ElGato's eyeTV 250?

Hi everyone,
I am looking for a way transfer my VHS tapes onto DVDs. I also want to record from TV if possible. I have been suggested to try eyeTV 250 by Apple. I am looking for good video quality. Can anyone who has used it provide me with some feedback? How is the output quality? are the videos full screen?
Feedback is much appreciated.
Rio.

I use EyeTV 500 all the time and have transferred about 300 tapes. Quality is dependent on the quality of your VHS tape. You can select progressive scan and that gives a bit better improvement over the quality of the original VHS. You can edit them easily enough then export to various formats (avi, mp4, dvd). Make sure you have Toast to burn to DVD and a fast cpu (3ghz). A one hour VHS takes up about 2 gig space.
I highly recommend the product and the procedure. I try and copy a tape every other day or so and if you have a large collection you can transfer everything over a period of a few months.
Tim...

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Cannot comment on either, BUT:
I use the Canopus ADVC110 which does a superb job - and is cheaper than the 300!
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FCP and the Elgato EyeTV 250 - Recording Live Gameplay

I have my Nintendo Wii connected to my Mac Pro, via the EyeTV 250. Due to the EyeTV's current limits, it is impossible to simultaneously record and play gameplay footage without a considerable amount of lag, using just the EyeTV software. The EyeTV FAQ suggests using a 3rd party program to get around this problem....
Another option is to use 3rd party software to capture what's happening on your display - you can isolate the EyeTV video window and record, while you're using EyeTV to play.
I am still fairly new to the world of digital video and editing (first year film student), and I am having trouble figuring this one out. How do I get this working? Any help would be appreciated!
Message was edited by: MuttonChopYaz
Message was edited by: MuttonChopYaz

I don't think there's any way to make FCP do this if that's what you're asking. You need some screen capture software.
SnapzPro is one, there are others.
http://www.eskimo.com/~pristine/screen.html
Message was edited by: J S Langham

Elgato Eye TV 250 makes iMac "pop"?!

Just hooked up Elgato Eye TV 250 a few days ago to my new (Christmas) 24" iMac which has worked flawlessly from day one. I now notice that whenever the Eye TV application is open, every so often I hear a single pop come through my iMac. I haven't timed it, but I'm guessing it happens maybe twice every half hour (?). I am using a pair of external speakers (Altec Lansing) that work without any problems. I can't really tell if the pop comes from the speakers or from the computer itself. It's not a huge deal--a little annoying perhaps--but just thought I'd see if anyone knew what this was or, more importantly, if it could be doing any kind of damage?
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I've been using my eyeTV with my iMac 24" for just about a year with Comcast digital cable. I am able to view HD (16:9) content on those channels that are not scrambled. Today, I added a Direct TV STB (not HD) and I'm able to view razor sharp digital 4:3 as my STB is not HD capable. I don't have a HD box handy, but I would suspect that if you have one, you should be able to view the D*TV HD programming including movies. I know someone who also has the D*TV HD bundle and he routes his composite video out to a Samsung DVD Player/Burner. He can create movie DVDs in 16:9 "HD" using this setup. His TV is connected via HDMI from the DVD player so he can watch those movies in real time as well.
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EyeTV 250 Plus - Signal Loss

Anyone besides me have this issue with the 250 plus?
I have the Hauppauge 950Q from my Vista plugged into the Mac now to use with the EyeTV software. The signal is 75% strength and the quality is 100% 720p and 50% at best for 1080i. 720p I can see okay but the 1080i stops and goes once in a while.
With the 250 plus, I have 100% quality but 10%-20% strength with the 720p and then it's jumping percentages of quality on 1080i with the 10-20% strength. Both are way horrible.
Is the mac mini not powerful enough to run any tuner or is there a stronger HD tuner for Elgato EyeTV that anyone knows of?

Here is a link to the hardware requirements for the EyeTV 250 Plus. http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/250plus/product3.en.html
There is also some FAQs. http://support.elgato.com/index.php?m=knowledgebase&a=view&parentcategoryid=1&languageid=1&group=englishdefault
I would recommend posting your question on the Elgato forums. http://forums.elgato.com/
If you are unable to obtain a sufficiently detailed response there you can submit a ticket to their tech support. http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/support/select-support.en.en.html
Good Luck!

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Hello, I have just purchased an Elgato Eyetv 250. I'm wondering how, or if, I can connect into my Rogers Cable TV program guide (Canada).
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I don't even know where to direct you since neither of the things you mention are Apple products.
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Elgato Eye TV 250 question

Hey guys, im not exactly sure if this is the right place to post this but whatever... i'll post it anyways. I was wondering if this product is able to allow me to record video
of me playing halo 2 onto my computer and put it in I Movie
so that i can edit it.
(thanks in advance for any help you can offer)
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/6244000/wo/DW5MT Nhsb9CV39igsY01YG0Bsjb/1.0.19.1.0.8.25.7.11.1.3
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If you mean recording while you're playing HALO on your Mac, then no. It records from a video input or external source. What you need is a screen recorder program.
Well if you were playing HALO on a game console (say, XBOX) and inputing the video feed in the EyeTV 250, then yes. If you go to the Elgato homepage it's all there. They refer to it as "Game mode".
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MyTV.PVR vs EyeTV 250...Is there a winner?

Hy everyone,
I was looking for opinions regarding myTV.PVR vs EyeTV 250.
Without knowing much about VHS tranfering and recording digitally via Cable TV and before I found out about the existence of EyeTV 250, I purchased myTV.PVR (which came with Eskape software). The salesman assured me that it was a good purchase but I guess they would say anything to sell products.
I told him that my intention was to transfer VHS tapes onto DVDs and also to record from Cable TV onto DVDs via my MacPro. I wanted to get the best video quality possible and something easy enough to use.
Now I'm wondering if I would have been better off with EyeTV 250 instead.
Which one gives better video and sound quality and has better options?
Any opinions?
Rio.
2x2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8) 1GB RAM

I can answer. I've transferred about 300 vhs tapes over to DVD, AVI, MP4, etc.
Quality is dependent upon the quality of the VHS. I have VHS tapes that were created directly from digital video camcorder (medical procedures, surgery training) and the DVD quality is as good as any high quality commercial DVD. I have BetaMax tapes from the 70's and they burn to DVD from EyeTV as good if not better then their original quality. With EyeTV you have several quality options and can select Progressive Scan (which doubles the number of video lines for higher quality. You'll need at least 4Gigs of space for each VHS tape but once burned to DVD you can delete and move to the next.
Toast is the most superior EyeTV is built with Toast in mind. Simply drag an AVI or directly select Toast from EyeTV of any resulting VHS/Digital file that you capture and it will burn a fine DVD with Chapters, Titles, and more.
What I like most about EyeTV is the editing capabilities. You can cut out all the crap, re-edit the movie if you want to improve it (in case you are a budding movie editor yourself) and burn it to DVD.
As for easy - yes, it's pretty straight forward. If you have a two hour VHS movie, say a commercial release of an older James Bond (which is non-Macro, i.e., encrypted) movie it will take two hours to record it. Once recorded you can then edit the items you don't want (warnings, junk...) save the edited file (very quickly) then click on the EyeTV Toast icon and burn it to DVD. If using Progressive Scan you'll get a very high quality DVD. How much time required to burn the DVD depends. If you are using a 3Ghz Mac Pro with 8 Gigs of RAM (my system) it takes about 20-30 minutes.
If you have commercial VHS tapes that are encrypted (MacroVision is used) you'll need to obtain what some sellers call "an enhancer". This is small machine (size of two packs of cigarettes) that sits connected via RCA cables or via SVideo and reconnects out the opposite side to EyeTV, then your video is automatically decrypted.
The resulting DVD quality is "enhanced" and you get a fine quality DVD.
If you are copying over films or TV shows that you have recorded on VHS tapes then the quality is about as good as SVCD, depending on how well your antenna receives the signal. You'll have to cut out the commercials (easy to do with EyeTV) and the resulting DVD quality is as good if not a little better then the original VHS recording.
I did all of the above for about six months and finally realized I could copy a VHS tape via EyeTV and export it to high quality DiVX or AVI format which resulted in an average size of about 700megs. These media files play beautifully on a Mac using the DiVX player or RealMedia Player, QuickTime Pro, VLC and many more media players.
The nice part of the latter is that you can get four or five full high quality movies on a blank DVD. Thus, rather than four or five DVDs you get one DVD with for or five movies.
I hope this explains it all to you. Try buying a used EyeTV 200 off of eBay which is just as good as the EyeTV 250 and 500. They all use the latest EyeTV software and unless you have movies in High Density on VHS (which you won't) you don't need EyeTV 500 (that's what I have) but it does a fine job. Another Mac user that taught me much was a guy who bought a used EyeTV 200 on eBay for just $50. We exchanged DVDs we made from each system and they were both of excellent quality.
I hope this helps.
Tim...

Exporting files from Eyetv 250 plus to imovies09

I AM TRYING TO COPY VHS TAPES TO DVD DISC USING EYETV 250 PLUS. CAN COPY FILES TO EYETV FINE. IN EYETV THEY ARE ABOUT 3 GB. WHEN I EXPORT TO IMOVIES09 I GET 3 FILES, A THUMBNAIL FILE ABOUT 300000MB, A QUICKTIME FILE OF 3 GB AND A DV MOVIE FILE OF 30-40 GB. THIS IS FILLING MY COMPUTER VERY FAST.

A couple of thoughts...
The current version of EyeTV software is 3.3. Make sure you are on it.
You should be able to open the "Recordings" view of EyeTV.
Right Click on the recording you want. Click Export in the Pop Up menu. In the Format box, Choose "For iMovie 09"
Give it a place to save to, and click SAVE.
Now open iMovie. Click FILE/IMPORT/Movie... and navigate to the file you just created in EyeTV.

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Has anyone used either of these products? I am looking for something with good picture quality and I have digital cable provided by Cox Communications, any pro's and con's of either product?

Hello,
I have the Miglia Mini (not HD) but back when I bought mine it came with Elgato's EyeTV software. The Miglia devices no longer come with the outstanding EyeTV application they come with Miglia's own package, which although I haven't used I suspect is not as well refined. If I were buying again tomorrow I would be going for the EyeTV250. It's feature set plus the features in EyeTV 2.5 (software) make it a very worthy purchase.
Watching/recording TV would take about 40% of a 1.25GHz G4 processor. On a 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme it takes around 25% of one of the cores to do the same.
The Miglia turned my iMac G4 20" into our main TV something the iMac 24" has taken over from very nicely.
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I use and old iMac G5 1.8Ghz (Mac OS 10.5.3) as a TV using Elgato Diversity and Elgato EyeTV 3.0.2
For quite a few months now I have an intermittent problem. When I start up EyeTV after about 10 - 30 sec the iMac shuts down instantly as if someone pilled the plug on it. I start up again and it does it again, then it will behave itself for a while.
I have heard of some older iMacs having a shut down problems, however it only happens with EyeTV and the serial number of my iMac doesn't fall within the region of the problematic iMacs.
It had the same problem with EyeTV 2.
Any ideas are welcome.
Thanks, Jeff.

Hi jeff Leyshon 66-
Have you tried interfacing the EyeTV device via a powered USB hub?
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Luck-
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Eyetv 250 importing to imovie from vhs tapes

Okay Guys, I need a lot of help.
I am new to mac and I love it. I used to use Pinnacle Studio 10. I have a lot of old camcorder tapes which through the use of a tape adapter I am able to play camcorder tapes in the VCR. Then connect the VCR to elgato eye tv. I use the eye tv VHS assistant and play my movie into elgato.
I want to encode these movies and ultimatly put them on DVD.
So after I did the import I tried to drag the file into IMOVIE.
I got this message..
The file could not be imported: The file “MacBook/Volumes/backup drive/EyeTV Archive/My VHS Tape - 9/10/06 9_21 PM.eyetv” can’t be imported; QuickTime couldn’t parse it: -43
I realized that the problem is the format that was imported was not compatible with imovie. I did more research and realized I that i could export the file to another format. There are several options, MPEG 4, Imovie, IDVD, etc.
What setting do I use to export the files? Also I want to combine several different sections of video. Can I do this. How can I export the section as a clip and drag the clip into imovie.
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I just imported my first clip into iMovie today and it was captured from a Hi-8 Camcorder using Eyetv250. I used eyetv2 software's export option and chose "iMovie HD" as the format. I only did this because I thought I had to, knowing that it was going to be imported in iMovie HD6. This however created a 13+gig file from what was originally a 2.5gig file ! So , I don't think that was the right choice. I am going to go back and export using the Quicktime Movie setting toward the bottom of the export format option list (within eyetv2). That setting will produce a video export of the same size as the original.
Another thing I am going to try is to go into the "package" ( a package is basically a folder ) that is created by eyetv2 and try dropping the quicktime file directly into iMovie and see if it will import that way. If you go to the folder where your .eyetv file is placed (Eyetv archive) and right click on that .eyetv file you can choose to "show package contents". When you do that you will find a number of files, including a .mpg file which I assume contains the actual video footage which I would think iMovie can import directly. I'll come back here and post what happens but go ahead and try it.
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in the max resolution mode in eye tv (720 x 576 i think) the image has lines banding accross the tv image.
This only occurs when the CPU is relatively idle
e.g. give it a task and the lines go away.
other resolutions don't cause a problem
any ideas or work arounds?
btw. i have tried all usb ports and hubs

> my macbook pro has 2gb - so a bit different
it could also possibly be linked with the harddrive read/writing as when it is busy doing so the lines briefly stop
I also have a MBP with 2GB of memory, and have not experienced any issues with my EyeTV Hybrid.
Have you tried configuring EyeTV to utilize RAM (instead of the HDD) for buffering Live TV? Also, are you utilizing the latest version of EyeTV (2.3.3)?
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ElGato's eyeTV 250?

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