Mom gets an HDTV, sounds like she will like it
This Christmas, I gave my mom a digital/analogHybridpersonal video recorder (PVR) for her iMac Macintosh computer.
After decades of the family reading in Popular Science and elsewhere how families would soon have flat-screen television sets, she now finally has one of her own.
The device was very inexpensive, quite small, and state of the art. It is made/sold by a company called Elgato.
Elgato also provides very nice custom software for these devices, which are basically virtual television sets.
You plug one into the USB 2.0 port in the back of your recent model Apple Macintosh computer, and then plug a TV antenna or cable TV cable into it.
It works with both the new digital/HDTV format that everyone is converting to, and the traditional analog TV format that everyone used back in the 1900s.
An iMac like hers has: a 20-nch color flat panel display, MPEG video support, digital audio support, a DVD-burner, and a really big hard disk. So there is really not too much of the hardware you find in a TiVo that is missing from her Macintosh.
Just the TV tuner!
Which is exactly what this Elgato EyeTV Hybrid device provides. It can receive either analog or digital TV signals, just like the new TiVo Series 3 systems.
However, unlike TiVo Series 3 - it does not carry a $799 price tag (nothing anywhere near that) and it does not require spending a dime on the electronic programming guide. I just received an email from Elgato this week and they are keeping the same program guide service free until the end of 2008.
In addition, this device comes with a very nice free remote control, and it works with the sleek, minimalist Apple Remote that comes with all new iMacs introduced this year.
Mom and my stepdad are opening their Christmas presents tonight. So I got to blog about it one day sooner. Tomorrow, I guess the whole family will be able to see digital HDTV.
The future is here!
And it does not cost anywhere close to a thousand bucks!!
Currently playing in iTunes: A Kind Of Magic by Queen.
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apple, hdtv, ntsc, atsc, video, television, entertainment, recreation, macintosh
posted by John Collins @ 6:52 PM
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