Hauppauge USB TV tuners now EyeTV compatible

Here are the differences between the Hauppauge and EyeTV offerings:

Hauppauge WinTV9xx: cheaper, comes with a cheap HDTV antenna. But NO remote and NO A/V input cable. Those parts are about $20 mail ordered from Hauppauge. The WinTV windows-only software is absolutely free.

EyeTV Hybrid: Roughly twice as expensive but it comes with the remote and A/V input cable. NO antenna but you can get one of those for under 10 bucks anyway. EyeTV's Mac-only software is included.

If you happen to buy the Hauppauge Windows product, you can pay extra for EyeTV's software and use it on the Mac.

If you have the Mac version, you can download the free Hauppauge Windows software and use it on Windows basically for free.

Anyway, I have the Hybrid. I find it marginally works with my Gen 1 CD MacbookPro (HD is nice but the A/V input gives nothing but dropouts, artifacts, and bad recordings) and it is not usable on my relative's AMD XP box. Not enough CPU to do HDTV decoding. This little gadget takes a LOT of CPU apparently.

The cheapest way to go: get the Hauppauge Windows device, pay for the remote and A/V cable and pay for the EyeTV software. You'll come out about 30 or 40 cheaper that way.

If only elgato would port over the eye TV software to MS Windows, Win TV is so dreadful by comparison. Does anybody know of any PC TV recording software that is anything like eye TV on the mac please?

Hauppauge has a mac-clone company called eskapelabs.


This is the Mac clone to the WinTV USB2 PVR.

http://www.eskapelabs.com/myTVPVR.html

They already have the software for it and i use it. its free and just as easy.

So we pay $100 for the wintv usb tuner and another $80 for the software. Thats $60 more than just buying the eyetv.

Good point about the software.
I wish eyetv made a North American hardware-based High Def unit. The hybrid (and these) looks nice but I'd rather pick up a used G4 mini as a HTPC rather than a Core Duo.

I've been waiting a while for Elgato to come out with a dual-tuner in the US. Then I got tired of waiting and just started using TVShows with Transmission. It's easier, free, and the commercials are already cut out for me.

I've been using Hauppauge's WinTV on various systems since 1999, dependable hardware -- sometimes confusing and buggy software (WinTV 2000 for Windows 2k / XP was always mess I recall).

Team-ing up with EyeTV solves buggy software for me- i'm serriously going to consider buying a tuner. My dad uses EyeTV for converting VHS Home videos to MPEG- on a Mac Mini (first generation - G4 1.25Ghz?). And the application is all he needs, keeps things simple, love the Front Row look-alike interface.

I bought my Hauppauge for $90...but you still need the EyeTV Software to run it on your Mac.

It's too bad Dvico won't come up with OSX drivers. I got a neat little HDTV dongle by them in a Snapstream bundle a while back, but it's Windows-only. I guess I could finally make use of the Parallels I bought with my MB a couple months ago...

Are the Hauppauge units significantly cheaper? The hybrid doesn't get below $120.