Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus Digital/Analog TV Receiver and Video Converter | 
| Brand: Elgato
Category: CE
List Price: $199.95
Buy New: $169.78
as of 7/31/2010 23:23 EDT details
You Save: $30.17 (15%)
New (17) Used (5) Refurbished (2) from $104.51
Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  59 reviews
Format: CD
Platform: Mac
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Macintosh
CPU Manufacturer: Intel
CPU Speed: 1
CPU Type: AMD Athlon
Processors: 1
System Memory: 128000
Memory Type: DRAM
Hard Drive Size: 1
Graphics Card: This is the description of the PC Graphics
Graphics RAM: 256
Graphics Card Interface: AGP
Native Resolution: 640x480
Display Size: 669.2913385826772
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 2.5 x 7.8
Legal Disclaimer: Shipping is 3-5 days FedEx or UPS with tracking number. Brand New. Continental USA street address ONLY, we do not ship to P/O box, APO, AE, or international addresses
MPN: 10020780
Model: 10020780
UPC: 852095000751
EAN: 0852095000751
ASIN: B0013PQ6P4
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks
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| Features:
| • | Watch, pause, and rewind free over-the-air HDTV, Clear QAM or analog television on your Mac. | | • | Record TV shows and export videos to your iPod, Apple TV, or iPhone. | | • | iPod Assistant to convert analog video to iPod/iPhone/Apple TV formats | | • | Includes Roxio Toast 8 Basic disc burning software and EyeTV 3 software. | | • | Records high quality video and frees up your processor for other activities. |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
EyeTV 250 Plus is a hybrid TV Tuner for the Mac with a powerful hardware encoder for higher quality recordings and smaller sized video files. EyeTV 250 Plus receives both free over-the-air HDTV as well as analog TV, and offers a complete solution for moving your video collection from VHS tape to DVD-Video. EyeTV 250 Plus is future-proof for the upcoming digital TV switch-over in 2009, and is ideal for those who want the flexibility of a digital and analog TV tuner together with a hardware encoder in one device. EyeTV 250 Plus delivers free over-the-air digital TV to your Mac in stunning 720p or 1080i HDTV (MPEG-2) and other digital television standards, as well as conventional analog TV via standard cable or antenna. EyeTV 250 Plus also comes with a break-out cable for composite video and S-Video, enabling you to connect a set-top box directly to your Mac. EyeTV 250 Plus' powerful hardware encoder also records high quality video from analog sources, compressing audio and video signals to small size MPEG-2 files and freeing up your processor for other activities. MPEG-2 is a premium-quality video compression standard which is the basis for DVD and digital television. Use EyeTV 250 Plus to capture video and convert VHS tapes into high-quality digital files. EyeTV 250 Plus' easy-to-use VHS Assistant will walk you through each step, from connecting your VCR or camcorder right through to burning a DVD or sending the recording to iTunes. Export clips and entire episodes to your video-capable iPod, Apple TV, and iPhone Store your collection on an external drive, or burn it to disc using Roxio Toast 8 Basic (included) Convert old videotapes to digital files using the VHS Assistant
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 59
 A Great Choice June 19, 2010
Mark E. Elliott (Mechanicsville, VA USA)
I have owned a number of PC tuners both USB and internal card. This is probably the best one. Since I don't really use the DVR functionality, I can't speak to that very much, but the picture and audio quality as well as the performance is probably the best I have seen. I replaced a dedicated HDTV Tuner and DVD recorder for this unit because the performance and picture quality of the name brand HDTV tuner was so bad. The EyeTV was extremely easy to setup on the Mac. You, basically, just plug it in, install the software on the CD, and start using it. It switches channels quickly, resizes quickly, and easily handles pauses and restarts. In short, I haven't had any problems that were the fault of the unit, and I am very satisfied with the picture quality and performance. I should also note that reception is poor with my current antenna system, and the EyePC handles the problem as well or better than any of the other HDTVs or converters in the house. For proper comparison to you potential performance, you should know that I have a 15", 2.8Ghz, MacBook Pro with 8G of RAM.
Mark E.
Great for Mac's April 23, 2010
Weather Nut (MI USA)
This works well with Cable (analog and clear qualm digital). It records and edits TV shows with ease. It also works very well to import VHS tapes.
My only issue is that the free Toast burning will only burn 2 files per DVD. If the files are not exported directly out of Eye TV there is also a 30min limit on DVDs.
Overall it works very well and I would recommend it to any Mac user.
Watch HD on your Mac April 9, 2010
B. Shaw (Kalamazoo, MI United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I owned an earlier version of the elgato eyetv, the one without the QAM tuner. I sold it and purchased this one so I would have the QAM tuner. Works great and the HD channels look great. I record lots of TV shows on my iMac. The included software makes editing the recorded program easy. It also can send the files to iTunes for easy syncing to an iPod or iPhone.
decent but not perfect April 6, 2010
AJL (South LA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Elgato EyeTV 250 plus is a good product. I love the video quality and the small size. The software is were i have my biggest complaint. The product does a good job of giving you everything you may need but they seem to piece mill it together. I bought this to transition from having a window media center PC box just as a dvr and a Imac for everything else. I wanted to reduce the heat and noise and my on pc was starting to show its age.
I was surprised that a mac product didn't do a better job are at least as good a job as the win mce. Its not that the software doesn't do the things I want. It just is not easily done like win mce. Exporting video to a format that my xbox 360 can play hasn't been a hit. I can do it but it the software lack feature that I wanted built in and it is not well designed. I know that their are some scripting tools that i can use that will probably solve this, but out the box this software is not as easy to use a the windows mce. The tvguide software is unimpressive considering I will have to pay for it next year and my old win media center provided it for free. I am a tech guy but I love how my mac seems to get things done because someone has usually thought it out already. This software is disappointment on that level.
Only other complaint is that the EyeTv seems to really have an effect on my system. There is a noticeable difference when I have the software running. I am so glad that It has hardware decoded because without it i would have killed my system resources. Not that my imac is not usable but it loses its pop with this running. I have a 24" imac Core2Duo 2.16 GHZ with 3 GB of RAM running snow leapord. I was thinking I would eventually hook it to an old G4 mini mac I had and leave it in the living room but after seeing how it effected my machine I not so sure anymore. I am mainly capturing HD content also with 30 min using about 3.7 GB.
Remote sucks... they need to take notes from boxee or someone else. With computer and onscreen displays their is no reason for controls that are not initiative.
On a good note it is very versatile software. It definitely has more freedom to change to other formats and i sure overtime i will tune it to perfection. So if you like total control and don't mind setting up scripts you be fine with this. Did I mention the quality was great.
However if you looking to switch to a all mac environment and have use win mce you may be left a little disappointed.
 The remote control and volume functions are tedious and touchy March 31, 2010
TicketMediaGuy (Los Angeles, CA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
For the most part I'm pleased. Aside from getting a computer that has it's own TV Tuner in it... this seems to fit the bill.
Although....I'm not liking the fact that there is a seperate volume control for the EyeTV program... and once you get to the maximum sound level on the EyeTV volume, the system volume then takes over to make it louder. At which point when you want to decrease the volume, the system volume stays where it is, and the volume decreases on the EyeTV program. This poses a problem for me since my iMac chimes the time every 15 minutes and also informs me when emails arrive... and it scares the bejeezus out of me when I've got the EyeTV sound low, but the system level is still high. Short of getting up from where I'm at to change the volume on the keyboard... this is annoying and should be fixed to use SYSTEM volume only. This way I can use one remote... and not the remote and the wireless keyboard.
The remote control functions are also a bit touchy. For example... when I want to get the menu to come up while using the remote (wether I use the iMac remote, the EyeTV supplied remote or my Logitech remote) the menu shows up, then disapears - as if I hit the button on the remote twice. I admit that since I'd like to use my Logitech universal remote there is some fine tuning I can do to the remote to make this work better, but there's to to be some fine tuning to the EyeTV software and hardware so that it works correctly out of the box.
Because the EyeTV system can read some of my cable company's digital and HD signals, I've been able to get more channels than I would have through the cable just being plugged into my TV or TiVo machine. Although... it did not automatically identify those digital stations. It does just fine with the analog stations. I spent a good portion of my Saturday manually identifying and labeling the digital channels so that the on board TV Guide could recognize the shows on those stations.
Other reviewers are correct in saying that the little box that attaches to your Mac does NOT convert the video into an iTunes compatible format. The recordings done through EyeTV are saved in a completely different format. The conversion process happens inside your computer. You can manually kick off the process, or you can have it automatically kick off once a scheduled recording has been completed. This requires your Mac to have the necessary processing power to accomplish this task.
The EyeTV Software does do periodic updates.. I'm just hoping that one of these days those updates will include what I'm griping about.
All in all after the initial set up, I'm happy I have this product. It clears the clutter in my bedroom. I no longer need a TV set, a DVD player and my TiVo machine (although, I'm still going to hook up the TiVo to the additional Input for EyeTV so that I have an additional source for storage and recording). I also have a bunch of rare VHS tapes that I'd like to get into a digital format, so this should work wonders for it.
Be warned, though: If you're the type of person who like to hold onto the shows you've recorded... you're gonna need to find additional storage space over time... so start looking for external hard drives now...in the immortal words from Jaws, "We're gonna need a bigger boat..."
Showing reviews 1-5 of 59
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