John66Blog

I'm sorry for the following rant but anything that does not get you premium HD content is a half-a$$ed device. unless of course your idea of HD is watching your local news team? Eyetv's entire lineup falls short of providing a path for accessing full HD TV.
s-video?! component?! are you kidding me? is this a tech blog or stay at home moms learning to browse the internets?
EyeTV is garbage, and you should be ashamed for using it for HD tv viewing. Although, their devices are excusable if you are encoding vhs or other media I suppose. I tried the eyetv 250 hdplus super duper blah blah and it was had a significant delay and was choppy at times in display the few hd cable channels it could carry. For anyone who is used to real hd content, this is a joke. I'll stick to fancast, hulu, netflix etc.
Additionally I think its ridiculous that I cannot play other sources on the imac- no real hd tv options (especially if your talking about HBO or NFLhd etc), you cannot hook up an xbox/ps3 to it. does apple really think I am going to go to the itunes store if they just lock out other sources?
as a pc user who wanted a new toy the 27iMac is beautiful but I feel handcuffed.

Elgato has untroduced the EyeTV One to the US market, its lowest-priced TV tuner for DTV antennas for Mac solution for $119.95 (or $101 at Amazon).

EyeTV One delivers digital TV and HDTV channels straight to a Mac or PC, enabling users to watch and record the huge variety of TV shows that are broadcast over-the-air for free - it’s an HDVR for the Mac (or PC).

The product ships with Elgato’s EyeTV 3, which enables users to watch, pause, and rewind live TV on a Mac, as well as record shows, subscribe to a favorite TV series, and create Smart Playlists. EyeTV 3 has a built-in editor to remove unwanted content and can automatically send recordings to iTunes to sync with an iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV. Recordings can be shared over a local network with other Macs. Elgato also offers optional apps to stream live TV and manage recording schedules on an iPhone while away from home.

Users who have a Windows PC as well as a Mac can use EyeTV One with either computer. EyeTV One is compatible with Windows 7 and works with Windows Media Center.

Pc TV Tuner

It wasn't very long ago when the only way to watch TV was with your television set. The content that you got to view was homogenized programming that followed a recipe designed to appeal to the “average viewer.” If this describes your situation, then it is time for you to discover some of the pleasant perks of 21st-century technology. Read on about the four different methods of watching television on your computer.

1) Did you know that there is a huge amount of old TV shows, movie classics and documentaries free for your viewing in the public domain? The public domain has content with expired copyrights and can be viewed or even sold by anyone. Try looking for this material on a search engine using phrases containing “public domain” plus “film” or “video”, etc. If you give the search a fair amount of effort, it shouldn't take too long to find lots of these “golden oldies”.

2) If you wish to watch the TV programming of your television set on your PC, it can be done with very little fuss with a USB TV tuner. This device is external to your laptop or PC and can be readily connected to your computer and TV set. This external arrangement is very different from that of the TV tuner card which must be installed inside your PC. Signals from your TV's output ports are transferred to the USB TV tuner input ports. The modified signals are then transmitted to your laptop or PC via its USB port. A feature common to most USB TV tuners are that TV shows can be paused, fast forwarded, rewound, and saved to your PC hard drive. Many USB TV tuners can also burn TV shows to DVD. Prices: $50 to $200.

3) Want to know a guaranteed way of getting a DVD quality image when viewing a movie on your computer? Answer: insert a DVD into your CD-ROM drive! To do this, you must download the appropriate media player with this capability. You can get one for free at Realplayer.com. Look for and click the “Get it free” button. Follow the directions after this. When you have finished with the download and installation, insert a DVD. Then start the player, open the “play” menu and click “Play CD or DVD”.

4) A popular approach to watching TV on the computer is using BitTorrent networking to download a video or movie onto your computer for free. BitTorrent networking is a sort of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing system and is a common way to download movies and music. A movie that is downloaded is first broken up into several parts and distributed to the people in the network who want the movie. Everyone then supplies each other with the parts of the movie that the other doesn't have. The process has to start with a complete file to begin with. The person who supplied that complete file is said to have 'seeded' the download.

In order to download movies in this way, you need to install something called bitTorrent client software. Although there are a lot of client software available, my preference is BitComet which has been around for a few years and is free. The next step is to search for a movie using a torrent search engine such as torrentz.com. Enter a search phrase that is related to your movie such as its title. You will arrive at a page of search results. Click on the most relevant link. You should then see the movie title as well as a 'Download Torrent' link or button. Click on the link or button to start the movie download.

When finished, you should allow others to share your file by becoming the 'seed' that initiates yet another download session for other people. This is done by allowing your client software to continue running for a couple of hours.

Please note that this description is rather minimal since a thorough description is beyond the scope of this article. Also bear in mind that downloading copyrighted movies is illegal. People using peer-to-peer networks for illegal downloads have been prosecuted.

Hopefully this article has given you some idea of what is possible with a computer and a fast Internet connection. The amount of content out there is enormous. I'm speculating here, but I would imagine that it would take years of continuous viewing to consume all that is freely available. Be warned that it can get very addictive and can have a devastating effect on your personal productivity.