Comments on: Watching and Recording TV on My Mac.

Question: Watching and Recording TV on My Mac.

rossination — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 17:28:25 -0800

I'd like to be able to watch tv and record it on my G4 iBook. I know that there are a plethora of ways to do this on the PC side, with a special card or whatnot. Is there a (cheap!) way to do this with my mac? It has to be external, obviously, since I'm going to be using it with the iBook.

By: qwip

qwip — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 17:33:01 -0800

There's EyeTV.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 18:39:53 -0800

Slingbox

By: danb

danb — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 18:49:37 -0800

Slingbox is only for PC.

By: meta87

meta87 — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:12:12 -0800

I looked into this and it seemed that EyeTV was all that I found. It is pretty expensive.

I'd say the best option is to buy a extremely cheap pc, through a pvr-150 in it and then stream the recorded tv to your i-book. Because the pvr-150 uses hardware recording, the pc doesn't need to have a good processor at all. I used it in a pentium 2 400 mhz and it worked beautifully.

By: pwb503

pwb503 — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:15:20 -0800

If you don't want to involve a Wintel box, then check this tutorial out. If you don't mind using a Wintel box, then this one might be good too.

Keep us posted, I'd like to know how you get this working and how you like it if you do.

By: misterbrandt

misterbrandt — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:38:38 -0800

Hauppauge seems to provide external USB tv tuners that are (claim to be) Mac compatible.

By: bcwinters

bcwinters — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 21:01:52 -0800

If you want cheap, you could borrow a camcorder, hook your home entertainment system up to its inputs and run its output into the firewire port on your iBook.

You can then import video on the fly with iMovie and do what you like with it from there.

It's certainly not NEARLY the best solution for watching shows and flipping channels and whatnot, but if there's a program that you want to digitize, it will get the job done.

By: nathan_teske

nathan_teske — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 21:14:38 -0800

If you're a Comcast Digital subscriber, you can pull it straight off your DVR.

You could also hack a Tivo and run Tivo Tool.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 22:28:43 -0800

eyeTV is pretty much the way to go for a Mac. If you're feeling adventurous, O'Reilly has a more DIY approach.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 07:07:22 -0800

Another option is this plextor item. Elgato's ITV USB is a little cheaper, but near as I can tell, none of the self-contained options are "cheap."