[mythtv-users] EyeTV

[Brian Wood]

On Sep 18, 2006, at 9:28 PM, Jon Bishop wrote:

> Yea, I was talking about the device itself, though I've also looking
> into the plextor device as an option. Doubt there is any plans for
> porting the backend to run on the mac as of yet though, so I guess
> the hardware isn't relative at this time...

I use EyeTV only to record programs on channels with no commercials  
if I know I will simply burn them to a DVD and not watch them through  
Myth. Takes some of the load off the Myth system.

I haven't tried the El Gato hardware device, but the Plextor is a  
great unit. As with all Plextor products it's a tad pricey, but they  
can be had refurbished at a cost competitive with other USB devices.

The only real problem is that the Plextor does not embed the audio  
into the encoded MPEG stream as the PVRs do, it outputs audio as  
uncompressed PCM and you have to process it yourself. I think this is  
because the chip they use was originally designed for video security  
use where they weren't concerned with audio.

But direct hardware MPEG4 encoding is a good thing.