EvolutionTV
It’s a little expensive, weighing in at $279
and shipping in mid-March, but the
EvolutionTV is the newest addition to my
ever-growing technolust list. This coupled with an over-clocked Mac mini might just be my new entertainment hub.
ElGato already has EyeTV out on the market as a
competitor, but EvolutionTV has the added bonus of ripping the shows straight to MPEG-2/4 and
DivX, along with TitanTV compatibility and iCal integrated scheduling. The
straight-to-DivX option means I can record more shows on less disk space, which is great for mobile viewing on my
12-inch Powerbook, and its aluminum case will nicely match all of Apple’s current gear. Also, unlike my current PVR
setup (using my ReplayTV box to capture shows and then transfering them to my Mac with
mReplay), using EvolutionTV to convert the video directly to MPEG-4 means I
can drag The O.C. directly over to iMovie 5 to edit out the commercials and burn to DVD, then
I can make copies of the DVD and go sell the copies on the
streets of Manhattan for $10 a pop....er, I mean, copy those shows on TV Land that
will never be released on DVD...no, wait, I mean
copy that educational show I saw on PBS over to a DVD after making a substantial donation to the continued
funding of public broadcasting. *cough cough*
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
John Faughnan said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Have you tried using this device to digitize output from an analog camcorder? I wonder how the quality would compare to using the passthrough digitizer on a digital camcorder.
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bkim said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
It would be great if it came in an HD version (with an ATSC and Clear QAM tuner). I wish ElGato would create a version of the EyeTV 500 that has hardware compression/decompression built-in.
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superpixel said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Oh man I hope this really turns up the heat on El Gato. They burned me with that 150... buried in the datasheet is the spec: DVD quality requires a dual G4 or G5... Yay! So now the primary purpose I bought the thing for is useless... My bad for not reading every single tidbit, but come on! Pinnacle makes a Dazzle 150 (any relation?) that captures DVD quality video on slowass P3's running Win98 via USB 1.1... Is this really so hard people???
Yeah, bring it on. This looks fantastic. I really like the Divx codec too. Dang. Shoulda saved my money.
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john said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
no hdtv output :(
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