[G4] tv on a G4

[Daniel Brieck]

Every TV recorded is going to have the problem of not being able to 
record and watch TV at the same time, unless the product has more than 
one TV tuner. Here is another suggestion and option if any of you have 
a somewhat powerful  PC box laying around, you can put it to work for 
recording TV and then watch the recorded programs on your mac using 
quicktime. All you need is a pc with a  Pentium III 600 MHz and Windows 
XP for best results (which is still not great) but don't try to make a 
TV recorder with Windows 98 it will not run more than a few days. Once 
you have the PC all you need then is a PCI / AGP tuner card. I would 
recommend an ATI all in wonder 128 card, because their cheap ($40.00 - 
50.00)  and work reasonably well.

This is a good solution because it gets the work of recording TV off 
your mac and on to another piece of hard ware, which is how it should 
be. The work of recording and encoding TV takes a good deal of power 
and should not be happening  with your Mac's  precious CPU cycles, 
which in most cases we need every-bit of  to get stuff done. A more 
ideal situation would be an independent set top Tv box that records TV 
and stores TV shows locally; however, unlike a Tivo this would  allow 
you to also use your computer to configure the box and watch / transfer 
recorded shows to networked computers.

So an independent PC box is almost ideal for recording TV. Also if you 
don't want to use Windows OS to do the recording a Linux OS can be made 
to do the job. However, I have no idea how hard it would be to get such 
a product running with any measure of success. I would even like to do 
this to my own current set-up to drop the Windows OS, because of its 
annoying quarks. (Ex's 1. Must enable / disable windows folder file 
sharing on a daily basis in order to successfully share /watch the 
programs recorded on a networked computer (mac or pc) 2. TV recording 
Stops with the ATI software after the Win Xp os has been running more 
than 18 Days, so must restart before then) As of yet though I have not 
had the time to try to get TV recording to happen on a Linux OS. It 
will probably not be easy , because getting stuff to work on linux can 
be a challenge.

This is yet another way to watch recorded TV on your mac. Here is all 
you need
1 PC with a  Pentium® III or similar processor (~ 500MHz or better) 
(128 MB of ram or better) (10 GB  or better Hard drive) with a open PCI 
slot or upgradeable AGP slot.

2. A TV tuner card that supports TV recording  and Scheduling( Eg ATI 
All in wonder 128 or better)

3. High Speed Network connection to your mac and other computers

Dan Brieck Jr.

On Feb 7, 2004, at 11:29 AM, Renita Williams wrote:

> Thanks Jim,
>
> You are the first person to mention not being able to tape and view at 
> the same time.  I wonder if this is a drawback of Formac TVR also.  I 
> am now considering either the fire wire version of EyeTV or Formac.
>
> Renita
>
> On Saturday, February 7, 2004, at 11:21  AM, Jim Burger wrote:
>
>>
>> I use Eye TV on a Sawtooth
>
>>  I've found no way to 'tape' and view at the same time though.
>
>> I can highly recommend it. Although I saw they have a new product out 
>> that works with fire wire(don't know if it also works with USB) that 
>> you might also check out.
>>
>> Jim Burger
>