So while everyone is waiting to see if Jobs is going to announce a ‘Digital Hub’ solution for television on the Mac, other companies like El Gato (le rawr!) are releasing products for OSX to keep it up to date with PVR functions. Their new EyeTV 200 is a lot better than their previous USB 1.1 model right out of the gate: the 200 uses FireWire, which means it has the bandwidth to record full MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video at DVD resolutions. It’s not HDTV quality, mind you, but then again neither is Windows Media Center Edition, either. Even better, the files it records are easy to use with iMovie and iDVD, so archiving recorded television is pretty painless.
Unfortunately, El Gato doesn’t included an IR interface with the $330 unit, so it has not way to change channels on satellite or cable that uses a digital tuner. Until the company provides a solution for that, it might just be easier to go with a dedicated set-top PVR (or wait for Apple to decide that video matters).
Product Review: EyeTV 200 Firewire Digital Video Recorder [PowerbookCentral]
