Elgato EyeTV EZ Opinions

[Eidorian]

Apple.com has this for sale and I've been looking for a TV tuner for my iMac G5. I don't need to capture from a camcorder or other analog devices. I only want to watch TV and maybe play my Gamecube on my iMac. They make mention of running a console on your Mac.

I might occasionally capture and that requires you to use to use you Mac since the Elgato EyeTV EZ doesn't have encoding hardware. Any opinions on it?

Edit: Macworld seems to like it. And I don't mind scaling my S-Video up to 1440 x 900 to game.

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/gameroom/2005/12/eyetvez/index.php

 

[Madmic23]

Should work great

I have the ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 which Elgato sold before the EyeTV EZ, and it works great for gaming. I was playing my ps2 on it just last night. Make sure you hook it up with an SVideo cable though.
As for capturing, it it works good on medium quality on my 2ghz iMac, but I can't record at the highest setting.
My only complaint about the ATI TV Wonder is it tends to heat up a bit whenever it's plugged in. If you get the EZ, let me know if it heats up too. Thanks.

 

[Eidorian]

Yeah, I have S-video for my Gamecube and coaxial for my collge cable.

I don't expect to do the highest recording quality. I was interested in the ATI USB 2.0 TV Wonder a rew months ago and now they have this new one. What's the recording resolution on your TV Wonder?

 

[Madmic23]

I'm not at home right now to check out the exact settings I have it on at the moment, but the recording resolution should be exactly the same as the EZ, as that is handled by the eyeTV software and not the actual hardware device. When you're watching live video, you can watch it at 100% quality which is 720x480 which looks pretty good, especially when using S-Video.
I would always just record on the lowest setting, which was something like 320x240 or something. I would do that because I was just recording wrestling and would delete it after I watched it to free up space.

 

[Eidorian]

Well I'm more of a 640 x 480 person. I have an external hard drive so I have the storage.