Product Reviews

El Gato's EyeTV is a TV Tuner and digital video recorder which has been available in the US since last summer, and this PAL version, which works with European TV signals, has just been released. It's a stunningly simple device to set up and use. The system comprises two parts: hardware and sofware. The hardware is a small box which connects to your Mac via USB. Installing the software is simply a case of dragging the EyeTV application from the CD on to your hard disk. The latest version of the software only runs in Mac OS X 10.2 or later. An older version is provided on the disk for users of OS X 10.1.5, but it lacks some key features.

Once you've plugged a TV antenna, or output from your cable or satellite box, into EyeTV's RF socket, launch the application and run the setup assistant. EyeTV automatically tunes into your TV channels. Where possible, it also attaches the appropriate name to each channel, although names can be edited manually, and you can also set channels not to appear in the channel list.

In its simplest form, EyeTV can then be used to watch live TV broadcasts. The system continually records the footage in the background, so that at any point during the broadcast, you can pause, rewind and then fast forward the programme. The amount of recording time is limited only by the available space on your hard drive - by default a 2Gb cache is used, enough for about three hours of pause time. The cache is emptied when you close the EyeTV application. Unfortunately, because there's only one TV tuner built into the EyeTV box, if you change the channel, that channel change will be reflected when you rewind. As the tuner is a standard analogue TV tuner, if you want to use EyeTV to watch or record cable, satellite or digital TV, you have to set the channel on your set-top box first.

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The software's main controls are displayed on the Controller, an on-screen mimic of a remote control. The CD also contains a file for mapping the keys on a Keyspan Digital Remote to EyeTV. With the on-screen controller, you can play and pause footage, move backwards and forward

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through it, change channels and so on. The time slider bar is useful for jumping to a particular place in the footage with a single click, while there is also a Skip Backward button for an instant replay of the last seven seconds, and a Skip Forward section to bring you back to where you were. The controller also has an instant record button, a button to display a channel listing, and another to bring up the list of existing recordings.

Frustratingly, the one remaining button doesn't work outside the US: this connects to a live TV listings service on the Internet. This is one of EyeTV's most useful features, as it makes the selection of programmes to view and record extremely simple.

In the absence of the Internet TV guide feature, you can manually schedule recordings similarly to the way you would with a standard VCR, by selecting the time, date, channel, and whether the programme will be shown daily or weekly and so on. The interface for doing so is very simple and intuitive.

But without the Internet link to provide these settings automatically, EyeTV can't come close to living up to its full potential. El Gato says it is working on adding programme guide integration for European countries, although at the time of writing no further information was available.

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EyeTV is not smart enough to automatically miss out commercial breaks from recordings. However, there is an editor window allowing you to perform simple editing tasks on recordings, such as cutting out the ads, or clipping a favourite section from a programme and saving it as a QuickTime movie.

The benefits over a standard VHS recorder are clear - EyeTV can record more than 30 hours of footage on a 20Gb hard drive, and there's no loss in picture quality as there is with VHS. The ability to pause live TV is fantastic, and it can only be a matter of time before such functionality is built into TVs and videos as standard. However, EyeTV's problem, and one it shares with all computerised video recording systems, is that you have to watch TV on your computer screen, rather than on your television.

One solution is to burn your recorded footage on to a Video CD using EyeTV's integration with Roxio Toast, and then play it back on a conventional DVD player. But this seems like a rather cumbersome approach.

Without a better way of integrating into your regular TV viewing and recording setup, the EyeTV remains a good proof of concept but requires a change in viewing habis to get the most out of it. And without the TV listing service support outside the US, it's lacking one of its best features. However, Solutions like this will be the norm one day. Watch this space.