Elgato were showing their eyetv for DTT and eyetv hybrid units to the Mac public. Visitors were paying a LOT of attention to Elgato’s offerings, with stand employees reporting massive interest.

The eyetv hybrid unit is a small USB stick device, which has both digital and analogue tuner. The software looks great, with some bug improvements of late. Scheduling for recording to your Mac is really easy. The years free subscription to tvtv (an online program guide) means that you can schedule recordings from anywhere you have internet access. I was impressed with the picture quality that I saw.

Of note, a new product called ‘eyetv diversity’ is soon to be available. Units should be shipping about mid-November. This new product costs £109.99 and offers two tuners. So you can record one channel whilst watching another, or record two channels and play back a recording at the same time. Another feature is the ability to combine both tuners into one ‘super tuner’ for increased signal reception.

Also coming mid-November is a software update that gives you ‘Picture in Picture’ (PiP). This fits in well with the new ‘eyetv diversity’ as it has two tuners. With the other products PiP will still work, displaying a live channel inside a recording you are playing back. You could also add another single tuner stick to your set-up to get similar PiP functionality to ‘eyetv diversity’.

A full review of ‘eyetv diversity’ will be on its’ way soon after the product starts shipping.
www.elgato.com