TV Capture devices

Breezer

Hey all,

I'm looking for a simple analogue cable TV capture device, preferably external USB, for an Intel Macbook. The Miglia TVmicro available from the Apple Online Store looks perfect for my needs, but I've had bad luck with these sort of things on Windows before.

My worry is that it won't pick up the channels I can get on my TV (about 15, the only ones I'd really be worried about are the 5 Irish ones including Setanta, BBC 1 & 2, UTV and Channel 4).

I live in South County Dublin so the signal should be fairly decent.

Anyone have any experience in this regard?

stephend2006

Hi,

I use an eye-tv usb device works perfectly.

Have a look at www.elgato.com

Breezer

Is that the EyeTV Hybrid? I did have a look at that but it's €50 more expensive than the TVmicro for an extra digital connection - pretty good feature but I'd never use it. Though if it was guaranteed to work and the TVmicro wasn't I'd be more than willing to spend the extra 50

stephend2006

No, my eyetv device is a lot older (almost the of a VHS cassette). The TV Micro is fully supported by mac.
The main difference between the tvmicro and the eyetv hybrid is the hybrid supports digital tv. So the extra 50 is worth it if you have ntl digital or sky, etc.


Macworld reviews of both
http://www.macworld.com/2006/11/reviews/tvmicro/index.php

http://www.macworld.com/2006/11/reviews/eyetvhybrid/index.php

Breezer

Thanks for all your help. One last question though - does it work properly in Ireland (i.e. would it pick up all the channels listed above from an analogue cable in the Dublin area - they all come through fine on a TV once it's been manually tuned in)

stephend2006

Yeah, I've had no problem at all tuning into all the channels on the ntl basic service.

Breezer

Brilliant. Thanks very much!

MHP

Breezer wrote:

Is that the EyeTV Hybrid? I did have a look at that but it's €50 more expensive than the TVmicro for an extra digital connection - pretty good feature but I'd never use it.

Using an EyeTV Hybrid here (Terenure). RTE are broadcasting digital signals (RTE1, RTE2, TV3, TG4) from the Three Rock transmitter. The EyeTV aerial picks them up perfectly. Much better than analogue.

Breezer

MHP wrote:

Using an EyeTV Hybrid here (Terenure). RTE are broadcasting digital signals (RTE1, RTE2, TV3, TG4) from the Three Rock transmitter. The EyeTV aerial picks them up perfectly. Much better than analogue.

Do I need Sky or anything for that though? Sorry I'm woefully ignorant when it comes to TV

MHP

Breezer wrote:

Do I need Sky or anything for that though? Sorry I'm woefully ignorant when it comes to TV

No. You plug the analogue cable (I'm using NTL) into the EyeTV Hybrid and you receive all the channels. You plug the supplied mini-aerial into the Hybrid and you receive the four digital channels. As RTE's digital transmission is still only at the testing stage, there's no guarantee that it'll always be available or that you'll be able to receive it but, as you're in South Dublin, I guess you will. For me the digital quality is vastly superior to analogue.

Breezer

That sounds great, thanks a million for all the help!

Elessar

Is anyone in North Dublin able to pick up RTE's digital transmissions with this?

eoineen

MHP wrote:

Using an EyeTV Hybrid here (Terenure). RTE are broadcasting digital signals (RTE1, RTE2, TV3, TG4) from the Three Rock transmitter. The EyeTV aerial picks them up perfectly. Much better than analogue.

Am in Terenure as well and have just received an Elgato Hybrid product. I do not have digital but have scanned all 16 regular NTL channels.

Might seem like a dumb question but does the mac have to connected to the card all of the time or can I plug in the aerial to the card? How many will I then receive?

MHP

eoineen wrote:

Am in Terenure as well and have just received an Elgato Hybrid product. I do not have digital but have scanned all 16 regular NTL channels.

Might seem like a dumb question but does the mac have to connected to the card all of the time or can I plug in the aerial to the card? How many will I then receive?

I have Eye TV set up so that, when I connect the Hybrid to the Mac's USB port, Eye TV automatically starts up. That way I leave the aerial permanently connected to the Hybrid. You can set it how you like in Eye TV>Preferences.

To get the digital channels you disconnect the NTL aerial and plug in the supplied mini-aerial. In the Eye TV Programs window, select Digital-DVB-T Pal in the Service pop-up at the bottom and click Auto-tune. If you're picking up the signal from the mast up there on the mountains, you should get 4 TV channels and 6 FM channels.

Let me know how you get on.

eoineen

MHP wrote:

To get the digital channels you disconnect the NTL aerial and plug in the supplied mini-aerial. In the Eye TV Programs window, select Digital-DVB-T Pal in the Service pop-up at the bottom and click Auto-tune. If you're picking up the signal from the mast up there on the mountains, you should get 4 TV channels and 6 FM channels.

Let me know how you get on.

Thanks MHP, that worked alright. Sorry for the delay. Feb's turning out to be a monster month.

Breezer

Well I finally got around to buying one of these things. I went for the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid, and for the most part I'm very happy. However, it hasn't managed to tune in BB2 or Setanta (and a bunch of others I don't really care about). Just wondering is there anything that can be done to rectify this? My TV picks the two up perfectly from the same connection.

MHP

Elgato promised to fix the auto-tuning problem but never did. You have to enter frequencies for the missing channels manually.
If you're connected to NTL analogue cable, BBC2 is 223.98 MHz and Setanta is 247.12 MHz.

Breezer

You, my friend, are quite the legend. You wouldn't happen to have the frequency for Sky 1 would you? Or better yet, where did you get that information from and I can look myself?

Thank you!

EDIT: Scratch that, I remembered Google existed. I'll answer my own question for the benefit of anyone else who happens to want it: http://www.iolfree.ie/~icdg/tuning_ntl_dublin.htm

[nicK]

hmm, i've been thinking about picking up one of these for a while now but was unsure if would be much use..
am i right in thinking that if you connect your sky/ntl cable to the device you can view all of the channels available to you normally..
but if the device is just plugged into the computer on it's own you can still recieve the usual bbc1+2,utv,channel4,rte1+2,tv3,tnag.. this sound right?

where does the digital part come in though? i presume that because i'm not living in dublin i won't be able to receive those channels anyway?? bah, i dunno.. off to google i go..

StephenC_IRL

Breezer wrote:

Hey all,

I'm looking for a simple analogue cable TV capture device, preferably external USB, for an Intel Macbook. The Miglia TVmicro available from the Apple Online Store looks perfect for my needs, but I've had bad luck with these sort of things on Windows before.

My worry is that it won't pick up the channels I can get on my TV (about 15, the only ones I'd really be worried about are the 5 Irish ones including Setanta, BBC 1 & 2, UTV and Channel 4).

I live in South County Dublin so the signal should be fairly decent.

Anyone have any experience in this regard?

i have a tvMicro and i can confirm its easy to set up and tunes almost perfectly without adjustment

Breezer

[nicK] wrote:

hmm, i've been thinking about picking up one of these for a while now but was unsure if would be much use..
am i right in thinking that if you connect your sky/ntl cable to the device you can view all of the channels available to you normally..
but if the device is just plugged into the computer on it's own you can still recieve the usual bbc1+2,utv,channel4,rte1+2,tv3,tnag.. this sound right?

where does the digital part come in though? i presume that because i'm not living in dublin i won't be able to receive those channels anyway?? bah, i dunno.. off to google i go..

I bought the EyeTV Hybrid. Basically what it does is let your Mac act like a TV by converting a hi-speed USB2 port into a TV-in socket. It can decode both analogue and digital signals. So if you subscribe to Sky Digital or similar you connect up your set-top box, tell it to receive digital and away you go. If you subscribe to NTL analogue cable (15 channels) you plug in the cable and tell it to receive analogue cable. If you don't subscribe to any service and have one of those aerials on your roof and bunny ears on your TV, connect up the bunny ears and tell it to receive analogue antenna.

It also comes with a small digital antenna that you can plug in and place on your desk. This is supposed to allow you to receive Freeview channels, which to my knowledge aren't available in Ireland. What it can pick up, however, is the test digital signal from RTE (RTE1, RTE2, TV3, TG4). Tell the software to receive digital with this plugged in and you'll get those 4 in digital quality. Though the strength of your signal may decrease depending on where in the country you are.

The great thing about this is that it lets you record to your hard drive. No more messing around with recordable DVDs (or in my case video tapes ). The software lets you play back your recordings from the drive, burn them to a DVD, or convert them to a format ipods can read.

A remote control is included but the Apple Remote also works. I use a (currently) €10 programme called Remote Buddy to extend the capabilities of the Apple Remote - it's great and works wonders for most Mac programmes - search for it on macupdate.com. It's in RC2 at the moment (free trial available for 60 days), the full version will cost €20. It's well worth it