Easy way to watch cable TV on a Mac running OSX
This past weekend I picked up the Miglia TVMicro TV tuner card, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to watch live cable TV on your mac. The official desciption:
TVMicro, powered by EyeTV 2, enables you to watch analog TV on your Mac wherever you are.
Barely the size of an iPod Shuffle, TVMicro delivers a great picture and is compact enough to take with you on any journey. Simply plug TVMicro into a free USB 2.0 port, connect your antenna or cable and start watching TV!
TVMicro is perfectly suited for users on the go or people wanting a quick and simple solution to watch TV on their Mac.
Key Features
- Watch analog TV on your Mac almost anywhere in the world
- Watch TV in a window or in full screen
- Browse Online TV Guides to find the right TV show for you
- Remote Control included for perfect viewing experience
Here’s my mini-review:
The total cost for this item was $100 from the apple store. Compared to other tuners on the market, this is a deal. The hardware is small, about the size of a iPod shuffle, and takes up very little space.
To use, you plug your cable line (coaxial cable) directly into in the TVMicro, and then connect the TVMicro to your computer via USB. There’s no need for a cable box or a converter of any kind — the TVMicro comes “cable-ready” and supports 125 channels.
The TVMicro comes with a pretty awesome piece of software called EyeTV, which allows you to view live TV, schedule future recordings, edit videos, export to ipod, etc. It comes with support for TitanTV, an online TV scheduler, that essentially tells you what’s on when. TitanTV used in conjunction with EyeTV lets you remotely schedule programs for recording, so you can schedule recordings from any computer with an internet connection.
In terms of performance, the TVMicro is acceptable. The picture quality still has plenty of digital artifacts, especially at full screen 1024 x 768. It’s about the same quality as old-fashioned airwave-based TV transmission, so don’t expect hi-def. But for my needs, it’s great, and I quickly look past the minor loss in quality.
The TVMicro also comes with remote control, which lets you change channels, select pre-recorded shows, control the volume etc. I’ve heard that the TVMicro also supports the Apple remote, though I haven’t tested this myself.
Since the TVMicro requires the use of your computer to do the MPEG encoding, it’s not a good idea to have multiple applications open while streaming live TV, as the performance degrades. There are hardware-based encoders (like the TvMax, also by Miglia), but it costs two and a half times more. The advantage of hardware-based encoders is that they don’t require your computer to do the heavy processing. The TVMicro, on the other hand, is small, convenient, and relatively inexpensive.
The bottom line: If you fit the following criteria, this is a must-have:
- you own a mac
- you don’t have a television in the room where you keep your computer
- you do have an unused cable line in the room where you keep your mac
- you care more about convenience/price over high-def
For more info or to buy the Miglia TVMicro, visit the official page or the Apple Store.
2 Comments
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Great review. Alissa and I are contemplating getting a mini + 30″ monitor instead of a new TV. For that we’d probably get the TVMax though.
Yeah, I’d agree… Get the TVMax, or else the quality will look pretty bad on full screen.
The two big makers of mac video solutions are Elgato and Miglia (Elgato makes the software, EyeTV, used by both).
The TVMax is perfectly sized for the Mini, so yeah, they’d work well together. You’d also get FrontRow with the Mini, making it a nice DVR set as well.
I too was thinking about getting a Mini… apparently two macs can easily connect via Bonjour, so you can send media from one machine (Powerbook attached to a 300 Gig external drive) to another (mac mini) wirelessly.
You’ll be happy got the mac, no doubt….