EyeTV 250

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A Hardware Review
by James F. Weiher

Product: EyeTV 250
Company: Elgato Systems

Price: $199.95 SRP; some Mac vendors discount this price.

Minimum System: 500 MHz G4; 512MB RAM and USB2

Test Systems:
1.25 GHz MDD G4 with 1.25GB RAM, 80 GB HD, OS-X 10.4.8, and
1.67 GHz G4 PB with 1.5GB RAM and 100 GB HD, OS-X 10.4.8

Reviewer's Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Apples

Elgato's EyeTV 250 is an excellent product for Mac users who want an analog TV receiver/recorder with hardware encoding. With its TV tuner you can view and/or record standard TV. With its composite and S-Video inputs you can easily convert other media, e.g. VCR tapes, to digital format. It comes bundled with Elgato's EyeTV2 software, a $79.95 value, which includes many advanced features like the built in program guide, the ability to program recordings, flexible editing of recordings, export to other digital formats, and burning to DVD.

The EyeTV 250 comes in a small package: it measures just 4" x 2.5" x 1", and weighs less than half a pound. It is powered by an external power supply. The TV, USB and power connectors are at one end.

On the other end are the LED power indicator and the breakout cable connector for attaching audio, composite video and S-Video inputs. Included are a remote control, a USB cable, the EyeTV software and a users manual as PDF file.

As with some other products in Elgato's line, EyeTV 250 is a joint project with Teratec. In fact, the unit I received for review is more strongly branded Teratec than Elgato. On the top it is labeled only "EyeTV" and on the bottom "Teratec Cinergy 850e PVR" with a Teratec UPC label. The remote control is branded Teratec and the Apple System Profiler identifies the unit as Teratec.

Regardless of branding, the big value of the EyeTV 250 is its hardware encoding into MPEG-2 format. Without that, the raw video of 170 MB/sec would have to be compressed to 6-8 MB/sec by the computer for recording. Such a heavy load would require the fastest Intel and dual processor G5 Macs. Compared to the previously-reviewed Eye-TV Hybrid which cannot hardware encode, EyeTV 250 takes this burden off the computer, allowing Macs as slow as 1GHz to record at the 90 min DVD level. On the 1.25GHz G4, I recorded at the highest quality of 2.7 GB/hr DVD-compliant MPEG-2, with no artifacts or dropped frames. On average my CPU usage was under 40%.

You can choose the compression format for recording depending on the amount of disk storage you want to consume and the picture quality you want:

Quality	File size	Format	Frame size	Avg Mbps
Video CD	589 MB/hr	MPEG-1	352x240	1.15
Super Video CD	726 MB/hr	MPEG-2	480x480	1.50
DVD 240 min	940 MB/hr	MPEG-2	352x480	2.00
DVD 180 min	1.3 GB/hr	MPEG-2	720x480	3.0
DVD 120 min	1.8 GB/hr	MPEG-2	720x480	4.0
DVD 90 min	2.7 GB/hr	MPEG-2	720x480	6.0

For many users the above options are completely adequate, but for the advanced user there is a custom option in which all desired encoding parameters can be set, e.g. the maximum bit rate is selectable from 128kbps to 15Mbps. Unfortunately the direct encoding to the more advanced MPEG-4 format is not available in the EyeTV 250 as it had been in the prior EyeTV 200. The MPEG-4 format results in smaller file sizes than MPEG-2 even for the full quality level. Users desiring the option of direct encoding into MPEG-4 might want to consider Miglia's TVMax or the recently released TVMax+, which are slightly larger and more expensive than Elgato's EyeTV 250 but have more encoding options. MPEG-4 format is of course available as a post-recording export option in the EyeTV 2 program, but that is a separate step.

Hardware encoding results in a 2 sec delay between incoming video/audio signal and its appearance on the USB bus. For most users this delay is of no consequence because audio and video remain in synch. However there is a "game" option, which turns off all encoding and allows for essentially zero latency display of the video signal.

Recordings are stored in an Eye-TV Archive as streaming MPEG-2 files. You can store your collection of recordings on an external drive, or burn it to discs using the disk spanning option of Toast 8. Recordings can be edited in the EyeTV 2 program and either clips or entire edited programs converted directly to DVD format using Toast 8.

However if you wish to use the greater flexibility and more professional features of Apple's iMovie and iDVD you need to export the EyeTV recording to an iMovie project. This conversion is necessary because iMovie and iDVD do not handle streaming MPEG-2 format. To do this just choose the export "for iMovie" option. This creates an iMovie project consisting of a set of seamless 2GB DV clips, as required by iMovie. Be careful not to choose the export "for DV" because this will result in a single DV file that will most likely be larger than iMovie's 2GB clip limit.

There are 26 different export options, including three easy export options for iPods.

Fastest encoding speed: 320x240, MPEG-4; 10 MB/min
Smallest file size: 320x240, H.264; 5.7MB/min
Best quality: 640x480, H.264; 10MB/min

Also included are export options for high compression tailored for Email and Web, as well as full-featured options for DV, QT, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, and Windows Media. Audio can be extracted and exported to AAC or Apple Lossless Audio. For users having only a version of Toast prior to the current 8.0, the option "for Toast" creates a compatible file.

An early reviewer of the EyeTV 250 complained of unacceptable long times for export to MPEG-4 format. I have not encountered this problem and suspect that in the latest version of the EyeTV software, v2.3.3, Elgato has significantly improved the export algorithms.

Overall the Eye-TV 250 is an excellent choice for any Mac with at least a 1 MHz G4. Even for a fast Intel Mac I would choose the EyeTV 250 over the Hybrid unless extreme small size and bus power were overriding high priorities. Hardware encoding always takes a load off the computer, even if it could handle the load.

There were only two faults that I found in the unit I tested:

The TV input used a European slip-on connector rather than the standard US F-type connector (an adaptor was included) and
The TV reception quality of the TV-Tuner was not up to the high standards I expect from Elgato.

The less than perfect TV reception was observed only on some cable channels and seems to be from some sort of interference or low sensitivity of the tuner. Replacing the unit with a new one from Elgato did not improve the signal. In all cases the video and audio quality were excellent when using the S-Video or composite inputs from a VHS tape, a DVD player or the TV Tuner from a VCR player. TV reception was fine with the EyeTV Hybrid, reviewed earlier, at http://www.mlmug.org/EyeTVH.html or with a Miglia Alchemy TV card. Elgato reports that interference is sometimes observed with the EyeTV 250 and that they are working to eliminate the problem. I suspect that the sloppy European slip-on connector rather than a direct screw-on F-connector may also contribute to the problem.

Pros:

Full featured, adjustable MPEG-2 hardware encoder
Multiple inputs: TV, S-Video, Composite Video
Built in Program Guide, programmable recording
Easy editing, export to other formats, DVD creation
Small, easily portable box

Cons:

Not bus powered; requires separate power supply
No digital TV input
No Firewire connection; probably only significant in no-compression mode
No direct MPEG-4 compression; this can be accomplished by export
Not as small as the EyeTV Hybrid

James F. Weiher About the reviewer: James F. Weiher

Dr. Weiher has been involved with computers, one way or another, for over 50 years — mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers — in university and government laboratories as well as research centers in private industry. For the last 20 years he has recommended the Macintosh as the personal computer of choice — be it on the desktop or on the road. He says: "The Mac is the researcher's best friend and tool."

His first Mac was the Mac II, his first "fast" computer the IIfx; his first laptop the PB 160, his last 68000 machine the PB 190. He was late getting into the PowerPC line first with the B/W G3 and then with the white G3 iBook. He currently uses a MDD G4, the last Mac bootable into OS 9, as well as his trusty one year old 17" 1.67 GHz G4 PB with DL burner, also the last in a line. As for the Intel architecture, he says: "An astounding revolution — already a success and with an even greater future ahead."

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