Still bummed that Steve Jobs didn't deign to throw a TV tuner and PVR software into the Apple TV? Well, Elgato wants you to know that you can still use their EyeTV products to make your Mac into a PVR.According to Elgato's FAQ, EyeTV can export recordings in Apple TV-friendly formats like H.264 or MPEG-4, which it already does if you export shows to iTuens for transfer to an iPod. Now, the list of recordings in iTunes will be available to Apple TV. It looks like EyeTV's MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 recordings are not Apple TV-compatible, meaning you'll always need to do some file conversion before watching your videos, although the process can be automated.
EyeTV exports programs at 640 x 480 and 320 x 240 resolutions, but Elgato says it's looking into enabling 720p recordings, since the Apple TV will support HD.
So for the price of an Apple TV and an EyeTV tuner, you've got yourself a Mac-based PVR, as long as you don't need to watch TV live. Granted, you'd still have that PVR without the Apple TV, but now you can easily display your recordings on your television set in the living room, no matter where in the house your computer is.
1. Unfortunately, converting files to H.264 (aka AVC, aka MPEG 4 part 10) is really slow, particularly for HD files. I'm not sure this is going to be practical. It's a shame that the AppleTV is so limited in the video formats it can handle - I'd buy one like a shot if it had Divx support.
Posted at 7:53PM on Jan 14th 2007 by W0mbat