MyTV.PVR vs EyeTV 250...Is there a winner?

Question

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

Answer 1

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...