Wow! I just hooked up my Elgato EyeTV 500 to my Powerbook G4 and was watching HD TV in about 10 minutes. This is quite an advance on the near hundred hours it took to get a Linux 2.6.11 kernel custom built and compiled so I could run MythTV with a PCHD-TV card.
Really, like 10 minutes.
I opened the box and pulled out the 8 x 5 x 2 silver box with the HD decoder in it. Pushed the software CD into the slot on the right of the PowerBook and dragged the app and docs to my Applications folder.
The amplified Terk HD antenna ($40 from Radio Shack) screws into the back of the Elgato box and a firewire cable connects between the box and the mac. This cable also powers the box, so if you are running on battery, expect it to drain a bit faster.
Displaying HD also takes a lot of power, so expect your fan to be running and your G4 to get a bit hotter than normal. Incidentally, the picture looks great, with so far no glitches. Recommended. Mine was about $240 refurb, directly from Elgato.
cool! I’m glad the Powerbook has enuf horsepower to play HD. I’m thinking of getting the 500.
Are you pulling channels off the air or is it unencrypted digital cable?
It’s unencrypted over the air. The ‘book does get pretty hot, and has to be cranked up to HIGH cpu to do this though. Even editing HD conent is possible, though I could use a bigger, external, screen.
I just ordered a reburbished model at $199 from Elgato today (Dec 21st, 2005)! Can’t wait ’til it arrives …
I’ll be hooking it up to my (1.42GHz) Mac mini.