Elgato eyeTV Hybrid Review

As the HD TV wave hits the nation and analog TV is slowly reaching the end of its line, I was interested in getting exposed to HD without spending gobs of money. Enter the Elgato eyeTV Hybrid.

What is the Elgato eyeTV Hybrid? Quite simply it's a small USB dongle that is able to pull in over the air HD - High Definition television - (also know as ATSC) broadcasts as well as regular analog TV from the air and over cable (though NOT HD cable signals). In other words any free source of TV signals can be viewed on your Mac. It also comes packaged with eyeTV software that manages the viewing and recording of TV programming - essentially Tivo for your Mac. You can record, pause live TV, skip commercials in recorded programs or delayed live TV. Your Apple Remote will work seamlessly with eyeTV.

I mention in the cons above that the USB unit's width blocks adjacent ports (at least on the Apple MacBook Pro). Elgato doesn't leave you frustrated - they also include a short (approximately 6 inch) USB extension cable to mitigate this port blocking issue.

The eyeTV software also includes a free 3 year Titan TV subscription to list all of the programming that is available for you to view and record. Recording is one simple click of the red record icon next to a show listing. All digital content is recorded in a lossless format, meaning that you won't lose any of the picture or sound quality of the original HD source.

Living in Chicago, I can catch over 27 HD channels and about 16 analog channels. It turns out that quite a few of the regular analog TV stations are broadcasting 2 or 3 digital channels. One thing to keep in mind is that not all content being broadcast over the digital channels is HD. Meaning that that not everything will be pristine, high resolution goodness. Still Archie Bunker looks better when watched over a digital signal than over an old analog transmission. ;-) I should also mention that I receive all of these signals without a proper antenna - I use a simple 4 foot length of 10 gauge speaker wire of which one end is inserted into the small hole of the coax connector on the Elgato eyeTV Hybrid. I wonder how much more I would catch if I used a real antenna?

One other note - during the set-up of the Elgato eyeTV Hybrid, you will be prompted to scan for available channels - make sure you scan for analog and digital channels. Otherwise you will be left scratching your head as to where all of the digital content can be found.

For those of you with a video iPod, the eyeTV software will convert recorded shows into an iPod friendly format and place them in iTunes - all with a click of a mouse button. You can even set your recordings to export to iPod automatically.

Included in the packaging is an additional connector (composite video & S video) that allows you to connect a game console to play games on your Mac or a camcorder to convert older home videos (VHS, Hi8, etc.) to DVD.

A few technical notes... eyeTV is a Universal Binary. The version of eyeTV that I use is geared for NTSC signals, which is how shows are broadcast in North America and other parts of the world. There is also a PAL/SECAM/DVB-T European version.

Bottom line - HD is around the corner and the Elgato eyeTV Hybrid is probably one of the lowest costing and best ways to get into the HD world while also gaining Tivo like DVR features. After watching HD, it's hard to go back to regular TV.

http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=products_eyetvhybridna

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Added Feb 13,2008

EyeTV has updated their software to version 3. One of the great new features is Automatic Recording of a TV Series.

Currently I'm using the eyeTV Hybrid with my Apple iMac 24" and loving it.