UPDATE: Elgato’s Canadian EPG is now out of beta, and purchasers will receive one year of free access with purchase of an EyeTV tuner.

A couple months ago I ordered the Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus from the online Apple Store (free shipping FTW). Technically speaking its a TV tuner, but I bought it for its cassette digitizing abilities – more on that later. I thought that was the only use I’d get out of it too, since Elgato doesn’t offer a Electronic Program Guide (EPG/listings) for Canada. Until now. The past few weeks they’ve been rolling out a beta version of the EyeTV 3 software that includes support for a Canadian EPG.

You might be wondering exactly what an EPG is and why its necessary for watching TV on your Mac. Basically its a file that EyeTV downloads to display the local listings for your area. The truth is that it isn’t really required, but in a world where everyone has a cable box, built in schedules are a given convenience that I know I wouldn’t like to live without. So it goes without saying I was thrilled to read about this beta version.

I signed up and got my beta invitation very soon afterwards. It was a breeze to download, install and configure EyeTV for use here in Vancouver, BC. It seems that some other parts of Canada aren’t covered yet, but I’m sure that’s coming in subsequent releases. It seems that Elgato has partnered with TV Guide Canada to makes this happen. Also worth noting, us Canadians only get a year of free service. Come next October I’ll have to pony up $19.95 (USD no less) for a rewenal. That’s not fair, eh.

Functionally its been almost flawless. There was this weird problem where programs starting at 4:00PM would have a duration of 0:00, but I believe that’s been fixed. I’m with Shaw Cable and all the analogue channels come through fine. I also have the digital cable package and box, but my EyeTV doesn’t pick those channels up for some reason. It does see the digital music channels though, so I don’t know what’s going on there. The quality is fair, but you’d never mistake it for HD. I’ve included a few screenshots that you can click to enlarge. Audio comes through very nicely with steady treble and tight bass.

There’s something nice about being able to pause live TV, or replay something you missed. Start watching or recording with one click. Schedule recordings up to two weeks ahead of time, then have them converted and placed in iTunes for you. There’s lots of cool stuff, its the best TV experience I’ve had thus far. I honestly prefer downloading HD shows/movies from iTunes or similar outlets, but that can take time and you rarely see obscure programming you may want to watch. I and friends have made a number of TV appearances lately. All I had to do to record them was set the time, and when I got home they were ready to post on YouTube.

All of that, and I only bought this little device to convert my VHS and 8mm tapes to DVDs. By the way, it does that very well too. Its as simple as plugging in your device (VCR, camcorder, LaserDisc) with composite or SVideo and hitting record. Then you can export to iTunes (for your iPod, iPhone or AppleTV), Toast (CD DVD or Blue Ray) or via a number of other options.

The EyeTV 250 Plus is a nifty little creature that can finally call Canada home. Its ease of use and capabilities make it worth every cent, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to other Mac users in Canada. If you have any questions about it I’ll take them in the comments..

My goal is to sync or stream all of my digital media (music, TV shows, movies, pictures etc) to a large SDTV (standard definition television) in the family room.

 1) AppleTV

The AppleTV is an amazing little box. It’ll sync or stream nearly all of your media from any computer that can run iTunes. There’s also some nifty plugins to extend its functionality. On paper it looks perfect, but in practice it caries a number of limitations.

• Initial cost
• File type limitations (think DIVX etc)
• Limited configurability/tweaking
• No support for SDTVs

These limitations are somewhat superficial, I could solve most of them by hacking and having a bigger wallet. At this time, however, the AppleTV just isn’t a viable option.

2) Tiger + ATV4mac

Because I already have an unused Mac mini, this option removes the up front cost of running my media center. AT4mac is a really cool project that lets you run the Apple TV OS as an application on any intel Mac running Tiger. It requires OS X 10.4 because the Apple TV OS is based on the older version, and it turns out that installing Tiger on my mini was the most difficult step. I installed Perian to cover those missing formats and picked up an Apple DVI to Video converter to connect to the television. Audio went through a headphone to composite adapter directly into the receiver. The procedure to get ATV4mac up and running was quick and painless. Afterwards I was able to sync, stream and play with my media flawlessly. All the functions of the Apple TV were present and functional. 

The problem is, once again, that I’m using an SDTV (See update below). While the ATV4mac brings down the resolution, it still has a widescreen ratio. This means the right most 1/4 of the picture is cut off. By using this solution I avoided all the issues surrounding the Apple TV except for the problem related to my SDTV. 

3) Leopard + Front Row

Until an HDTV enters the equation, it looks like the Apple TV route isn’t the way to go. The next obvious solution is Front Row. I had problems with Front Row on Tiger crashing, so I reinstalled Leopard on the mini and chose some tools to make things work. 

I installed Perian again, and I also got a copy of Sofa Control. It lets you do almost anything you can do with your mouse and keyboard right from your Apple Remote. Then I installed Syncopation. This little app is idea for our project. It connects to iTunes libraries on the network and automatically merges them into to one. All the media can then be played in Front Row. Its pretty slick, but I’m disappointed that there isn’t a free alternative. I’d really like to sync remote iTunes libraries just like you can an Apple TV. You can’t buy or rent content directly from Front Row either, and there’s also the missing YouTube and Flickr access. This solution is less than perfect, but at least it works without cutting off the screen.  

In conclusion I have to say none of these solutions turned out to be all I hoped for. The good news I can watch video and play my music, even if the process to do those is convoluted. I hope that someone finds a better solution or that I get an HDTV, and I’ll update this story once one of those things happens.

Update: I found a solution (SwitchResX) to the ATV4mac / SDTV problem. I’ll provide a tutorial soon outlining how to get your intel Mac and old SDTV to work together.