until the Freeview signal is boosted considerably. Indeed, even with the ability to adjust the antenna to maximise the signal, sometimes we had no joy at all. Channel 4, picked up clearly on the fourth floor of a North London home, was entirely absent on the third floor, along with all the other channels on its multiplex.
Re-orientate the telescopic antenna for better reception
Should we blame Elgato for that? The Deluxe has no trouble when connected via an adaptor to a fixed roof-top antenna, so there's nothing amiss with the hardware. No, blame Freeview, and its weak signal. Elgato may be blameless, but that doesn't help its product's reception any.
In addition to the two aerials, the Deluxe comes with a Freeview-friendly remote control - there's an infrared port on the top of the tuner. It's Elgato's standard TV-remote-sized unit, but given the emphasis on the Air, which is a traveller's machine, we'd have preferred a smaller, more stowable remote.
Speaking of the Air, which we used to try the Deluxe, it's a laptop that's perhaps not best suited to a heavy duty DVR app like EyeTV 3. Since it is a DVR app, it's constantly buffering what you're watching on to the hard drive, to allow you to pause and rewind. That has the HDD-equipped Air's 4200rpm 1.8in drive spinning flat out, and combined with EyeTV's CPU and GPU overhead, soon had the Air's normally near-silent fans humming away.
Fortunately, you can minimize the drive use by reducing the size of the recording buffer and electing to keep it in memory - not a problem given the Air's 2GB. EyeTV uses 55-60 per cent of the Air's CPU resources.
Elgato's EyeTV 3: the best Mac DVR app?
In addition to the DVR stuff, EyeTV provides easy tools to convert recorded programmes into iPod-, iPhone- and- AppleTV-friendly formats, and will back them up to DVD if you have a drive and Roxio's Toast Titannium installed.
COMMENTS
"TV License"
Didn't think it would be long before someone came on for a moan. Not entirely surprised you can't spell it either: It's licence with a 'c', being a UK noun,
You pay plenty of tax for watching non-BBC programmes - every time you inadvertently buy a product which is advertised on them. They're not funded by some magic cash cow in the sky you know, but if you haven't got the imagination to realise this then be my guest, and carry on moaning about the TV licence.
Or, you could investigate Rupert Murdoch's tax avoidance schemes if you prefer.
Little Late?
I don't know the status of "standard broadcast" over there, but here all broadcast will be cut off in 5 months... I see no mention of HDTV reception on the device review... So...
@AC
As for "Is it coming out for real computers instead of the fisher-price versions?", for which presumably by "real computers" you mean PC's, well let me just say that I'd rather have a "fisher-price version" as opposed to having wasted four hours of my life at the weekend trying to get digital TV software working with a USB digital TV tuner dongle under Windows XP (and having to ultimately resort to a full reinstallation of Windows).
And the software didn't work properly when it was finally persuaded to display a picture, which was distorted due to (presumably) video driver problems, meaning I had to resort to using inferior third-party software or spend another three hours trying to configure open source PVR software.
Steve Jobs? Well of course...
Grrrrr, Freesat Memory Key
Got me all excited thinking they were doing a Freesat HD version of it then :(
I have an earlier version of the Elgato and only use it with a rooftop aeriel, but have to say it's the best TV app i've used on any OS.. very simple and easy to use, the company are excellent too, my unit developed a fault out of warranty but they repaired it FOC (cost me return shipping but hey..)
You could save even more money
You could avoid the TV licence fee, the price of a Mac, the cost of electricity to run MythTV and so on.
Just get an empty cardboard box and cut a hole in the front. An old coathanger makes an excellent pretend aerial, and an empty cigarette packet can be the remote control.
Simply take turns putting the box on your head and recreating your favourite programmes in the comfort of your own home. Hours of fun for all the family.
Normally I'd expect to be flamed for this, but I expect your keyboards are just made of cereal packets with the letters drawn on in marker pen.
