Review: Eye TV 250 Plus a fine, flexible TV tuner (and more)
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jun 13, 2008 at 3:34am
I’ve reviewed several TV tuner products for the Mac, but I’ve never reviewed the Eye TV 250 Plus—until now. Which is too bad, as it’s one of the best of its kind, thanks to its flexibility beyond letting you watch and record TV. Basically, it’s a hybrid TV tuner for the Mac with a hardware encoder.
Extremely easy to set up, it receives both digital TV as well as analog TV. Analog TV shows look good, but your reception for either will depend on your location (which is, of course, not Elgato’s fault)—and you’ll have to provide your own antenna. In areas where HDTV is broadcast, you can watch 720p or 1080i HDTV (MPEG-2) in addition to the other digital television standards. (The Elgato device supports “over-the-air” HD programming, but not the digital cable variety.) The Eye TV Plus 250 also supports Dolby Digital sound.
Unfortunately—and this is true of every TV tuner I’ve test driven—the watching cable on your Mac is not nearly as crisp and sharp as watching it on a decent TV. The video is clearer when you keep the viewing window small. If you make it full size or full screen, you’ll want to sit a ways back from your Mac’s display so you don’t see the compression artifacts. This is one of the reasons, my Mac doesn’t double as a TV that often.
Still, the EyeTV 250 Plus records digital television in the lossless quality setting. It records high quality video from analog sources, compressing audio and video signals to small size MPEG-2 files and frees up your processor for other activities. There’s a bit of latency, but it’s not bad. (Note: the 250 Plus’s built-in MPEG-2 encoder is used to encode the video from analog sources. This is completely separate from the function of Elgato’s Turbo.264, which accelerates the conversion of existing recordings to H.264 format.)
The Eye TV 250 Plus also offers an easy-to-use solution for converting videos from VHS tape to DVD-Video. It includes ports for coaxial, S-Video, and composite video inputs, along with RCA audio plugs, which work great—along with the VHS Assistant, software that guides you step-by-step through the conversion process—for digitizing video footage from a camcorder. The ports also allow you to connect a set-top box directly to your Mac.
The TV tuner comes with an intuitive iPod Assistant to help you convert analog video to iPod/iPhone/Apple TV formats. Other bundled software includes Toast 8 Basic (Toast itself is up to version 9 in the retail version), which lets you burn your recordings to DVD .
Another nice touch: the Eye TV 250 Plus now comes with a Xceive 5000 silicon tuner and 6th generation demodulator technology for improved reception (both analog and digital) and unencrypted digital cable (Clear QAM) support. It also comes with EyeTV 3 software, one of my favorite Mac products. I won’t rehash what I love about it here. You can read my Feb. 28 review.
The Eye TV 205 Plus requires: a Mac with a PowerPC G4,G5 or Intel Core processor; 512MB of RAM; a built-in USB 2.0 port; and Mac OS X v10.4 or later. An Internet connection required to download Program Guide data. Also note that 720p or 1080i HD features require a Dual PowerPC G5 or an Intel Core Duo processor.
Macsimum rating: 8 out of 10
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Mark Tennent Says:
I have an EyeTV 410 (Firewire) and the EyeTV 250 Plus. Both work fine but the 410 is far better at dealing with a poor quality signal than the 250 Plus. It doesn’t need a separate power supplu either.
Posted on June 14, 2008
zahadum Says:
1) no mention of closed captions, subtitles, etc etc??!
2) it is unfair for elgato to punish its customers (and for macsimum to pass along the insult to its readers) by requiring to pay for (and configure the workflow of) two gizmos to do the job the pc users can get in one gizmo!
... i refer of course to integrate support for a hardware H264 codec!
eg: http://www.plextor.com/english/products/M402U.htm
and plextor sells a combo device for the same price as EITHER of elagtos tuner or their 264 encoder! ....
which might explain why elgato has a promotional pricing (50%) off for a bundle of two! ---- a fact that macsimum did not notice! (one suspects that elgato prpomtional price is designed not only to blunt the competition from the superior PC product, but also to clear out inventory in advance of a new combo product of their own to be launched next month at macworld).
3) over-all elgato seems always to be flat-footed compared to a competitor like plextor which actually has a real engineering department that can build what it needs in-house, instead of being dependent on hand-me downs from merchant chip vendors ... instead elagto products tend to show for with mac products with too little, too late!
... as a result of the lack of hardware prowess at elgato, there still is not one simple usb product (heaven forfend in firewire!) that can what is needed without fuss & muss:
* tune all the analog and all the digital;
* process all the SD and all the HD all;
* access the all the OTA and all the coax/cablecard
* encode in all forms of mpeg - but ESPECIALLY mpeg4/H264!
at that point, i will regard a everything else as either a bonus or a luxury— firewire or wifi or bonjour or self-contained/self-managed storage like tivo, or closed captions; or subs or dubs or internationally valid guides— everything that should define a premium mac experience, i will meekly surrender it all ...... if only the guys at elgato will stop embarrassing themselves & dragging down their customers by shipping such a ridiculously INCHOATE product mix!!!!
Posted on June 16, 2008
Kiyotchan Says:
I just purchased Elgato 250 plus, first purchase of TV tuner for computer. Was easy to install as long as you supply necessary source and connector, in my case coaxial connection to cable TV. I have three Mac computers of less than 3 years old, and for convenience reason, I installed the software into Macbook with OS 10.4.11.
Pros:
Ability to watch unencrypted HD channels. I only have basic Comcast service, but now I can watch at least 3 more HDTV channels to only 4 HDTV channels I obtain from ATSC. Amazingly clear picture when receiving HD broadcast, probably because Macbook has 13 inch screen. Works seemlessly with Titan TV programming to reserve recording of any show ahead of time. Watching live TV broadcast in a smaller window enables you to use another software simultaneously, ultimate multitasking.
Cons:
Inability to share (or send) live TV broadcast to other Macs and/or iPod. For whatever reason, I do not seem to be able to update Titan TV programs.
Overall conclusion:
Have not tried over-the-air antenna, but I am thoroughly impressed with this device and accompanying software. I would recommend this to anyone (including those with limited computer knowledge like me!) with Mac with at least Tiger. I understand Leopard would even be better.
Posted on September 29, 2008
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
jon Says:
“(The Elgato device supports “over-the-air” HD programming, but not the digital cable variety.)”
vs
“Eye TV 250 Plus now comes with a Xceive 5000 silicon tuner and 6th generation demodulator technology for improved reception (both analog and digital) and unencrypted digital cable (Clear QAM) support.”
Posted on June 13, 2008