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The software has a cable or satellite sytle program guide that makes finding your favorite show on any channel simple and only one click away. The USB extention cable is great if you want to tuck away the tuner stick or just don't want it sticking out the back of your desktop. Recording a show or a series is also be done with a click or two. This item was a great buy. Pinnacle tuner comes with EyeTV Lite, the Elgato tuner comes with EyeTV hybrid. Another cool feature, you can use the mini remote that comes with your iMac. If you're looking at buying the Pinnnacle TV tuner for Mac, make a better investment and buy the Elgato EyeTV. The Elgato EyeTV tuner is an over all great product and very user friendly.
I also live in a studio so my computer is in the same room that I sleep in, easy to lay down and put on something to watch on my computer. I also used to to record old 8mm tapes from my camcorder. There is a newer one than this which has better Clear QAM support and is the 2008 edition, but other than that this product is still great. The remote is very unresponsive when you are only a couple feet back and not in the direct line of sight of the Hybrid device.All in all, probably the best out there for what it does, seems like a lot of people are satisfied with it, especially for $100. Works great but the cable on that comes with the EyeTV Hybrid is a female, and so is the camcorder, therefore you DO need you own male to male RCA if you are not using and Svideo cable (which a lot of old 8mm/hi8 camcorders do not have). But there's a new 2008 edition that Amazon does not mention, the remote is lame and unresponsive, the editing features on EyeTV are horrible. And since the camcorder is mono out and the cable is L/R you'll have to set your audio in your video editing program to be mono so it doesn't come out on just the right side.
Would be cool if I had dual monitors. I could've probably gotten a mono to stereo L/R cable but it did fine for me.I either didn't to all of my research or Elgato just fluffs up the features and makes it sound amazing, when in fact it's pretty basic. It does the job and EyeTV is cool, but the menus aren't very intuitive, and neither is the remote since there are 4 colored and unlabeled buttons and I still forget which is which. I was excited to see the price of this, but there is NO hint whatsoever that this is the 2007 edition besides that fact that there is a date for when the product was first listed. Good for someone who doesn't watch too much TV and is always using a computer or wants to set up a computer as their "media center". I haven't A/Bed products to compare quality or features but this is definitely what I needed. I use it to watch HDTV on my 22" computer monitor, and it's not even and HD LCD but still looks great.
If you need it to record from an external source, definitely cool, but if thats ALL you need, I'd rather go for a Canopus ADVC.
It's extremely easy to set up and record. I've never used another type of product like this so I can't really compare. I am very pleased with my purchase of the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid. That being said, all the other versions that work with macs seemed to be more expensive.The only thing that I had a problem with is the editing aspect of the software. It's very awkward and hard to use. I liked everything about it. However, you can export the video files to be used in various editing programs so it doesn't really matter that the EyeTV editing sucks.
A bonus I was not expecting was the ability to transfer my old copy protected VHS tapes to the Mac (for subsequent transfer to iPod or DVD) with ease and at pretty good quality. Clearly, it does not have the automatic "find similar shows" that is included in Tivo, but the advantages outweigh this loss:1) near limitless recording capacity - constrained only by capacity of hard discs you wish to hook up2) very easy to jump/scroll/scrub through recordings to find a particular part. This product does everything I would was expecting and hoping for. Since owning it, I have stopped using a DVD recorder.
tough. Further investigation & emails to elgato reveal that the unit has failed & as it is more than 12 months old. Bought it to use on my macbook pro, didn't really use it that much. After 14 months I had an error that it was connected to USB 1 (which it obviously wasn't). I'd be very wary before spending money on this company's inferior products
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