Filed under: Video, Features, Reviews
First Look: Equinux Tube Stick Hybrid
When it comes to Macintosh TV tuners, it's hard to ignore the very large cat sitting in the corner. Elgato dominates the US market, but in Europe Equinux has been a big player and they've recently crossed the ocean with a new US-compatible tuner. The TubeStick Hybrid with its "The Tube" software arrives at a distinct disadvantage.
It's a small white box that you can attach to a spare USB port and use to watch channels both from over-the-air signals or connect to your cable TV. Equinux provides the software that turns the tuned data into a watch-able show on your screen.
The product and its software remains at a stage I can best describe as "beta". Yes, you can watch TV with it. Yes, you can tune to both ATSC (High Def) and analog channels. But many features like integrated TV listings are not yet available for the US. You're able to import your own Extended Programming Guide listings in XMLTV format, and Equinux recommends SchedulesDirect.org.
Follow the jump to read more about the Equinux Tube Stick Hybrid.
For me, the test of a good tuning package is the brainlessness with which I can install it, figure out what to watch and set a few recordings. The Tube software just isn't at the point yet where you don't have to work hard to get a recording or two to happen.
A few sparkly features do stand out: You can export recordings to your media player, placeshift your TV shows to iChat Theater, and participate in the TubeTalk live chat. The chat feature lets you share your Gossip Girl watching experience with other TubeTalk customers, although during my testing I never found anyone watching the same show I was watching.
The actual TV-watching experience was serviceable rather than exemplary. The tuner seemed to display a coarser, noisier signal using the same Mac and cable connection I use for my normal TV watching. Also, the software arrived with spamware in the form of a mandatory demo installation of their MediaCentral product, which still will not delete off my Mac after two successive reboots.
The TubeStick offers a lot of promise and it's good to have competition in what has been a pretty exclusive market on the Mac. Yes, there are other tuners available but no one has done quite as good a job yet, particularly in software, as Elgato's EyeTV (after reviewing the EyeTV a couple of years ago, I ended up buying a unit out of my own pocket).
As TubeStick matures in the US market, you can expect to see better scheduling options as Equinux negotiates for a US partner. Until then, if you're shopping for a tuner, consider checking out this Elgato 404 page sent in by TUAW reader Larry.
TubeStick hybrid and TheTube run on recent Macs (Power PC G5 1.66GHz and newer) with 10.4 or higher. The hybrid costs $129.00.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
wesr said 12:52PM on 5-28-2008
I love this thing. I bought it for the simple channels like news/weather, but I got a lot more channels than I thought I would. Works great with the apple remote for changing channels/volume.
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Paul said 1:20PM on 5-28-2008
OWC has the Elgato 250 plus for $170 (15% off), and their latest hybrid for $129 (13% off) - the last version of the hybrid is available for $70.
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Seth said 1:34PM on 5-28-2008
I bought one. I like Equinux's products; their registration is amongst the most heinous in the industry but hey - hopefully you don't have to do that much.
I agree. The Tubestick Hybrid is early beta at best. It's also *stinko* resource intensive. I was planning on using it with a Mac Mini as my media hub; having tried it on a Macbook, a dual 2.5GHz G5 (with 8GB of ram) and a Mac Mini, it looks like it'll take at least an iMac to run it decently.
It doesn't like 4200rpm hard drives. It doesn't like integrated video. And it's not particularly stable under any circumstance. They've been throwing software updates left and right, so maybe it'll stop sucking quite so much soon... but not only does it throw you no appreciable EPG, it does a piss-poor job of letting you manage channels. You can delete them with a keystroke or a mouse gesture... but if you want to bring ESPN back, you have to let the stupid thing rescan all your channels, reinitialize all your naming conventions... it sucks.
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Rubbinz said 6:07PM on 5-28-2008
I've been a longtime Elgato EyeTV user, but stopped using their products when I upgraded my DirecTV to HD. Reason being is because they haven't put and HDMI input option on their products. I wish they'd move beyond Clear QAM and allow us to have an HDMI input.
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DocMacPS said 10:57PM on 8-12-2008
This is a good, accurate article. The TubeStick TV tuner hardware itself is the best designed Hybrid USB-Stick tuner Mac users have seen yet: Very narrow and compact, and the Composite/S-Video cable is small and plugs in In-Line so it isn't a huge, fat clunker hanging off the side like other stick tuners do.
Ah, but it's the software that makes or breaks a product. The Tube (now at version 2.7.4) certainly improves with each update - but it's still rather crash-prone and VERY resource intensive - while lacking some core, basic features that EyeTV nailed long ago. How well future software updates address this will determine if the TubeStick is ultimately a great product, or just a So-So one.
Doc
http://www.mac-digital-tv-tuners.com/
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