TVMini HD: tune in, turn on
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Apr 6, 2006 at 4:19am
I didn’t think I’d find a TV tuner for my Mac that matched my all-time favorite: the EyeTV 200 (see my Sept. 15 review), but, darn, Miglia Technology has done it with the US$249.95 TVMini HD, which allows you to watch, pause record and rewind free-to-air Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) on your Mac.
The TVMini HD is a USB 2.0 device (though, admittedly, I’d prefer FireWire) and requires a to 500MHz G4 or greater to handle the bandwidth. The system requirements are more than reasonable considering what you get. Set-up is a breeze, and the TVMini HD comes with the near-perfect EyeTV 200 software (which we’ll review tomorrow since it’s available as a separate product). It also has USB and antenna jacks.
The USB plugs into your Mac, and the antenna plugs into whatever type of antenna you’re using. The ATSC tuner built into the device decodes Over The Air (OTA) HDTV and SDTV signals and plays them live on your Mac’s screen. By the way the TVMini HD comes with an antenna. It’s far from top-of-the-line, but it’s better than many of the “rabbit ear” antennas I’ve used in the past. On the other hand, the device accepts a digital cable feed and that’s the way to go, if you have this option.
About the size of a deck of cards, the TVMini HD comes with a remote control. You can “shift time” by pausing live television, rewinding or fast forwarding. You can edit recorded television to remove unwanted content or save a favorite scene and archive programs to DVD, SVCD or VideoCD to play on most standard DVD players. The TVMini HD offers Closed Captioning and TeleText for International users. You can export to iMovie HD, iDVD, Final Cut Pro HD / Express HD or DVD. And you can play television in its own window, side-by-side with other applications, at full screen or even in the Dock.
As far as I can tell, this is the first device that can record unencrypted QAM HDTV broadcasts over digital cable.
DVB-T or Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) is known as Freeview in the UK and TNT in France. The TVMini HD supports DVB-T multilingual programs and Dolby Digital audio—if supported by your Mac. However, while the TVMini Hd will let you watch unencrypted digital TV content, it’s not compatible with paid digital cable or satellite services. Many cable TV providers broadcast free-to-air digital channels on their networks, but 1080i broadcasts require a dual PowerPC G5 processor.
You can get programs in Standard or High (1080i) Definition, and the quality—especially in the latter—is outstanding. But be warned: you need LOTS of storage space. A typical one-hour TV show will eat up between 5-8GB of storage. However, you can You can also rename and move your EyeTV recordings in the Finder. Export to iPod or burn DVDs with a click.
All in all, there’s very little to complain about with Miglia’s device. And with its silver/white design, it looks good with just about any Mac, pro or consumer model.
Macsimum requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher and USB connectivity (the EyeTV 2.0 software works with both PowerPC and Intel Macs).
Macsimum rating: 9 out of 10.
Mike Says:
I don’t think this is the first to record unencrypted QAM HDTV broadcasts over digital cable, EyeTV 500 has been able to do that for some time.
Posted on April 06, 2006
giant Says:
so it relies on the computer to do all the video processing and encoding? doesn’t the eyeTV 500 box do the encoding so it gives your computer a little reprieve?
Posted on April 06, 2006
DAG Says:
Mike is correct, I own an EyeTV 500 and it records 720P & 1080i off of digital cable or over the air.
It’s nice to see Miglia using ElGato’s superior EyeTV software instead of their own. I used to own an internal Miglia SDTV card in my old G5. Performance was OK but the software was clearly lagging the older version of EyeTV.
Posted on April 07, 2006
kat Says:
Will it work in Canada? How much does it cost for the actual service, buying the device is one thing......
Posted on April 07, 2006
Eric Says:
It works fine with ClearQAM. There is no service to pay, as it’s free-to-air or unencrypted digital cable.
By the way, it does not rely on the computer to perform the encoding. The data is already encoded as an MPEG-2 stream. What requires some horsepower is displaying that MPEG-2 stream on a screen (hence the high requirements for 1080 content).
Nice solution, does everything the EyeTV 500 does for less money.
Posted on April 10, 2006
Jim Turner Says:
My knowledge of technology is extremely limited. What I want/need to know is will it allow viewing of regular TV signals as well as HD?
Posted on April 18, 2006
Brad Says:
So which one is better? I have the eye tv 500. I will prob recieve the same amount of channels with either one,,,correct?
Has anyone tried the EyeTV EZ USB 2.0.....It says you can hook up your games on it.........
Posted on April 21, 2006
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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.
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Jason Says:
The problem with this device is it is limited to over-the-air HD, and not compatible with over-cable transmission of HD. I also agree with Dennis in that it should sport Firewire.
Posted on April 06, 2006