Elgato Eyetv 250 Digital TV Recorder for Mac 10020251

by Elgato

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000F1UFZ4
• Item model number: 10020251
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,202 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 15, 2006

Product Description

The Ultimate Digital TV Recorder for the Mac. EyeTV 250 brings live television to your Macintosh in stunning quality. By combining award-winning digital TV recording software with a premium analog TV receiver and video encoder, EyeTV® 250 will change the way you watch TV.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The best PVR option available for Mac, May 14, 2006

By 

JL "J" (Washington, not the DC) - See all my reviews

I just got mine yesterday and I'm totally amazed by it. Just as iTunes and the iPod are a seamless experience, EyeTV 250, the EyeTV 2 software, and TitanTV are equally seamless. Unfortunately I haven't bought Toast yet to see what the quality is when you transfer to DVD and watch your recordings on a big screen.

It's not quite perfect, but definitely worth the money. I particularly love that I don't notice any lag whatsoever from my computer while I'm watching or recording shows. In fact, I can switch freely between other applications with EyeTV running in the background as if it's not drawing any system resources at all. Very impressive.

I also love the control the software gives you over the channels. You can fine tune the channel frequency for the best possible signal (which you don't have to do because the software will automatically detect your available channels). You can add or remove channels from the channel lineup so that if you really hate the home shopping network (raises hand) you don't have to flick past it.

The software combined with the included remote really adds flexibility to the experience as you sit at your computer and control everything with your mouse, or you can control it all from the couch with the remote. When changing channels there is an excellent large channel number and show title displayed across the bottom of the window clearly visible from several feet way on the couch. Well done.

My gripes, though minimal are mainly with the limitations on transferring the content. I was really dissapointed to learn that I also have to buy Toast 7 (a $70 program) to be able to burn recorded shows to DVD, I can't just use iMovie, or a program of my choice.

Also, when using this to play video games, you should be aware that the frame rate and refresh rate of your screen is really going to affect the experience. If you have an older monitor like I do, you get kind of a blurry experience when playing fast moving games.

Also, the incessant ominous blue light on the front of the box it completely annoying! I had to cut out a peice of cardboard to cover it because it's so insanely bright. That's a minor gripe though.

Overall, great product, made excellent with the purchase of additional software (Toast 7). Very happy with it. I would recommend you research which EyeTV device is best for you needs though, because it will depend on what your TV source is (ie. satellite requires one EyeTV box, while analog cable works fine with this one.)

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars go for miglia tvmax instead, May 10, 2007

By 

Puneet Khanna (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Elgato Eyetv 250 Digital TV Recorder for Mac 10020251 (Personal Computers)

I would recommend the Eyetv 250 only if you are interested in the game mode. I purchased the eyetv 250, but it always jumbled up or dropped letters in the closed captioning. Fortunately elgato customer support was good and they took the product back and gave me a full refund, even though i hadn't purchased it directly from them. It might have been a problem with only my unit though. But even if you disregard that as a unique issue, a big problem with eyetv 250 is that it records only in mpeg 2 format (mpeg 1 is available but it's quality is too low). Mpeg 2 takes up too much hard disc space for your daily record/view/delete purposes. Trust me, at best quality setting, mpeg 2 format will fill your hard disc faster than you want - 2.7 GB per hour! Practically this comes to 3GB per one hour show if you factor in the extra two minutes it normally record before and after a scheduled recording.

I would strongly suggest users to go for the miglia tvmax instead. It costs the same as eyetv 250, and does hardware encoding in mpeg 2, mpeg 4 and divx formats. And it even uses the same software (eyetv 2) as the eyetv 250. Mpeg 4 or divx take up almost half the hard disc space with the same quality. Also exporting to ipods/personal video players is faster if the recording is in mpeg 4. However, there are a few caveats with tvmax. You lose the game mode of eyetv 250. Also, be aware that as is, TVMax has some recording after sleep issues which result in "0 KB" recordings (probably due to a softwar bug in eyetv 2). To overcome this you have to use a small workaround posted in miglia forum (at the company's website). After that the TVMax works perfectly and you would be much happier with TVMax than eyetv 250.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very nice, January 6, 2007

By 

Loves Macs (Ojai, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elgato Eyetv 250 Digital TV Recorder for Mac 10020251 (Personal Computers)

I'd been considering the EyeTV series for awhile and read a review on the 250. Being a tech junkie and a Mac enthusiast, I bought the 250 for myself for Christmas. It is a well-designed system. I've had no problems with it on my iMac G5 2.0GHZ nor my Powerbook G4 1.5G. I had a weak cable signal from the wall (some of the channels were fuzzy) and solved that with a $20 in-line cable booster. This system integrates very will with a Mac and Mac applications (e.g., Toast 6.0, Quicktime, etc.); it's operation is intuitive. Also, it allows me to digitize an analog signal (from recordings on a TIVO, cable box, or VCR) so I can produce DVDs from old VHS tapes, for example. I am very impressed with it.